BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2020 ROUND-UP: PART 1

A celebration of the escapist power of the pictures.

Broadway Cinema is back. My favourite cinema reopened its doors on September 25th. I went on opening night to a screening of ‘Rocks’ (2020) - the brilliant new film from Sarah Gavron. It was followed by a Q n’ A with Director Gavron and Nottingham-born star Shaneigha Monik-Greyson. I was standing behind them in the queue for the mini-bar. That’s my little claim to fame anyway!

The cinema is virtually unrecognisable and, no matter how good the social distancing measures were (fantastic all-around!), it’s sad to see the physical impact this Covid-19 Pandemic has had on Nottingham’s No.1 arts and culture hub. There’s no foyer anymore. You have to either go straight up the stairs or down the stairs depending which screen you’re in. And exit round the back to avoid crossing paths with incoming customers.

You can’t grab a drink and sit down in the Cafe Bar with a copy of LeftLion. The Cafe Bar and Mezzanine Bar remain closed for refurbishment; due to reopen in December. 

Not quite a return to normal then. But the big news is that the BFI London Film Festival took place between October 7th and October 18th and Broadway Cinema was screening films live from the festival; accompanied by live Q n’ As with the film-makers and stars. Preceding the screenings, we were graced with the video presence of some of the biggest and best names in British Film. Steve McQueen, Riz Ahmed and David Byrne were just some of the famous faces lighting up the cinema’s colossal Screen 1; talking about their films and pontificating about the challenges of releasing them in this uniquely challenging year.

Broadway have always prided themselves on being one of the best cinemas in the country. It was actually rated, in 2009, by Total Film as one of the best in the world. In 1993, Broadway hosted the UK premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994); screening it shortly after its debut at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. And, consequence of Laraine Porter (co-founder and director of the British Silent Film Festival) being director of the Broadway Media Centre from 1998 to 2008, the cinema hosted a series of silent film festivals in conjunction with the BFI.

Just last year, Broadway was the set of a Q n’ A with supreme satirist and film-maker Chris Morris; talking about his then new film ‘The Day Shall Come’ (2019). Suffice to say, the fact that Broadway were screening films from the UK’s biggest film festival was a sign of a partial return to normalcy. Even if that new normalcy takes an online form as will increasingly be the case for the film industry in the coming years.

I didn’t see all the films that were being screened. I missed Pixar’s ‘Soul’ (2020) which I am now told will skip cinemas and go straight to Disney Plus. What must surely be another blow to the future of the theatrical experience. 

I did, however, attend the Broadway practically every day for the past two weeks. Certainly for the latter halves of the weeks as the cinema is now only open from Wednesdays-Sundays (blame Covid!). I’m probably their most regular customer. Possibly there more than many of the staff.

I have to say I’ve seen a terrific range of movies as part of this year’s LFF. Some better than others. My two standouts were Steve McQueen’s ‘Mangrove’ (2020) and Spike Lee’s ‘David Byrne’s American Utopia’ (2020). But all the films, in their own ways, stressed the importance of the big screen experience as a collective whole. 

As emphasised by lovecinema.com’s eye-popping advert (playing in all cinemas since they re-opened), “cinema is back” and “great stories need a big screen”. There was certainly an attitude in all the interviews towards preserving the art of watching a movie in the cinema. A medium which is currently under threat from implosion in the post-Covid world of streaming, download and home viewing services.

I especially liked Riz Ahmed’s little bit before a screening of ‘Mogul Mowgli’ (2020) where he talked about his new film being essentially a “Covid film”. In ‘Mogul Mowgli’, Ahmed plays a British Asian rapper who finds his career in jeopardy after a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease. His character endures prolonged periods of isolation. Something millions will have related to during lockdown.

If this London Film Festival did anything at all, it was celebrate the escapist power of the pictures. All the films revelled in the big screen’s ability to transport viewers to other worlds. And, as someone who’s spent most of the past 7 months watching movies at home, the festival reminded me how much I’d missed the cinema.

Here’s a selection of my LFF highlights...

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​Mangrove (15, 126 Mins)

I saw this with possibly the worst behaved crowd I’ve ever been with. There was talking, jeering, a phone went off...all of which threatened to put a dampner on the film itself.

