Film Review: The Counselor

"Drink up man, it's delicious. Surely you're not doubting my taste?"

Preview at Curzon Mayfair - 7/11/2013

Cormack McCarthy, Pulitzer Prize winning author, follows success with adaptations of his novels The Road and No Country For Old Men by scripting The Counselor. Ridley Scott directs a heavyweight cast of Hollywood's finest. Unfortunately The Counselor ends up as less than the sum of its parts.

The unnamed counselor[sic] (Michael Fassbender) is seduced by the promise of riches and a glamorous lifestyle into getting involved in a drug smuggling ring, together with his dealer buddy Reiner (Javier Bardem). The other parties in the deal are the largely unseen Mexican cartels and Westway (Brad Pitt). The details of the deal and the roles of these players are unimportant, to the extent of not being explained beyond the most indistinct sketch. Women loom large in the background, with Penelope Cruz as Laura, the Counselor's fiancée and Cameron Diaz as Malkina, Reiner's girlfriend. Needless to say, the drug deal goes wrong and as the result of a series of apparent coincidences the Counselor gets into trouble with those nasty Mexican gangs. 

Unfortunately the film feels indecisive and in not focusing on either the counselor's undoing or the criminal underworld it fails to illuminate either satisfactorily. A film like Carlito's Way, for instance, is more satisfying in may respects from a similar starting point. The counselor's partners repeatedly advise him to not get involved, and there is little evidence of why he would want to given his seemingly very comfortable position. Dialogue is often restricted to a series of near-monologues that are oblique to the story. Many scenes are superfluous, for instance the diamond dealer, the bizarre car humping scene and the phone call with the counselor's oddly verbose philosophical friend. One tokenistic surreal scene has the counselor wandering through a nocturnal demonstration by grieving families of drug cartel victims. Fassbender's performance is vague, though this could reflect his character being outside his comfort zone throughout the film. Bardem is amusing but stilted and Cruz is criminally underused, reduced to being a muse for the Counselor even though her ethical position seems entirely opposed to his activities. Diaz's woozy performance suits the role - Malkina's character is inscrutable though her intelligence is hinted at in Reiner's lines but never demonstrated in any way until the unconvincing non sequitir ending. Brad Pitt is a comedy cowboy in a bad suit and performs much like he did in Burn After Reading, good in a comedy but inappropriate here.

Every shot of the film is beautifully composed, and shows the cars, bikes, apartments, villas, furniture and actors at their best. The director's background in advertising shows and everything looks beautifully seductive. The desert landscapes are stunning, like a less saturated Breaking Bad - but clearly geographically distinct - and evoke some of the atmosphere of McCarthy's novels. However given the writer's very visual prose style, it is surprising that the drama hasn't transposed effectively to the big screen. In the end we have a film that although enjoyable, doesn't begin to do justice to the considerable talents involved. 2.5/5

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ML50I0mVHY

Film/Immersive Theatre Review - Strange Factories

Serving suggestion.

Cinema Museum, London - 5/11/2013
Strange Factories as staged at the Cinema Museum is a hybrid film/immersive theatre experience that addresses the nature of the creative process and how the artist's creation possesses an existence independently of the artist. The experience begins in the queue outside, where actors in masks instruct audience members to be silent during the performance, and inspect and tease them, priming them for what happens inside. The audience is then split into two groups which once inside are introduced to a number of characters in immersive theatre style, invited to consider their role in the performance, plied with (sham) drinks at a bar and participate in a seance-like ceremony. There was plenty of personal interaction in the viewing I attended, with an audience of nine, though I expect this will vary considerably with the size of the audience. Much of the action takes place in the dark, and the spooky atmosphere throughout is skilfully maintained.

The audience is then invited to sit down to watch the film. This to me is where the serious problems I had with the production begin. The film follows Victor Stronheim and a cast of largely forgettable and interchangeable characters around as he agonises over a play he has written. Boundaries between the worlds of Stronheim, his characters, the audience in the film and the actual audience are blurred, and Stronheim is forced to stage his play to get out of a predicament whose nature is obfuscated by the frankly tedious goings-on. In some scenes the film appears to taunt the audience with dialogue such as (I'm paraphrasing, from memory) 'How much longer can this possibly go on?' and 'The audience is desperate for this to end'. The film's final scene is played out simultaneously on screen and onstage with the same actors. This is followed by a dance and final theatrical scene, after which the audience is led out of the building.

I found the production as a whole unengaging, shallow and the film section overlong. My feeling is that Strange Factories could work as an immersive theatre piece, or as a ten minute art film playing in a gallery, but is too insubstantial for its near three hour running time. My immediate impression was of a company that has become insular and immersed itself too completely in a work. John Harrigan writes, directs and stars, and perhaps this singular vision needs some editorial oversight. An artist creates and has no obligation to cater for a particular, or indeed any audience. However, when the medium is film or theatre, the production is made to be witnessed. To be fair, Strange Factories doesn't appear to be widely publicised and I only heard about it as an existing fan of the Facebook page of Foolish people's previous production, the very enjoyable A Virulent Experience. Perhaps if the film had attempted to develop its characters or had adhered to a more conventional narrative style it might have engaged sufficiently for me to give a fair consideration of its themes. I am sure I was not alone in not getting it, as two other audience members walked out shortly into the film. The immersive theatre was somewhat enjoyable, but it is dragged down by the ponderous film and as a spectacle I give it 1/5.

Website (with trailer): http://www.strangefactories.com/