Freaks

Tod Browning's Freaks was a Saturday afternoon offering as part of Exhumed Cinema for the Strange Festival. It was first time the old Liberty Cinema in Perth has been open for films since 1997 (I believe they had some art and music shows there in 2022). The films are being shown by 35mm projector, in this case the projectionist spoke before the film. He told us the film would be on four 20-minute reels, and as they weren't allowed to cut the head or tail, there'd be a 10 second fade between reels. They might have needed more reels as, apparently, some of the more 'objectionable' scenes were cut from the original 90-odd minutes, bringing this widely seen version down to a smidge over 60 mins (it's pretty clear where the excises were made).

The screening actually turned out to be the fist leg of a night at the Strange Festival, which had shows and installations throughout the Perth CBD. We popped in to some pop-up events in and around Hay Street Mall - Slow Rainbow, The Zoo, Video Difficult, The Michael Cera Experience - and then caught a spot of music with Birdbox at Pooles Temple. Quite the art attack.

But back to the film. Freaks was Browning's follow up to the iconic Bela Lugosi Dracula, made the year before in 1931. Odd that he was riding high from that success and chose to make a film that must have been a risk, especially in the more conservative early 1930s. The test audiences generally hated it, requiring MGM to make those cuts mentioned above, and Browning's career never really recovered (he made only four more films after this).

The film itself isn't now as shocking as it likely was back then, but it still has its moments of unease, mainly due to the view of the circus 'freaks' of the time. The leads are Hans, a circus dwarf (played by Harry Earles, who would have been around 30 at the time, but due to his hypopituitary condition, looked like a child), and Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), a 'normal' sized acrobat. Cleo entices Hans to fall for her, using his money while carrying on an affair with the circus strongman, Hercules (Henry Victor). Her treatment of her fellow performers, and Hans in particular, drives the others to despise her and worse, as we find out later. A key scene is the wedding dinner where the now infamous chant, "We accept her. One of us!" peals around the camp.

The acting is quite poor, maybe in keeping with the non-professional status of most of the cast, though Earles, his real-life sister, Daisy Earles and Angelo Rossitto were munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (Rossitto was quite prolific - imagine being in The Wizard of Oz, The Incredible Hulk, H.R. Pufnstuf AND Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome!). The film is delivered with very broad brushstrokes but its heart is in the right place - all the 'freaks' are nice folk (though not to be trifled with) and it's the able-bodied carnies who are portrayed as the wrong'uns here. A very dated (sometimes even hard to hear) classic, that doesn't really live up to its long-held rep.

See also:

Some of the films screening at the Liberty for Exhumed include: The Princess Bride, Akira, Pulp Fiction, Muppets from Space, A Clockwork Orange and Labyrinth, along with a John Waters trilogy. Something for everyone. Ends Sunday July 2nd.

Reality

Reality Winner isn't the title of a shitty TV game show, or a victor of one such mess. It's actually the name of a Pashto language expert who was arrested by the FBI for 'mishandling classified documents' in 2017.

It starts with a dialogue-free locked off wide shot of a woman at her desk in an office with, crucially, Fox news showing a clip of FBI director Comey's sacking on wall mounted TVs. Cut to a number of days later and we see Winner, played with wet-eyed anxiety by Sydney Sweeney, heading home after grocery shopping.

On her arrival home, she gets a knock on her car window, and here's where the film begins its unusually constrained method of using only the recorded transcript of her 'interrogation' as dialogue. This works surprisingly well and there are even a number of gimmicky shocks when redacted material is mentioned. It's a neat way of working, presumably a cheap way also, and it stands as more of a docu-drama record of this part of recent history than a particularly gripping modern political thriller.

The first third of the film consists of not much more than an extended sequence of awkward small talk. The FBI agents don't really do anything wrong, in fact, they're extremely 'by the book'. It's just a shame this 'book' is so badly written. The main pair of agents, Garrick (Josh Hamilton) and Taylor (Marchánt Davis) bend over backwards to be kind and fair, and it's this veiled threat that keeps the film ticking along. It's only after chatting about her pets, and over-explaining how they're planning to go about things that they get to the point of their visit. This is outlined to Reality in an empty room at the back of her house and the ugly sparseness of the setting drives home her creeping dread. Incidentally, co-writer/director Tina Satter based the film on her own play, titled 'Is This a Room'.

The film reminds us that all the dialogue is official transcript by popping waveform and script page graphics up on screen now and again. Fair dues to the cast for resolutely sticking to said (trans)script, even down to misspoken instructions and coughing. Sweeney illustrates Reality's diminishing confidence with aplomb, while Hamilton and Davis are utterly believable as regular fellas tied to a toxic government's regulations. A small scale Snowden, a minor Assange, but Reality joins this sub-sub-genre and manages to maintain the rage and the curiosity too.

Reality opens at Luna cinemas and Event cinemas on June 29th.