What a wonderful film this is. Gritty yet uplifting. Realistic yet cinematic. Political yet accessible. It’s also not actually a “film”. ‘Mangrove’ (2020) was made for Television, due to air on BBC1 in November and the first part in the BBC’s ‘Small Axe’ mini-series - a series of dramas documenting Black lives in 70s Britain.

This is the first time the LFF have screened something made for Television; further blurring the line between TV and Film in a world where the distinction between the two mediums is increasingly unclear. “Cinematic” TV Shows like ‘The Wire’ (2002-2008), ‘Game of Thrones’ (2011-2019) and ‘Breaking Bad’ (2008-2013) possess production values, budgets and cinematographiques as high-calibre as the worthiest Oscar-bait dramas.

To be honest, it’s no surprise that ‘Mangrove’ is as cinematic as it is considering it’s directed by Steve McQueen - the celluloid auteur behind ‘12 Years A Slave’ (2013), ‘Widows’ (2018) and ‘Shame’ (2012). 

‘Mangrove’ takes its title from the Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill, West London which, in 1970, was targeted by police. The nine black British activists who protested against the targeting were tried for inciting a riot. The trial then became the first judicial acknowledgement of racial hatred in the Metropolitan Police.

The trial itself is the location for the vast majority of the over 2 hour running time. Courtroom procedures, lawsuits and paperwork aren’t the most “cinematic” materials. However, while ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’s shouty judges and moralistic messages felt very “Televisual” and made for Netflix, McQueen here makes distinctly un-filmic settings suited for the biggest screen possible.

Whenever the legal terminology becomes too report-like, the camera switches to close-up shots of inanimate objects. For example, the legs of a chair juddering ramps up the jittery anxiety of being in court. Meanwhile the overhead shot of a prison window when Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes) is first detained encapsulates the isolation, confinement and claustrophobia of cell life.

The film pulses with incendiary passion and righteous anger. The passion is provided by Sam Spruell who is absolutely electrifying as PC Frank Pulley. This is a bitterly racist police officer who delights in inflicting brutal beatings upon his suspects. Scenes of the character mouthing lines like “go back to wherever the f**k you came from” prove particularly shocking. Not least because they are mouthed by a man in uniform. But more shocking that this kind of hate speech was tolerated as late as the 70s.

Pulley’s blue oni to his red oni is Frank Crichlow who embodies the anger that runs through the heart of this film. Crichlow was the owner of the Mangrove restaurant which, for many years, played host to a variety of activists, musicians and artists organizing the Notting Hill Carnival. He was widely seen as “the symbol of resistance to police persecution”.

Abner Cohen wrote in 1993 that Crichlow had been “one of the most significant West Indian leaders in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s”. He went on to write “his role in the Notting Hill Carnival was paramount...What was astonishing about Crichlow was that he did not give up. During twenty turbulent years, he made the Mangrove into a potent symbol of black unity, defiance and resistance”.

Crichlow is played here with tremendous conviction by Shaun Parkes. Parkes’s performance highlight comes mid-way through the movie during the protest march itself. As multiple men and women scream “HANDS OFF! BLACK PEOPLE!”, hard angles on his face carve disgust, rage and just overall sadness. Expressions that will hit home for millions of black people observing social change over a tumultuous 50 years history.

‘Mangrove’ may be set in the 1970s, but couldn’t feel more cruelly contemporary. In this year alone, we have seen the killing of George Floyd and the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. In keeping with the times, the BFI couldn’t have picked a more perfect film to open 2020’s LFF…

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Herself (15, 98 Mins)

I saw this with a slightly better behaved crowd, but suffering from a severe case of Writer’s Block. It’s the latest film from Phyllida Lloyd who is best known for the ‘Mamma Mia!’ movies (2008-2018) and the Meryl Streep-starring Margaret Thatcher biopic ‘The Iron Lady’ (2012). She’s not the first person that springs to mind when you think about a drama about domestic violence.

‘Herself’ (2020) is written and stars Clare Dunne and is based on personal experiences. Dunne plays a woman recovering from an abusive relationship; trying to rebuild her life for her and her two children. 

