Tag: Fionn Whitehead

Voyagers

Rated: MA15+Voyagers

Directed and Written by: Neil Burger

Produced by: Basil Twanyk, Neil Burger, Brendon Boyea

Starring: Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, Fionn Whitehead, Chante Adams, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Viveik Kalra, Archie Madekwe, Quintessa Swindell, Madison Hu and Colin Farell.

“I’m scared.”  “Of what?”  “I don’t know”.

It’s 2063.

Life on Earth is deteriorating with ongoing drought and famine.

The only hope for humanity is light-years away – two generations away.

Where populating a new world means creating a class of humans that can tolerate living in close quarters, without sunlight or interaction with any other humans except the thirty crew sent into space.  And Richard (Colin Farrell).

Richard has educated and raised the crew destined to live on the spaceship, HUMANTUS.

If he goes with them, he can at least try to protect them.

“Protect us from what?”

Voyagers is about that scary idea of what is truly human nature.  Without rules, it’s the rule of the jungle (or space?).

So what happens to a group of teenagers when their chemical restraint is lifted?

What happens when impulse takes over, never having learned to control all those basic human desires and drives to survive?

I admit to being in a cynical mood walking into this film, and the intended message of enlightenment because of all those extra layers of grey matter eventually making sense over the kill or be killed instinct had the potential of feeling like an overdone premise.

Having said that, it was interesting to watch the handling of that survival instinct from writer and director, Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist), as the crew dealt with overwhelming hormones AKA getting high on life, and the drive to kill those hitting on your girl or for any slight.

It’s tense with flashes of overriding emotion depicted in montages of screaming and flesh rising in goosebumps to tunnels of blue light and the soundtrack of silence rising with disjointed strings.

It’s a theme that creates an innate fear of seeing what we are capable of, but without overdoing the horror of humans, while keeping up the intensity with a few jumps as this group of young adults figure out what it means to function as a social group.

Timely with the current generation growing up with the threat of climate change and pandemic.  Strange times.

And although I feel like I’ve seen the idea of unpacking human nature played out many times before, such as adaptation, Lord of the Flies, well, think any coming-of-age movie, there’s enough suspense to keep, Voyagers interesting.

The Children Act

Rated: MThe Children Act

Directed by: Richard Eyre

Produced by: Duncan Kenworthy

Screenplay based on his Novel by: Ian McEwan

Starring: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead, Ben Chaplin, Jason Watkins, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Anthony Calf, Rosie Cavaliero, Eileen Walsh, Nicholas Jones and Rupert Vansittart.

The Children Act is based on the novel written by Ian Ewan – he also writes the screenplay stating he started writing after spending time with ‘a handful of judges’ who were ‘Talking shop’.

A Sir Alan Ward (an appeal court judge) left the table to consult a bound volume of his own judgments to settle a disagreement.  Ian found himself with the book, reading the judgments and finding the cases written like short stories; those involved captured in broad strokes; the dilemma written with sympathy for the ones who inevitably lose.

Several years later, The Children Act was written.

The film opens with the sound of a gentle heartbeat, blood reaching through arteries like the branches of trees the film revolving around a case where a seventeen-year-old Jehovah Witness’ boy, Adam (Fionn Whitehead) who has leukemia, refuses a blood transfusion because of his faith.

To the Jehovah Witness, the soul, like life itself, lives in the blood, therefore, it belongs to God.  To allow another person’s blood or soul enter his veins would be blasphemous.

The hospital moves to force the transfusion under the instruction of The Children Act, 1989:

“When a court determines any question with respect to … the upbringing of a child … the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.”

The case lands on the desk of eminent High Court judge Fiona Maye (Emma Thompson), who now childless and struggling in the relationship with her husband Jack (Stanley Tucci) because of her commitment to her career, finds her emotions breaking through her usual cold rational as she decides the fate of Adam’s life – to allow him to die for his faith, or force him to live at the cost of his beliefs.

She decides to hear from Adam himself, to see that he understands the painful death that awaits at the refusal of the transfusion.

A highly unusual circumstance, she sits by his hospital bed and ends up singing with him as he plays his guitar.

This is a practical, concise and highly intelligent woman who has sworn not to allow her emotion to enter her decision-making process – all very believable from the performance of Emma Thompson.  Her place is to make decisions based on law not morals.

