What happens when you take three ageing, but undeniably great, actors, add them to a plot that is essentially b-movie nonsense, and then throw in a bit of Nazi chic just for good measure? Well you’d probably end up with a film like Franklin J. Schaffner’s Boys from Brazil.
The film follows Ezra Leiberman (played by Laurence Olivier), an elderly Jewish Nazi hunter who is living out his autumn years in Vienna. When he is contacted by a young disciple with information of a Nazi plot, he is set back on the case and pitted head to head with Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) who is orchestrating a curiously precise murder plot from his lair is South America. Pulling Mengele’s proverbial strings is a former Nazi Colonel, a character who is of no importance really; apart from the fact he is played by James Mason, which makes him brilliant. The story jumps from one madcap plotline to another, until finally exploding with the mother of all ridiculous twists. I won’t spoil it for people who haven’t heard it, but it’s fucking hilariously good.
The quality of the actors obviously pushes this up from being a nazi-ploitation film until it reaches the bracket of genuine political thriller. Olivier gives a tasteful and restrained performance of the idealistic Leiberman, a haunted concentration camp survivor (ironically it was Olivier playing the Nazi two years earlier in Marathon Man). By contrast Peck appears to relishing playing the bad guy and chews up scenery with an intensity that is truly quite frightening. Finally James Mason finds playing a Nazi a breeze, as it is a perfect role for his trademark brand of callus charm.
One thing you’ve got to love about the 1970’s is that a film like this just wouldn’t get made in this day and age, or if it did it certainly wouldn’t be played straight. Everything about this film should be ridiculous, it shouldn’t work, but it does. It’s like someone’s taken a novel by Dan Brown and turned it into a good film, a miracle. I mean it even had enough of a budget to be shot in various locations around the world, have pretty good affects for the time (including some quality gore at the end) and still pay its leading actors.
Boys from Brazil is testament to one slightly disappointing truism, they literally don’t make em like they used to. Watch this film, you’ll thank me later.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
It Ain't Easy Being Green
Some People seem to forget that the environmental movement started way back in the 60’s. Back then people who recycled or tried to save the rain forest were dismissed as hippies and tree huggers, now everyone from middle-class house wives to oil companies recycle in one way or another.
Released in 1972, Silent Running was way ahead of its time and still holds its own as a powerful rallying call for people who don’t want to see the forests vanish from the earth.
Set in an unspecified future the film tells the story of Freeman Lowell, a botanist aboard the space freighter Valley Forge. The ship is carrying the last remaining forests from the earth in huge bio-domes in an attempt to preserve them against the industrial wasteland we have made of the planet. Lowell’s is an idealist; he loves the forest and finds himself constantly at odds with his apathetic ship mates. When the call comes that cut backs have had to be made and that the forests are to be destroyed and the ships returned to commercial use, Lowell can’t accept it. He kills the crew and hijacks the ship, steering it deep into the solar system to try and save the one, last forest.
The film looks awesome, with above average special effects and a refreshingly grimy aesthetic for the post 2001: Space Odyssey era. Admittedly the two robot drones that Lowell has for company after the rest of the crew have been dispatched aren’t really up to much, but they are pretty endearing, even if they do look crude.
The real merit in this film is that you just wouldn’t have anyone around these days with the balls to fund it. It has a real emotional depth to it, essentially being the story of one man’s quest to protect what he loves. There’s also the loneliness and the guilt at having killed his friends eating away at him as he struggles to man the ship on his own and drifts further and further away from earth.
Rightly regarded as a cult classic, Silent Running isn’t some retro oddity, but a film whose message is more important today than it ever has been. Anyone with an interest in science fiction, the environment or the early 70’s counter culture should see this film and be inspired by the sacrifices one man was willing to make to save a forest.
Released in 1972, Silent Running was way ahead of its time and still holds its own as a powerful rallying call for people who don’t want to see the forests vanish from the earth.
Set in an unspecified future the film tells the story of Freeman Lowell, a botanist aboard the space freighter Valley Forge. The ship is carrying the last remaining forests from the earth in huge bio-domes in an attempt to preserve them against the industrial wasteland we have made of the planet. Lowell’s is an idealist; he loves the forest and finds himself constantly at odds with his apathetic ship mates. When the call comes that cut backs have had to be made and that the forests are to be destroyed and the ships returned to commercial use, Lowell can’t accept it. He kills the crew and hijacks the ship, steering it deep into the solar system to try and save the one, last forest.
The film looks awesome, with above average special effects and a refreshingly grimy aesthetic for the post 2001: Space Odyssey era. Admittedly the two robot drones that Lowell has for company after the rest of the crew have been dispatched aren’t really up to much, but they are pretty endearing, even if they do look crude.
The real merit in this film is that you just wouldn’t have anyone around these days with the balls to fund it. It has a real emotional depth to it, essentially being the story of one man’s quest to protect what he loves. There’s also the loneliness and the guilt at having killed his friends eating away at him as he struggles to man the ship on his own and drifts further and further away from earth.
Rightly regarded as a cult classic, Silent Running isn’t some retro oddity, but a film whose message is more important today than it ever has been. Anyone with an interest in science fiction, the environment or the early 70’s counter culture should see this film and be inspired by the sacrifices one man was willing to make to save a forest.
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