When the housing system refuses to give her a new home, Sandra (Dunne) decides to build her own; offered support by her friendly community and dozens of new friends. With this newly found ambition, Sandra rediscovers herself (hence the title)...That is until her abusive ex-husband (Ian Lloyd Anderson) sues for custody of her children…
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The opening sequence of this movie is one of the most triggering I’ve seen in a long time. It involves Dunne’s Sandra beaten to the pulp on the ground with her wrists trodden upon. A quick thinker, it’s down to her young daughter to alert a local shopkeeper with a quite distinctive code word for “mummy’s getting attacked”.

Based on Dunne’s own experiences of Domestic Abuse, this film shines a powerful, thought-provoking light on the subject that screams factual research and thought-through planning. And I really liked listening to Dunne talking about her inspiration for the project; suggesting this is a highly personal film for her.

She’s great here - a literally bare-knuckle performance that really cuts to the battered heart of a domestic violence victim - both physically in the triggering scenes of abuse and emotionally in her heart-wrenching relationship with her two girls.

She’s well-served by a warm, lovely performance from Conleth Hill (best-known for playing ‘Game of Thrones’s chief eunuch spymaster Varys) as Aido - a local building contractor who offers his hand in helping Sandra build her new home. He’s really good at encapsulating the sense of community spirit and support that give ‘Herself’ a positively uplifting feel despite its supposedly grim subject matter.

I was especially moved to tears of joy during one of the building scenes which is backed up by the powerhouse vocals of Sia’s ‘Titanium’. As Sandra, Aido and others lift timber, bricks and other materials, Sia’s bellowy lyrics echo around the sound-system: “you shoot me down, but I won’t fall! I am titanium!”.

Written by Dunne herself, ‘Herself’ certainly benefits from having direct experiences of Domestic Abuse behind the pen. But frankly it couldn’t be directed by anyone else other than Phyllida Lloyd who initially seems an unlikely choice for this sort of social realist drama. In order to emphasise the importance of family and community in beating abuse, you need a director who understands the power of feelgood escapism and the uplift of the soul. Lloyd certainly has that…

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Shirley (15, 107 Mins)

Elizabeth Moss is having one hell of a cracking year. First playing another domestic abuse victim in ‘The Invisible Man’ (2020) and now playing arguably one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th century - Shirley Jackson - in ‘Shirley’ (2020). This first premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival back in January where Director Josephine Decker won the US Dramatic Special Jury Award for Auteur film-making.

Talking in the video introduction shortly before the movies began, Director Decker talked about this film being less a biopic about Shirley Jackson and more just a movie about Shirley Jackson. And that basically sums up where we are. ‘Shirley’ is based on the novel of the same name by Susan Scarf Merrell which is a “largely fictional story” about Jackson’s life around the time she was writing ‘Hangsaman’.

Michael Stuhlberg and Odessa Young are a recently married young couple who relocate to Bennington College where Fred (Stuhlberg) is teaching as a lecturer. Fred is working for American literary critic Stanley Hyman whose wife Shirley’s (Moss) work Rose is immediately infatuated with.

Shortly after they arrive, Stanley gives Rose menial jobs to do around the house because Shirley is struggling with writer’s block and Agoraphobia. When Fred and Rose move into the house, Rose is dismayed that her chores are like that of a housekeeper. She also bears witness to Stanley and Shirley’s increasingly bitter and acrimonious marriage. Shirley is also very cruel to her…

The basic set-up is a lot like other, partially fictional movies about famous writers/celebrities. Think ‘Finding Neverland’ (2004) where Johnny Depp played J.M Barrie and documented his relationship with the family who supposedly inspired him to write ‘Peter Pan’. Or ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ (2017) where Domhnall Gleeson’s A.A Milne was inspired to write ‘Winnie the Pooh’ to cure his PTSD and for his young son Christopher Robin. Or even the recent ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood’ (2020) which had Matthew Rhys as a troubled journalist trying to profile and cut to the heart of American children’s TV darling Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks).

In this movie ‘Shirley’, the core relationship - as is always the case in these kind of movies - is between a famous person and a non-famous person/people. In this case, it’s between Shirley Jackson and Young’s Rose.

The fictional stuff is what works best in this movie. I especially liked the horror elements which any film about Shirley Jackson absolutely needs. For example, when Shirley has a vision of Rose wounded in the woods and draped in blood...