All the while imagining her husband having an affair, writing a text, ‘Having fun?’ Then having to delete when work and making life-and-death decisions for other people and their families once again become the priority.

When Adam survives, when his life is more important than his dignity, he chases the only one who understands: the woman who decided to save his life.

This is a film about the characters who are making serious decisions all day, every day.  Emma Thompson shows clarity of mind when making a judgment in court balanced against the confusion and overflow of hurt when her husband explains his unhappiness in their marriage: ‘Do you remember the last time we made love?’ he asks.

‘No idea!’ she states while pouring over the arguments for and against the separation of conjoined twins.

Then we see this fascinating case of Adam playout in court, from the medical side to the point of view of his parents, to the clear mind of a judge entangled in emotion from her personal life, to still be able to make concise decisions; the consequences of her decision shown in this strange and precocious boy who lives.  Who wants to know more about the life he feels he owes to her.

The film asks the question – if you save a life, are you responsible for that life?

Not in the court of law.

The Children Act is a quietly emotive film that gives a deeper understanding of those stories we’ve all read in the papers.

It’s a thought-provoking film about how the court has more power over life than religion.  And the cost it takes from those who make the judgment and the ones who have to live with a decision not their own.

Dunkirk

Rated: MDunkirk

Written and Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Music by: Hans Zimmer

Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema

Starring: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, James D’Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy.

I’m still trying to figure out the feeling, that swell in the chest I felt while watching Dunkirk.  Whether it was pride or love of humanity or patriotism, Dunkirk was an emotive intersection of timelines during Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of troops from, Dunkirk, France, during World War II.

The film focuses on three different Fronts from:

1. The mole: Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) the soldier who’s been on the ground for a week;

2. To the steadfast Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) for a day;

3. To Farrier (Tom Hardy) the pilot of a Spitfire in the air for an hour.

All of these men are fighting the same war and all of these men are either trying to escape or save the men surrounded by the Sickle Cut (war strategy) the German forces have maneuvered on French soil; the Allied forces stranded on the beach where they desperately wait for ships to take them back to Britain, just across the channel:

Commander Bolton: You can practically see it from here. 
Captain Winnant: What? 
Commander Bolton: Home.

With leaflets falling from the sky depicting the hopelessness of their effort to escape – an arrow pointing: ‘You are here’, surrounded by the enemy and literally being pushed into the sea only to be picked off by fighter pilots dropping bombs, the soldiers watch battleships sink, one after the other to then watch the tide bring in the dead.

But this film isn’t about blood and guts, Dunkirk is about celebrating the small victories and how all those victories eventually add up.

Hence that swell in the chest because there’s this overriding feeling of people doing the best they can and somehow the everyday civilian can make all the difference: Sometimes doing right, wins.

Take that notion and add the suspense of the desperation to escape, full credit going to Hans Zimmer and his soundtrack creating tension with music like a ticking time-bomb.  Director and writer, Christopher Nolan uses little dialogue, instead it’s about the words unspoken, just a nod here and the audience knowing the music is building.

There’s a simplicity to each scene combining the different threads of storyline in real time like a formula pulled together by sound: the low thud of bombs, the droning of jets, the running of boots on sand and bullets popping through the hull of a ship like copper coins hitting tin.  There’s much to be said about the soundtrack, but watching the film on IMAX with that big square screen?  Can I say it didn’t really need it?  But what am I saying, go see that expanse of beach and ocean on IMAX – why not?

Dunkirk

The effort to film the movie on 65mm film (transferred to 70mm for projection) brings the story to life all the more, leaving little room for error.  Dunkirk is such a solid film, with such beautifully orchestrated performances (was also a win to see Harry Styles finally get a haircut!) to see the views from air to the beach to under the water on such a large screen just added more to an already impressive project.

Lastly, I just want to say I usually struggle with war films.  The reality of the violence of war makes my blood boil. I love the fact that there’s no unnecessary violence here.  We all know what happens when a bomb goes off.  We don’t need to see or imagine our ancestors or grandparents getting blown apart.

Nolan has used his talent to bring the true story of Dunkirk to the screen without over-dramatising, allowing us to admire the courage and valour of the civilians of Britain who saved more than 330, 000 soldiers’ lives.

Subscribe to GoMovieReviews
Enter your email address for notification of new reviews - it's free!

 

Subscribe!