August Film Review
by @saidonescottishlady
I’ve got a confession to make…
I have a confession to make. I haven’t seen a single new film this month.
Not one.
I could, of course, pretend otherwise. I could have a look at what everyone else has been saying, sprinkle in a few phrases about “the performances” and “the visual language”, and hope nobody notices. But that seems dishonest. So instead, this month, I am reviewing the cinema-going experience of not going to the cinema.
And, oddly enough, I’ve still managed to hear quite a lot about The Odyssey.
Christopher Nolan’s enormous, expensive, extremely wet-looking version of Homer’s epic has been provoking the usual mixture of awe, bafflement and arguments about whether anyone can actually hear what anybody is saying. Which brings me neatly to something I have been thinking about for years: Nolan’s sound.
I don’t like it.
There. I’ve said it.
I know I am supposed to find it immersive. I know that Nolan regards sound as a fundamental part of the cinematic experience, rather than something that merely sits underneath the picture. And there is no question that his films can sound spectacular. But spectacular and enjoyable are not necessarily the same thing.
I want to hear the words.
This is not a new complaint. Tenet became almost a spectator sport in the debate over whether the dialogue was supposed to be intelligible, while Oppenheimer generated similar complaints about volume and balance. And now The Odysseyappears to have revived the argument, with some viewers praising its ferocious soundscape and others complaining that dialogue gets swallowed up by bass, effects and Hans Zimmer’s increasingly tectonic score.
Perhaps this is the point. Perhaps Nolan wants his films to be experienced physically as much as intellectually. Fair enough. Personally, I don’t need my cinema seat to rearrange my internal organs.
Anyway, I shall have to wait and see.
September, fortunately, gives me plenty to look forward to. I’m particularly intrigued by The Incomer, Louis Paxton’s strange-looking Scottish comedy about two siblings on a remote island and the unfortunate council worker who arrives to uproot them. It is an original screenplay, rather than another instalment in something we’ve already seen six times, and it sounds properly odd.
There is also Pressure, starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser, about Eisenhower and the meteorologist James Stagg in the tense 72 hours before D-Day.
Look at the September release schedule and the problem becomes rather depressing. Sequels. Remakes. Adaptations. Established characters. Familiar titles. Practical Magic 2. Resident Evil. Fall 2. Shaun the Sheep. Sense and Sensibility. Even The Death of Robin Hood.
I could only find three films that really made me think, “Oh, that’s a new idea.” And one of those is a documentary about the Oasis reunion.
Still, there is always October.
Frankly, at this point, anything that doesn’t require me to understand dialogue through a wall of bass will do.
Coat On or Kettle On?
Worth the trip, or worth the wait?
Personally, I’ll go and see The Odyssey at some point. I’m nosey enough to know what all the fuss is about – but I don’t do it willingly and so I’d recommend to you to wait till it’s on a screen at home. At least you can pause it and rewind to hear what is being said.
If you have any feedback on the column, please send to saidonescottishlady@me.com