Three thought provoking films on our radar tackle three very different relationships.
By The Sea
Seen through the romantic blur of a washed-out Seventies filter, By The Sea follows Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as a volatile married couple struggling to save their relationship at a holiday resort in the South of France. Directed by Jolie, her third feature as director, the film has been dismissed by some critics as a vanity project that keeps the inaccessible characters at arm’s length as the glamorous couple’s turbulent marriage painstakingly reaches breaking point and beyond. Vanessa, a former dancer, and Roland, a writer, have reached a dramatic impasse, the reason for Vanessa’s obvious pain not revealed until towards the end of the film. US box office figures based on the film’s initial limited release seem to bear out the mixed reviews.
Despite the languid pacing of the film the chic European interiors don’t disappoint, however, and nor do the stylishly underplayed costumes of silk robes, perfectly cut blouses and lace-trimmed nightgowns crafted by costume designer Ellen Mirojnick to reflect Vanessa's despondency. Melancholy and beautiful, the most compelling reason to watch is the evident chemistry between the real life Hollywood couple (a notion acknowledged in their characters’ voyeurism of a newlywed couple at the resort), their first joint outing on the big screen since Mr and Mrs Smith exactly ten years ago.
Macbeth
From the languourous travails of a disaffected couple to the life and death potency of Macbeth, a force of nature unfolding in Middle Ages Scotland, directed by Justin Kurzel. With Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave, Prometheus, Steve Jobs) electric in the lead role, already declared ‘born for this’, and Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose, A Good Year, The Immigrant) as a complex Lady Macbeth, the film is a visceral journey from its outset, poetically mired in blood and mist. “He’s got an incredible intensity,” said producer Iain Canning on casting Fassbender “and the Shakespeare sort of bubbles through him like he was born to play that role. We couldn’t really see it being so centered and so emotionally complex with anyone else.”
Faithful to Shakespeare’s words, the script nonetheless reimagines key scenes in vivid technicolour with a definitive modernity: Cotillard’s performance in the sleepwalking piece unforgettably eerie. With grand battle scenes (Macbeth’s army defeating Thane of Cawdor is as gorily theatrical as they come), agonised soliloquies and supernaturally haunting witches prophesying Macbeth’s downfall, this latest version of the Scottish tragedy is set to be a smouldering classic.
Life
The definitive rebel without a cause, Life follows the story of the friendship between James Dean (Dane DeHaan) and photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson), the man responsible for some of the most iconic shots of the star to this day. Directed by Anton Corbijn (The American, A Most Wanted Man), Stock pesters Dean into friendship at the delicate moment that the actor is reluctantly transforming into a new breed of movie star. Prada campaign star and fictional anti-hero in The Amazing Spider Man 2, DeHaan captures the recurring loneliness and secrets of an outsider thrust into the limelight in his portrayal of Dean. “He has a beautiful face, but it's a hard face to grasp,” says Corbijn. “It's hard to see how Dane reads [on screen] sometimes, and the same goes for James Dean.” Set for release in the US in early December, this pared back insight into the life of a film legend is a brooding insight into how the bright lights of fame often prove both a beacon and a warning.
