[The 13th Belfast Film Festival] Day 1 - The Mask

And so it begins. 

This is the first entry in my coverage of the 13th Annual Belfast Film Festival. Over the course of the next 10 days I've booked myself into a lot of films, and I hope to find time to cover them all for you. This is something I'm pretty excited about, the range and quality of the films on show over the course of the festival is an example of how Belfast has developed both culturally and cinematically over the last couple of years. 

I kicked off the festival in the cosy bean-bag cinema, a snug and suitably low-key setting that fitted the vibe of our first film perfectly. 

The Mask (1961) 

Location - BFF Beanbag Cinema

Director - Julian Roffman
Country - Canada, USA
Starring - Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, Bill Walker, Anne Collings
Running Time - 83 Minutes
Synopsis - A young archaeologist believes he is cursed by a mask that causes him to have weird nightmares and possibly to murder. Before committing suicide, he mails the mask to his psychiatrist, Dr. Barnes, who is soon plunged into the nightmare world of the mask.

As 3D tears its way through our multiplexes with an unsupported metabolism, each new re-release and shoe-horned gimmick come with the sense of inevitable collapse. The profits are down, the release numbers are down and the interest is down. Why? There is probably a long list of socio-economic factors that could be wheeled out in order to explain the short lived fad. Yet it is in the view of this film-school romantic that 3D is losing its numbers because its lost its fun. 

And here we have Julian Roffman's low budget horror-schlock The Mask which doesn't just gives us all the gimmicks and silliness, it embraces them in a wonderful meta-textual exploration of audience interactivity. 

Just as The Wizard of Oz famously opened in Black and White, before blowing the world apart in a Technicolor marvel, The Mask traps us in the two dimensional reality as the suicide of a young archaeologist launches a inquiry about a missing mask. For the first half hour the film plays out like one part Scooby Doo, one part Citizen Kane. Slowly the pieces unravel as detective and psychologist move from clue to clue but it is only when the missing mask (mailed before the archaeologist could take his own life) arrives Dr Allan Barnes desk (in a moment of pure Hitchcockian McGuffunry) that things enter the new dimensional horror promised by the films trailer. 

Tempted by the enclosed letter, Barnes dawns the mask and is immediately inflicted with horrific visions. Put on the mask! Put on the mask! Put on the mask! Rings the voice over, but really it's a warning to the audience. On goes the old school red and blue glasses and suddenly we all found ourselves in a grotesque trans-dimensional nightmare. How well these sections worked almost took me by surprise, structurally they're pretty flimsy, the don't really offer anything other than haunted house sequences intended to shock the audience with vague ties to the overarching story of ancient evil. Yet I couldn't help but give myself to them completely. It brought the audience along with Dr Barnes into a new reality, giving the effects a reason to exist and the audience a reason to interact with them. Not to mention the sequences themselves were marked by creatively devilish set design and special effects, it frequently called to mind the work of Jean Cocteau, had he collaborated with Goya. 

The Mask might be a little to dreary for it's own good, there isn't enough ham to make it's rather silly and forgettable plot all that interesting, and the acting isn't great, but it isn't terrible enough to offer up more than a few giggles. But that didn't stop it from being a joyously memorable ride on an old rickety ghost train.

[Review] Sightseers - The Caravan Condition

Sightseers (2012)

Director - Ben Wheatley

Country - United Kingdom

Starring - Alice Lowe, Steve Oram

Running time - 88 minutes

Synopsis - Chris wants to show girlfriend Tina his world, but events soon conspire against the couple and their dream caravan holiday takes a very wrong turn.

Britain as a society is one built upon its traditions, and perhaps none is more ludicrous (or cherished) than that of the sacred caravan tour from campsite to campsite, complete with an abundance of vexatious locals and washed out skies. Led, marketed and even defended by a safe middle class sense of freedom that allows one to enjoy the hospitality of the great outdoors filtered through rusty showers, pull-out beds and deck chairs. Not to mention the immense strain on our mental well-being that comes with being confined to sailor-esque quarters with our nearest and dearest. For Ben Wheatley the caravan tradition masks something much more disturbing lurking beneath the surface of our mud-stained paradise. 

There is a direct primal quality to Wheatley's films, one scarcely engaged or even referenced in Britain or indeed British cinema since the 1970s. However he engages with it head on, tapping into our most visceral urges through aggressive slow-motion close-ups dominated by his male leads. More sinister however are the various cults and rituals that take place up and down the country, in last years Kill List it was the ultimate expression of middle class denial, here it infests our characters psyches and brings them into a hypnotic, violent trance. Murder is perhaps the most natural and basest means of expression.

Drawing on a legacy of lovers-on-the-run films, Sightseers' takes notes from Natural Born Killers, Mike Leigh's Nuts in May and one very obvious visual nod to Terrence Malick's debut Badlands. The message here may not be remotely original, but through the jet black realism humor, audaciously straight soundtrack and increasing absurdity of Chris and Tina's blood-stained 'erotic odyssey' the film amounts to more than the sum of it's influences. 

 

Too easily could this descend into a crass exploitation of our customary ideals at the expense of some cherished British quirks. However, neither writers Lowe or Oram, nor Wheatley are looking to mock. Instead, they find a great deal of admiration and beauty within their locales as Chris and Tina stare slack-jawed at the world’s largest pencil in the Keswick Pencil Museum or dance in the reflected light of the Blue John Caverns in Derbyshire. However there is an intense haze that blankets the landscape, inhabiting the Lake District in an alien yellow or unsettling mist, it spills into the attractions. The retired trains of Crich Tramway Museum become industrial skeletons, slapped with the label of 'heritage' as if to install a sense of entitlement and responsibility into those who come to stare. Something which Chris adopts instantaneously, or so it appears in his satisfied smile as he backs over an indignant litter bug with his caravan. This is when things change.

It is not Chris' vigilant desire to protect British tourist attractions that drives him to, as Tina puts it 'murder innocent people,' but a deeply seated social resentment. After all when he is confronted by an angry member of the National Trust after dog Poppy fouls an ancient site of interest, Chris brutally murders him, justifying it with 'He's not a person, he's a Daily Mail reader.' As the body count racks up, Tina slowly emerges as the more dominate of the two, much to Chris' discontent. Murder may be the most natural means of expression, but it is his means, and having his girlfriend take matters into her own hands usurps his control. The aforementioned jet black humor has taken the stage here, but it comes with an unnerving sense of guilt and discomfort that comes from each gloriously gooey murder. Unfortunately this wears the film down, and it runs out steam shortly before redeeming itself with an astonishing finale.        

Perhaps it isn't the fault of Chris and Tina for the disastrous outcome of their holiday, but a result social and economic climate of which they are a product, an unsettled, tainted generation who find themselves constrained by an obligation to fix the world. Led by Wheatley’s assured direction and two career-making performances, their tragedy becomes giddy pop-enjoyment, twisted thrills and a surprisingly sombre romantic charm. Eventually, as with most Holidays, Sightseers’ overcomes its issues through the tinted eyes of post-viewing reflection. You might not be after an 'erotic odyssey' of your own anytime soon, but the British countryside has never housed a more mysterious and lurid beauty.  

4/5