Some films

Spoiler Alert!!

Kings is the Irish language version of Jimmy Murphy's play 'The Kings of the Kilburn High Road' and if you didn't know it was a play going in, you'd probably have guessed by the time it ended. In the late 1970s, six friends leave Connemara and travel to London in search of work, fortune and a few jars. Jumping forward to 2007, we find that while they all managed to find work of one kind or another - at least for a while, only one has found any kind of fortune. However, all of them, of course, have managed to find a few jars. And a few after that.. One of the 6 has died, having supposedly slipped onto the tracks and under an oncoming tube and the remaining 5 come together for his funeral. Simmering resentments between the 5 old friends come to the fore over the course of a drunken wake in the back room of their local boozer.. It's a hard old film to get through and there's not a lot of laughs to be had. Which is to say that there's no laughs to be had whatsoever. But it's nice to see a mostly accomplished Irish film, even if it's a little stagey by times..

Speaking of accomplished Irish films, Garage has arrived in Irish cinemas weighed down with ecstatic reviews and glowing recommendations. I'm not so sure.. It’s a slight enough story about Josie, a simple-minded garage attendant in a small Irish village. Josie lives along, has no family and is the butt of most people’s jokes. His boss sends a surly 15 year-old to work in the Garage with Josie and gradually they get to know each other. Josie buys drinks for the young lad and his friends and, in return, the teenagers let Josie hang around with them.. Eventually, Josie makes a foolish misjudgement that sets a sequence of events in motion that leads to a heartbreaking conclusion. Nothing happens quickly in Garage but what does happen is credible and happens at its own pace. Pat Shortt is terrific as Josie but I’m not sure the film is the masterpiece that many claim it to be. It does seem that that every few years an Irish film arrives on our screens to much praise but is quickly forgotten. I can’t help feeling that Garage may suffer the same fate. Irish critics tend to operate a policy of ‘shower with praise first and ask questions later’ when it comes to films. Still, for all that, Garage is well worth a look..

And then there was Control, Anton Corbijn’s much praised biopic of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis who died aged 23 in 1980. It’s a great-looking film and I’m finding it hard to think of much that’s wrong with it. I suppose if you’ve no interest in the story then it might be a bit of a slog. In fairness though, I’ve never had much time for Joy Division’s music but I was taken along by the energy and excitement of a new band making music and finding an audience. And then the realisation amongst the band members that Curtis’ epilepsy and depression was in danger of undoing their potential.. I read recently that none of the band really took his depression too seriously and never thought he might harm himself. One can only wonder what might have happened if they could have helped him. Although I suppose they were just kids.. Sam Riley, a musician with little acting experience is terrific as Curtis, overcome with guilt about his failed relationships, anxiety about his growing fame and fear over his epileptic attacks. Samantha Morton, perhaps the finest English actor of the day, is completely believable as Debbie, Curtis’ wife. The film has been based on Debbie Curtis’ book, Touching From a Distance, and Morton manages to find the right balance in her portrayal of Debbie from teenage girlfriend to wife and mother, capturing the loss of innocence and optimism as Curtis isolates her and pushes her aside. And the scene where she comes home to find Curtis body is extraordinary. It’s shot from outside the house and is held together by her performance alone and she does a fantastic job with it. It’s also worth saying that, for a film dealing with depression and suicide, there’s a lot of humour too. Obviously any film with Tony Wilson as a main character is going to have a few laughs at his expense, but Toby Keppell deserves a nod for his humourous portrayal of Rob Bretton, Joy Division’s manager. In fact in a film that’s going to bring a lot of attention to Sam Riley and Samantha Morton for their performances, I think Keppell very quietly was the star of the show..

And the soundtrack is fantastic!

And finally, The Counterfeiters.. What a grim, challenging and ambiguous film this is.. In 1936, Salomon ‘Sally’ Sorowitsch, a Jewish criminal, known throughout the underworld as the greatest forger in Germany is arrested by Inspector Herzog of the Berlin Fraud Squad. Salomon is sent to a concentration camp where his illustrations and pictures of guards earn him special privileges. Eventually he is moved to a special wing in the Sachsenhausen camp where Herzog, his captor years earlier, is ruuning a top secret forgery unit, Operation Bernhard. Salomon is put in charge of a team of artists, printers and bankers who’ve been plucked from various camps and instructed to produce forgeries of foreign currency, specifically sterling and dollars. The unit are housed separately to all the other prisoners and are given luxury motivational treats like bedsheets and a ping pong table. Salomon and the inmates are left with a choice. Do they produce the forgeries that will be flooded into the market and prolong the Nazi war effort or do they try to sabotage the operation risking their own lives. This isn’t some kind of heroic Escape to Victory caper though. The choices are real and complicated and the hero of the film, we have to remind ourselves, is a criminal after all. He’s struggling to decide what’s the right thing to do and what’s the criminal thing to do. His instinct is to produce the greatest forgeries of all time but to say he's conflicted would be putting it mildly. He wants to stay alive while some of his colleagues, particularly Burger, a Communist printer whose wife has been killed trying to escape from Aushwitz, are prepared to give up their lives in order to sabotage the Nazi plan. When the war ends, the prisoners in the forgery unit have to justify themselves and their actions to the other prisoners that have been living in atrocious conditions just yards away.

The Counterfeiters is a riveting film about morality and life and death decisions. Was Salomon a hero? Did he do the right thing? Did he betray his country or save his unit? I'm still not sure that I know and I’ve been trying not to think too much about what I'd do in the same situation..

Incidentally, and here's the spoiler, all these films feature suicides of varying importance to the plot. That's 4 in a row. It's time for some comedies!