davidlmartin Reviews

Ivan's Childhood (1962)

Provocative tale of a child at war

[10/10 · 15 April 2007]

Kolya Burlyayev gives a haunting and moving performance as Ivan, a boy recruited to spy at the eastern front after the murder of his family. His dark and moody and argumentative character seems so mature for his years, perfectly echoing the state of someone who has lived too much and grown up too soon. The flashbacks to his happy childhood of times with his family and playtime innocence contrast starkly with the sombre and spartan contemporary wartime scenes. The cinematography is excellent in showing these disparities between past and present; a light and bright memory with a grimy and grubby here and now.

The editing is well paced, never allowing the flashbacks to halt the main action. Andrei Tarkovsky handles the main actors well, developing full and richly rounded characters. The final scenes are shocking and unexpected, mixing what looked like documentary footage with fictional shots to expose the horrors of German atrocities. The ending blows your mind, especially as you never see it coming.

Recovery (2007 TV Movie)

Moving and convincing portrayal of a family tragedy

[8/10 · 16 March 2007]

Recovery is a well-judged and balanced drama of a sensitive subject that doesn't sentimentalise the main characters. David Tennant and Sarah Parish bring to the fore the complex and conflicting emotions of a couple deeply in love struggling to come to terms with the personality changes they both endure and also must make to survive a tragic accident.

Tennant, as Alan, brings humour as well as a dangerous lecherousness, as an engineer recovering from a memory loss brought on by a road accident. Alan is not portrayed simply as a victim but as human being with feelings doing the best he can to make sense of his new life. Sarah Parish's Tricia is not a clichéd stand-by-her-man housewife who will do anything to support her husband. She struggles with falling out of love with Alan, as the man she once new and loved is now a completely different person - a stranger to her.

Contrary to some opinion, this - in my view - makes perfect Sunday night viewing. Too often, we are shown soft family dramas or detective series, like Heartbeat, which rot and putrefy the brain. Programme commissioners seem to think that the traditional day of rest is also a day when our minds go to sleep. More challenging and thought-provoking drama like Recovery would seriously change the situation.

Fallen Angel (I) (2007)

Fallen Angel rises like a phoenix

[8/10 · 15 March 2007]

I enjoyed Fallen Angel on ITV1 this week. It's not your conventional murder mystery we are so used to seeing. I like the innovative "rewind" format used to trace the life of serial killer Rosie (Emilia Fox) back to 1991 and 1979. We uncover her motives and influences that made her what she is - more a whydunit than a whodunit. There are no obvious quick fixes pinning down a single reason for Rosie's behaviour. The complex story arc neatly ties the complex relationships between Rosie, her clergyman father David (Charles Dance), family friend Wendy (Clare Holman) and adversary Michael (Oliver Dimsdale). Running through the core of all three episodes is a subplot about an allegedly murderous clergyman from the 1920's, Francis Ulgreave, who practised child sacrifice. Although long dead, his story casts a long shadow over all the characters with disastrous consequences. Fallen Angel is a provocative and intelligent tale of the need for love and the consequences of keeping secrets. I've already put Andrew Taylor's novels in my Amazon wish list.

Fallen Angel - Behind the Scenes on ITV3 provided further enlightenment. It had psychologists detailing scenes in the serial which exemplified the motivations of psychopathic killers. One example, where Rosie storms out after she mistakenly believes that David accused her of stealing stepmother Vanessa's (Niamh Cusack) ring, demonstrates a psychopath's impulsiveness. Andrew Taylor deliberately made his killer female to counter society's preconceptions of beautiful women being all sweetness and light. One case he was influenced by was that of baby killer Beverley Allitt. The cast and crew discuss the nature / nurture debate as to what makes a person evil. One bit of trivia: Clare Holman had make up applied which creased her face to make her look older in the contemporary scenes. She was so well camouflaged that a crew member mistook her for a chaperon!

There were good performances all round. Charles Dance was studious as the repressed and sexually rapacious vicar. Niamh Cusack was effectively obsessive and tetchy as David's second wife, Vanessa, who is more interested in Francis Ulgreave's journals than satisfying her husband's hungry sexual appetite. Mark Benton was convincing as Eddie, the paedophile simpleton unwittingly manipulated by Rosie into doing her murderous bidding. Sheila Hancock gives a majestic performance as Francis Ulgreave's adopted daughter mischievously keeping her family secrets from the desperately fascinated Vanessa. Emilia Fox was cold and calculating as Rosie, but also gave her the soft, childlike vulnerability of someone who craves ultimate adult power, but hasn't grown up and is trapped and defined by her tragic past and disappointments in life.

The young child actors were splendid too. Jade Sharif as Michael's kidnapped daughter portrayed a captivating and heart-melting innocence that belied her ignorance of the dangerous situation she was in. Tigerlily Hutchinson as the young Rosie was magnificent as the headstrong and inquisitive youngster tightly drawn into a web of religious obsession that drives her on the road to murder.

Primeval (2007–2011)

Passable but unoriginal dinosaur caper

[7/10 · 15 March 2007]

I thought Primeval was quite derivative of current TV science fiction. Hoping this was going to be a hard-edged, modern and gritty sci-fi in the wake of Battlestar Galactica and Millennium as trailed, my heart sank when I heard it was dinosaurs. Not again! It's a sort of X-Files meets Jurassic Park made by Impossible Pictures, who produced Prehistoric Park and Walking with Dinosaurs. Obviously, they're not straying from their tried and tested formula. Douglas Henshall is the head of team of dinosaur experts whose wife disappeared eight years earlier in mysterious circumstances, much like Mulder's missing sister. The team meets up with a Home Office trouble-shooter whose job is to cover and clean up the dinosaurs that are strangely appearing in modern-day Britain. I was concerned by the casting of Hannah Spearitt. Predictably, she was so-so. Andrew Lee-Potts from Band of Brothers played a nerdy conspiracy nut who has a database of dinosaurs in his computer. This cast of characters we have seen in a number of other programmes. I just wonder how ITV are going to sustain a series only on chasing monsters and being chased by them.

The Page Turner (2006)

Good psychological thriller

[8/10 · 15 February 2007]

I only found out about this film when I checked the Odeon website to see what was showing at the Director's Chair screening on the day. Financed by Film4, this an excellent French psychological thriller on the trauma of childhood twisting a person to revenge. When young Melánie (Déborah Francois) is distracted in a piano audition by Ariane Fouchécourt (Catherine Frot), causing her to fluff her performance, she goes home in tears. Years later, accepting a position as a home help chance would have it that the person she is helping is Ariane... A good character piece with a slow revelation that works like a clockwork toy, unwinding with a twist.

Angela (1995)

Eerie and thought-provoking

[8/10 · 13 February 2007]

Rebecca Miller's haunting tale of a young girl driven by her religious obsessions into a frightening world of hallucinogenic images and superstitious delusion. There are touching performances by the two principal girl actors, Miranda Stuart Rhyne and Charlotte Eve Blythe. Rhyne, in particular, is engaging as the young protagonist caught in a heavenly struggle between good and evil to save her mentally ill mother. She convincingly portrays Angela as a determined and feisty but naive and vulnerable child in equal measure; someone who is headstrong but literally open to abuse.

There is a fine director's commentary on the DVD narrated by Miller exploring the themes and motivations that went into the making of the film.