The Screengrab : bill milner

Reviews By Request x2: Reprise (2006, Joachim Trier) and Son of Rambow (2007, Garth Jennings)

Paul Clark — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

When I asked you folks to vote on my next three Reviews By Request columns a few weeks ago, one thing I hadn’t anticipated was that there’d be a tie for third place. Under other circumstances, I might simply have chosen one film to write about over the other, but I’m more or less a man of my word. I briefly toyed with the idea of running a poll to determine which I’d write about, but when I realized that both of the films- Joachim Trier’s Reprise and Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow- deal with creative sorts, I figured that the best way to solve my problem would simply be to write a tandem review of the films.

The act of creation can be tricky to portray cinematically. When someone is inspired to create a work of art, it can be the most exciting feeling in the world for that person. But it’s much more difficult to convey this excitement to others in the form of a film. Moreover, some media are better-suited to a cinematic treatment than others. While the making of a movie consists not only of a series of creative decisions but also the logistics and politics of collaboration with others, writing is essentially an inward, self-absorbed act. In this sense, Reprise begins at somewhat of a disadvantage compared to Son of Rambow. Does Trier’s film transcend this disadvantage to become a more memorable finished product than Jennings’? Not quite.

There’s an old writers’ joke that says that because young writers are told to “write what they know,” this explains why there are so many books and movies about writers. Reprise doubles up the usual beginning-writer-on-the-make storyline by focusing on two budding authors, a pair of friends who we first see mailing off their manuscripts at the same time. Of course, not all writers are created equal, and while Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) finds literary success almost overnight, Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) gets turned down by the publisher. From that point forward, the film cuts back and forth between the two, with Phillip suffering a nervous breakdown, Erik finding his own measure of success, and each of them trying to find their ways in life.

Unless they’re especially well-written, I find that educated twentysomethings can make for some of the least interesting and most insufferable characters in films, partly because their intelligence has yet to be tempered with maturity, humility, and the wisdom that gets born from actual real-world experience. The protagonists of Reprise harbor some lofty ideas both about life and literature (Erik’s first novel is entitled Prosopopeia, fer chrissakes), but when they give voice to them, they come out mostly in writerly clichés, like when Erik decides to dump his girlfriend in order to live the stereotypical writer’s life of booze and cheap sex. If the film had shown any real self-awareness about its characters in the manner of Arnaud Desplechin’s My Sex Life…, this might have worked. But it doesn’t.

And that’s a shame, since Trier’s film has plenty of interesting ideas that would have been worth exploring. In one subplot, we see Phillip, recently released from a mental hospital, trying to re-connect with his ex-girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge). Phillip’s mother has gotten rid of his photographs of Kari, fearing they might trigger another mental collapse. So Phillip decides to take Kari to Paris, where they vacationed shortly after they met, in order to re-take the photos and, consequently, re-live the memories. There are a number of other compelling ideas in Reprise that mark Trier as a talent to watch. Even if this feels very much like a first film, there’s real potential here.

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Compared to Reprise, Son of Rambow is a relatively modest work, one with little more than a desire to entertain. Yet it succeeds in this sense in a way that Trier’s film can’t quite manage to fulfill its loftier ambitions. I’m not a huge fan of the sorts of festival darlings that are routinely labeled “crowd-pleasers”- I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid™ on Slumdog Millionaire, for example- so I was a little surprised by how well Son of Rambow worked on me.

Like Reprise, Son of Rambow tells the story of two young friends, although the heroes of Jennings’ film are preteen boys, which tends to cut down quite a bit on the navel-gazing. The unlikely friends are Lee (Will Poulter), a troublemaker who spends his free time working on elaborate home movies, and Will (Bill Milner), a pint-sized boy from a staunchly religious family who Lee cons into working for him as a stunt man. Inspired by a bootleg of First Blood that he sees at Lee’s house, Will gets the inspiration to turn Lee’s movie into a kind of sequel to the Stallone opus- one that stars himself.

In its story of DIY movie-making against a small-community backdrop, Son of Rambow bears a casual resemblance to Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. However, I think Son is the more successful film, in part because the story works better with kids in the lead roles instead of adults, even if one of those adults happens to a man-child like Jack Black. What’s more, the visual flights of fancy Jennings brings to the story- inventive production design, flashes of hand-drawn animation- are more effective than Gondry’s, since Jennings’ touch is lighter and the whimsy never wears out its welcome.

Son of Rambow flags a bit in its second half, after other characters (led by a Culture Club-ready French exchange student) are brought in to collaborate on Will and Lee’s movie. Thankfully, Jennings recognizes this, and acknowledges it when he has Lee confront Will to tell him as much. But for much of its duration, Son of Rambow is fun and occasionally even enchanting, as in the scene when Will’s drawings come to life. And it’s hard to resist a movie that manages to combine Lee’s anarchic spirit with Will’s wide-eyed innocence without making us decide on one over the other. Son of Rambow isn’t perfect, but it’s a real charmer.

Screengrab Q&A: Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith, Directors of Son of Rambow

Peter Smith — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith made their production company's name — "Hammer & Tongs" — on their inventive music videos for Blur, Pulp and R.E.M. With their debut feature film, an adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they showed off a sweet sensibility that belied the metallurgical toughness of that name, and with the just-released Son of Rambow, they go one step further. Rambow follows schoolboy Will (newcomer Bill Milner, an instantly endearing tangle of scrawny limbs), raised by his mother in a conservative religious sect, the Plymouth Brethren. His upbringing has kept him away from all media, so when his troublemaking classmate Lee Carter shows him a bootleg copy of Sylvester Stallone's First Blood, his world is forever changed, and he and Lee Carter set off to make their own First Blood sequel — "Son of Rambow."

