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| Cannes 2013: For Those In Peril - first look review | Cannes 2013: For Those In Peril - first look review |
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| This debut feature from young British director Paul Wright concerns a disturbed young man in a remote Scottish fishing village: Aaron, played by George Mackay. He was the only person rescued alive from a craft wrecked by a catastrophic storm; the other five crew-members, including his adored elder brother Michael (Jordan Young), were drowned. It is a study in grief, pain and survivor-guilt - that is, the guilt felt by the survivor, and also that imposed on him by a community who will not forgive him for being alive while their loved ones are dead, and whose anguish gradually metamorphoses into irrational suspicion and rage. In his loneliness and misery, Aaron becomes close to Michael's fiancee (Nichola Burley) - a taboo-infringement which just intensifies the village's anger, particularly enraging Nichola's father (Michael Smiley) and increasing the burden of fear placed on Aaron's mother Cathy - a typically good performance from Kate Dickie. | This debut feature from young British director Paul Wright concerns a disturbed young man in a remote Scottish fishing village: Aaron, played by George Mackay. He was the only person rescued alive from a craft wrecked by a catastrophic storm; the other five crew-members, including his adored elder brother Michael (Jordan Young), were drowned. It is a study in grief, pain and survivor-guilt - that is, the guilt felt by the survivor, and also that imposed on him by a community who will not forgive him for being alive while their loved ones are dead, and whose anguish gradually metamorphoses into irrational suspicion and rage. In his loneliness and misery, Aaron becomes close to Michael's fiancee (Nichola Burley) - a taboo-infringement which just intensifies the village's anger, particularly enraging Nichola's father (Michael Smiley) and increasing the burden of fear placed on Aaron's mother Cathy - a typically good performance from Kate Dickie. |
| The movie is intensely acted, with a sense of interior longing possibly inspired by Terrence Malick, but it is also sometimes contrived and straining self-consciously for dramatic mood and moment. Wright creates a showy visual texture, a collage of film and video for various memories, impressions and snatched glimpses of local TV reports - although the use of Super-8 for childhood is a little close to cliche. There is a superabundance of ideas. Wright maybe just has the first-timer's inability or reluctance to leave anything out. | The movie is intensely acted, with a sense of interior longing possibly inspired by Terrence Malick, but it is also sometimes contrived and straining self-consciously for dramatic mood and moment. Wright creates a showy visual texture, a collage of film and video for various memories, impressions and snatched glimpses of local TV reports - although the use of Super-8 for childhood is a little close to cliche. There is a superabundance of ideas. Wright maybe just has the first-timer's inability or reluctance to leave anything out. |
| For Those In Peril reminded me a little of the Japanese movie Bashing (2005) by Masahiro Kobayashi, about an aid worker held hostage in Iraq, freed after official intervention, but then perpetually hated and harassed - "bashed" - in her hometown by locals who perpetually suspect her of selfishness and ingratitude, and somehow hold her survival against her, especially as she intends to return to the Middle East. In For Those In Peril, Aaron conceives the idea of returning to the sea in a crude raft of his own making, obsessed with the crazed, visionary possibility of somehow finding all five remaining crew-members alive. | For Those In Peril reminded me a little of the Japanese movie Bashing (2005) by Masahiro Kobayashi, about an aid worker held hostage in Iraq, freed after official intervention, but then perpetually hated and harassed - "bashed" - in her hometown by locals who perpetually suspect her of selfishness and ingratitude, and somehow hold her survival against her, especially as she intends to return to the Middle East. In For Those In Peril, Aaron conceives the idea of returning to the sea in a crude raft of his own making, obsessed with the crazed, visionary possibility of somehow finding all five remaining crew-members alive. |
| George Mackay gives a good and honest performance as Aaron, and if his impassivity creates a slightly shapeless impression, then that is probably close to the numbed, un-expressed and inexpressible sense of pain that someone in this situation would experience in real life. He has an excellent scene with Lewis Howden, who plays the middleaged fisherman Davie: Aaron approaches Davie in the pub, wanting a private word, and every single drinker apart from Aaron himself is aware of the cracklingly tense atmosphere his request has created. To Davie's astonishment and anger, Aaron mumblingly asks about the possibility of finding something or someone out there: his question is naive and tactless - and in fact quite genuinely selfish - in ways that Aaron had failed to anticipate, and it is also a startlingly real moment of banal everyday pain, an excruciating stubbed toe of pain, in a movie whose ambient agony is often rather poetically created. | George Mackay gives a good and honest performance as Aaron, and if his impassivity creates a slightly shapeless impression, then that is probably close to the numbed, un-expressed and inexpressible sense of pain that someone in this situation would experience in real life. He has an excellent scene with Lewis Howden, who plays the middleaged fisherman Davie: Aaron approaches Davie in the pub, wanting a private word, and every single drinker apart from Aaron himself is aware of the cracklingly tense atmosphere his request has created. To Davie's astonishment and anger, Aaron mumblingly asks about the possibility of finding something or someone out there: his question is naive and tactless - and in fact quite genuinely selfish - in ways that Aaron had failed to anticipate, and it is also a startlingly real moment of banal everyday pain, an excruciating stubbed toe of pain, in a movie whose ambient agony is often rather poetically created. |
| Kate Dickie's Cathy is the still emotional centre of the movie, a difficult role and a character who doesn't have Aaron's dramatic prerogative of dangerous and self-destructive action: Cathy must remain calm and almost martyred, rather like the mother of a universally loathed criminal. Poignantly, her only chance at self-expression and defiance is performing at a karaoke night, dedicating the song significantly to "her boys". Again, it comes close to cliche, but Wright and Dickie carry it off. | Kate Dickie's Cathy is the still emotional centre of the movie, a difficult role and a character who doesn't have Aaron's dramatic prerogative of dangerous and self-destructive action: Cathy must remain calm and almost martyred, rather like the mother of a universally loathed criminal. Poignantly, her only chance at self-expression and defiance is performing at a karaoke night, dedicating the song significantly to "her boys". Again, it comes close to cliche, but Wright and Dickie carry it off. |
| Paul Wright creates a blanket of sadness in his film, a blanket which ily cast off by his final image, or images - it is a mysterious, serendipitous redemption and catharsis which perhaps could have been refined and clarified further in the edit, but it is bold and confident. This is a striking film from a valuable new talent. | Paul Wright creates a blanket of sadness in his film, a blanket which ily cast off by his final image, or images - it is a mysterious, serendipitous redemption and catharsis which perhaps could have been refined and clarified further in the edit, but it is bold and confident. This is a striking film from a valuable new talent. |
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