Moss is very good as she always is as Mrs Jackson. She nails her angsty, anxious spectacles, mousy complexion and jittery vocal addresses. But frankly I never forgot I was watching anything other than Elizabeth Moss doing an impression of Shirley Jackson. A very good impression, but an impression none the less.

Frankly, the best performances of famous figures - the ones that warrant Oscars as many people are predicting for Elizabeth Moss - are the ones where you forget you’re watching an actor and just see who they’re playing. Gary Oldman nailed that when he played Winston Churchill in ‘Darkest Hour’ (2018) and Renee Zellwegger had elements of a true transformation when she played Judy Garland in last year’s ‘Judy’ (2019).

In the case of Elizabeth Moss, I’m just seeing Elizabeth Moss…

I also felt the storyline about Rose trying to unravel the mystery behind Shirley Jackson was underwritten. You were supposed to really care about Fred and Rose’s marriage. You were supposed to really feel for her when Stanley gave her terrible chores to do and when Shirley was vicious to her. And I just didn’t…

I’m sure Lizzie Moss will get an Oscar nomination for this. She’s got more of a chance than she would in most years considering the majority of awards-bait movies won’t be coming out this year. I just preferred her in ‘Mad Men’ (2007-2015) where she was fabulously jittery and neurotic and crucially not playing a famous person…

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Mogul Mowgli (15, 90 Mins)

Riz Ahmed is an actor who has been lost for a good space of a decade. He started off so brilliantly in ‘Ill Manors’ (2012), but since then has wasted his time in small supporting roles in big blockbusters like ‘Rogue One’ (2016), ‘Venom’ (2018) and ‘Jason Bourne’ (2016).

It’s good to see him back in a leading role in what surely must be his most personal to date in ‘Mogul Mowgli’ (2020). It was also good to hear him and Director Bassam Tariq talk so eloquently and passionately about this project shortly before the movie was shown. It was here that he talked about ‘Mogul Mowgli’ being a “Covid film”.

The word “Covid” isn’t what immediately springs to mind when you read this film’s plot summary. Riz here plays a British Pakistani rapper based in New York who is about to begin his first European tour. Unfortunately his plans are struck down when he is struck down by an autoimmune disease; leading him to return to London to stay with his relatives.

Riz is also a rapper in real-life and this role was clearly very personal for him. There’s a particularly powerful scene where he raps the lines “Britain’s where I’m from and I love a cup of tea and that...But, where my genes are from, people don’t really MC and that”. “They all ask you “where you from?”... “Nah, where you really from?”.

Ahmed himself is, of course, British Pakistani and the director Bassam Tariq is American, but was born in Karachi, Pakistan. And that line I just mentioned beautifully sums up the cross-cultural clash that faces any British citizen caught between their British and Asian heritage. Where your passport may say and prove you are British, but the question of “where you really from?” still comes up far more often and too often that it should.

Ahmed claims this movie is a response to the rise of Black and Brown Lives Matter. And it certainly touches upon the issue of racism which is prevalent in every corner of society, but is primarily talked about as a black issue.

‘Mogul Mowgli’ alternatively attempts to shine its light on black-on-brown racism as encapsulated by a scene where Ahmed is verbally and physically assaulted by an African American rapper. “You p**is are stealing rap from us!” the man says while giving Riz a pounding. 

This film could easily feel exclusive to British Asian people as it deals with the immigrant experience and the partition trauma in India. Thank goodness then for the ongoing storyline about Ahmed’s muscular degenerative disease which will appeal and be related to by people of all and every skin colour around the world.

A scene where Ahmed has to be helped going to the toilet is particularly moving. This fit, handsome young man brimming with ambitions and aspirations has to rely on his greying, ageing father to change his pants. The father’s role here is certainly what the carer of anyone with any disease will identify with...Especially in this year where Covid-19 has left so many millions isolated.

Ahmed is fantastic too - throbbing with hot-headed anger, well-earned frustration and debilitating self-pity. Both in the electrifying rap scenes and when his disease slowly deteriorates. Surely his career masterpiece.

He lends this polemical yet universal film the beating heart it needs…

This article was originally written in October 2020.
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