The Hired Hand

(Peter Fonda/1971/USA)

This post hippie western works as an allegory for the end of the 60’s generation of peaceniks and long haired love lubbers and is paced just right, lolloping along like a ranchero after hot knives. On the cusp of a golden era of American cinema it fits in very nicely as a mildly experimental reworking of western tropes with some sweet cinematography and a decent soundtrack too. Fonda directs and stars as Harry, the travel weary hipster cowboy who decides to return to his abandoned family; attempting to literally work his way back into their affections as a hired hand on his wife’s farm. The friendship he has forged over his seven years of wandering the frontier with Archie draws him away once again though when news of Archie being in trouble reaches him.

The story centres on character and emotional transition, not action, unusual for the western genre but done really well. There are two scenes with typical western action that pivot the rest of the narrative but in the main The Hired Hand hones in on how the desire for freedom conflicts directly with the traditional family set up. And that’s where the allegory for the death of the 60’s comes in; it questions if any real contentment or fulfilment is found in the free ranging life of Harry and Archie and suggests that ultimately, happiness is rooted in settling down. It’s a slow burner but the measured pace is a sign of maturity, allowing the emotional resonance of the story to gently expand to the final scenes. A quirky 70’s revisionist western that put me in mind of watching The Missouri Breaks, which treads similar ground; they’d make a great double bill.

(3/5)

I Wish

(Hirokazu Kore-eda/2011/Japan)

I Wish is a delightful story of two brothers whose parents have separated, each taking a child and living miles apart in separate cities; causing the siblings to conspire to secretly reunite in a plan to get their mum and dad back together. The film is one of comic observation of folk and the little quirks of life as they get through their daily routines, aspiring to bigger things with the same hopes and wishes as all of us. It’s ultimately a coming of age drama as the brothers each realise the folly of their machinations but it is cut through with the belief in magic that only children can unquestioningly accept. The scene with the elderly couple grabbing some precious, vicarious good vibes from having the kids stay over for a night is sublime. Kore-eda has an ability to tell a story in simple terms but striking a universal gong of shared experiential and existential spirit. As I said at the outset, an absolute delight.

(3.5/5)

Neon Demon

(Nicolas Winding Refn/2016/France, Denmark & USA)

Refn delves into the world of fashion modelling in this satirical and scathing tale of an adolescent girl, naive and overawed, trying to make her way in Hollywood’s cut throat arena of scantily clad women. It’s nothing new in terms of a story but stylistically he takes the pomp and sheen of that world and reflects it back from the cinema screen as a crass and shallow image of itself. It is visually luxurious and seeping in allegory. The established models have modified themselves and their habits so much to adapt to what is expected of them to work within the industry that they react with spite and aggression to the purity and apparent innocence of Elle Fanning’s Jesse. However, the jaded, cynical and downright malicious photographers and model selectors salivate over Jessie and soon she is a star. This provokes further reaction from the other models and from Jesse herself as she inescapably changes with the growing limelight and attention.

Neon Demon is an exquisitely crafted film but careens dangerously close to the very exploitation it is critiquing. There are extended sequences that meld together and have a dream like quality and the symbolism is at times cringingly obvious. And therein lies the problem with it, it looks beautiful, is put together well and is open to interpretation and thus provokes debate but it seems at times as shallow as the world its depicting, is obvious in narrative and doesn’t really say anything new. Refn has an outspoken love of old slasher flicks and it is difficult not to consider this as a big budget, glossy homage of sorts. But it does induce conversation around its subject and what exactly it is as a film itself and for that it’s worth a watch.

(3/5)