See also:

Speaking of Assange and Snowden, there are two notable pairs of films about each of them, one doco and one drama. Assange is covered in Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (2013) and Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate (also 2013). Snowden has Laura Poitras's Citizenfour (2014) and Oliver Stone's Snowden (2016).

The Flash

There's an intriguing correlation that seems to be occurring in pyjama films these days. Once the undisputed master of the genre, the MCU has dipped of late (though the recent Guardians film was a peach), whereas the erstwhile shite DCEU has lifted its game. Their latest entry is The Flash, written by Christina Hodson and Joby Harold, and directed by Andy Muschietti, and to my surprise, it's a bit of a banger.

It concerns the fast one in the Justice League, Barry Allen (AKA The Flash) and his awkward attempts to fit in to society. A possible reason for his gormlessness is the fact that he lost his mother when he was a child, so when he realises he can run fast enough to, stay with me here, crack the space time continuum (!), he decides to go back and prevent his mother's death. What could go wrong?

Well, shit, obviously a lot, and so, wrong it goes. Even though Batman warns him off it, Flash can't resist and is on his way back to his past when he's knocked out of his 'Speed Bubble', landing, coincidentally, on the day he got his powers. Cue some mumbo about timeline stuff and suddenly the Flash is joined by a less anxious, more irritating version of himself. This double act is one of the many happy surprises in the film, along with the consistently funny dialogue and the effective performances (it's a credit to Ezra Miller that I found myself thinking of them as two different actors). Aside from Miller, Michael Keaton is fantastic and Sasha Calle is some find. Her introduction sequence in a snowy Russian compound is great fun.

After a slightly wobbly, yet pretty funny opening, The Flash picks up the pace and rarely stumbles, finding time for belly laughs and emotional kickers along the way. If I had to pick out one issue, it would be that the whole Zod incursion (Michael Shannon, revisiting his role from Man of Steel) felt way more grandiose than it should be, like it's some sort of filmic cultural touchstone. Didn't help that Shannon himself gives it the full CBF - he's actually on record voicing his displeasure at being in the film. On the flip side, there are genuine moments of class. Keaton's explanation of the multiverse using a spaghetti dinner is sublime ("What does the parmesan represent?") and the discovery of alternate reality film casting is wry. The DC film mythology is explored (real and almost) and though mildly indulgent, it doesn't milk the cow too much. 

This is a film that juggles its themes of loss and fatalism alongside separate balls of sharp wit and social discomfort. Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend and not an exception.

The Flash is/was/will be screening in a multiverse near you.

See also:

Miller is almost unwatchably top notch in Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), and the Quicksilver scene in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) is still the best of its kind.

(Film stills and trailer ©Warner Brothers, 2023)

Prison 77

Based on events in Barcelona following the death of General Franco, this film looks at injustices within a prison system that systematically brutalised its inhabitants. Director Alberto Rodríguez sets most of his film inside the (in)famous Cárcel Modelo prison, where Manuel (Miguel Herrán) is sent for embezzling a sum of money from his company (in an early indication of the film's intent, we discover that he's been left to carry the can for the boss's son). The prison building is a fantastic drawcard for the film - it was designed in the 'panopticon' style, a kind of concentric layout where, in theory, one guard could view all sections of the jail from a central hub, with the 'spokes' as the inmates' quarters.

On arrival, Manuel is sent to solitary quarantine where he's attacked by bugs and guards alike, but where he also meets Blacky (Jesús Carroza), a fixer type of prisoner. When he's finally released into 'regular' accommodation, Blacky sets him up in his room, also shared by Pino (Javier Gutiérrez), a veteran of the penal system.

The story that flows from this opening centres on Manuel's attempt to be released, which coincides with the aims of the PRA, a nascent prisoners' union that wants amnesty for all inmates of the Franco regime, political or otherwise. Some elements of this film are blood-boiling, be it outside reluctance on the part of the authorities or inside, more bloody justice meted out by guards and fellow cons alike. An almost unbelievable vision awaiting Manuel upon his release in the form of potential girlfriend Lucía (Catalina Sopelana) just adds to the anxiety.

The historical nature of events is both beneficial and detrimental to the aspirations of the film. In trying to stay loyal to the facts, Rodríguez and his co-writer Rafael Cobos, have bitten off just a morsel more than audiences can chew. There are probably 15 minutes that could have been lost, notably Manuel and Pino's transfer to another prison and their subsequent travails.

The relationship between the two leads is well set up - the old porridge pro versus the proud poser - and it culminates in a satisfying détente. Both Gutiérrez and Herrán are believable in their respective roles and, aside from the pace drifting at the start of the final act, the film holds the attention through to an unexpectedly upbeat gear change at the finale. This is a fine document of a place and time in flux.

Prison 77 is screening as part of the Spanish Film Festival, which starts June 16th at Palace and Luna cinemas. 

See also:

Rodriguez's film Marshland (2014), also starring Gutiérrez, is a gripping mystery, and Stuart Rosenberg's Brubaker (1980) is a fine film about prison corruption.