This is a great comedic premise, but what Jennings and Goldsmith could've played as broad farce, they instead use as a startlingly tender look at childhood friendship and loss. It's warm and nostalgic without ever getting cloying, and it has a compassion and fellow-feeling that should make it a family classic. I spoke to the duo about how they shaped their ode to filmic summers past. — Peter Smith

There's a very bittersweet undertone to the film. Both characters are missing their fathers.
GJ: Both of us have our fathers intact, but my dad lost his dad when he was about nine, and one of my best friends had almost exactly the same experience. But it wasn't the starting point. We didn't know where to start originally. We knew we were trying to capture how great it was to be that age and not have any fear of consequences. But when you're trying to capture a feeling, rather than make a documentary of how things really were, you've got to sort of start using storytelling techniques. And one of those is to take things away from the character. For example, the next-door neighbors of mine when I was growing up were Plymouth Brethren. By making Will a Brethren, you understand the impact movies had. Whereas it would be really hard to do that with a regular kid, like we were.

It makes seeing First Blood so much more of a mind-blowing experience for Will.
NG: Exactly — it's very difficult to convey it without having to verbalize it. And the last thing we wanted to do was just tell the audience.

GJ: The kid would be going, "Hey, have you got any more movies like that? Wow, that was cool! My mind's blown wide open!" And at that point the audience would've left the cinema.

The kids who play the leads are wonderful.
NG: Well, we had them made by a really good specialist. [laughs] They'll never grow old, and they'll be in shops by Christmas.

GJ: Really, the success of the film is down to the fact that we found the right kids. Because they're the hardest thing to find, and if you get it wrong they're the most unpleasant, uncomfortable thing to watch.

Neither had acted before. How did you prepare them for the shooting?
NG: First off we went and made a short film in my mom and dad's backyard, which basically involved Garth and me making them watch us have fun. But then we did some rehearsals with them, and they got it. So it was actually all about trying to keep that as innocent as possible, and not do too many rehearsals. And then on set, to create an environment that would allow them to blossom. We didn't have any video monitors, so they couldn't see themselves and get self-conscious.

What let you to frame the film with the arrival and departure of the French exchange students?
GJ: Again, it's a heightened memory, but when that coach would turn up, those kids would get off, and they were so exotic, just by comparison — their clothes, their attitudes… Even physically, the boys already had their little mustaches. Maybe that only interested me because I was a late developer and wanted a mustache so badly.

You depict the French teenager, Didier, as this sort of alien rock star, but at the end there's this sweet moment of empathy when you realize he's —
GJ: Going back to nothing. [laughs]

Yeah — and you could see that as comeuppance, but I just found it kind of poignant.
GJ: That's right — there's hopefully no actual bad guy. Even the ones you think are bad, they're just not right for that relationship. There's Joshua, coming in to try to become the head of the family, and he's just got it wrong. He's just not the right guy. Again, it's all based on memories, and how when you look back, you realize that cool jock probably wasn't as happy as you thought he was. There was always more to it than you realize. You've got to love your characters.

The movie has been in the works since before you made Hitchhiker's. How did making that change your conception of this?
NG: We were told going into Hitchhiker's by many different people that making a film was very different from doing music videos. And what we realized in making Hitchhiker's was, actually, we've had a really good film school in making videos, and it's not really any different. So the main thing that we took from Hitchhiker's was a confidence to make Son of Rambow the way we wanted it.

There's a melancholic tone in Douglas Adams' work that's somehow very English.
GJ: You're never allowed to get too happy. [laughs]

But there's something very sweet and resigned about his whole worldview. You're never going to get the right cup of tea. I actually thought Son of Rambow captured more of that than Hitchhiker's did.
GJ: Douglas Adams had written Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy more than twenty years before we became involved, so our job was to try to not get in the way, really. But with Son of Rambow, really before we had the plot, it was that feeling we were after. And we're quite emotional little sappy people, really. [laughs] We like to have our buttons pushed by films. To do that properly, there needs to be a balance. You need to be up and down, not just one thing. Otherwise you start to react against it.

The movies or books or music that move you the most are usually the ones that push to the edge of sentimentality, but not over into it.
NG: It's a fine line, and it's very easy to fall over the edge. And I'm sure some people will go see Son of Rambow and think it's one way or the other. If you get it right, it's brilliant, and the film works incredibly well for that person. Like Garth says, there's a sense of manipulation sometimes. But often when you go into the cinema, you want to be manipulated a bit.

This film pays tribute to VHS films you made as a kid in the '80s. Do you still have copies of those films?
GJ: Yes, definitely. In fact, we're using them to inspire the next generation, allowing people to enter their own films into a film competition. We set up on sonoframbow.com a competition, so that the winning home movie, no more than five minutes in length, would get its own special slot on our DVD. And in order to inspire people I put up my first home movie that I made as a kid, having just seen Rambo, which is called Aaron, Part 1. And it's a good one to put up, mainly because it's bad enough for people to think, "Well, I could do this."