Hello everyone. My name is Zak, and I am a twenty-three year old student of film-studies. I am currently living in Montreal, Quebec. With this blog I will discuss various aspects of the film medium. This will mostly come in the form of review and critique but I will also be writing articles on a variety of film-studies topics. My current goal is to watch at least a film a day for the foreseeable future. This will be outside of the films screened in my classes, but I will likely refer to those films anyway. For every film I watch, I will make at least a small post to develop my thoughts on it. I have no established path that I will work through in terms of movie-choice. There will be a lot of current films discussed, but I can't make the trip to the theatre every day so I also have a large backlog of films to watch. The films I will watch will cover a large range. As I said, I have no direction set for myself so the films will likely differ greatly from day to day. With that said I will move onto my review of Animal Kingdom.
Animal Kingdom is a film directed by
David Michôd about a newly orphaned teenager named Joshua that is forced into the life of the family that he was once secluded from. Unfortunately his extended family is entrenched in the crime world of Melbourne, and deal in armed robbery and drug-dealing. As Joshua becomes a part of the family the focus of the film shifts to the new relationships that are presented, both from his family, and the police.
The film is very slow moving. The story is presented much differently than a typical crime film. There are no breaks in the narrative in order for a gun-battle to occur. Instead we are treated to a more realistic look into this kind of world. This is accomplished through some outstanding performances, particularly those of James Frecheville who plays Joshua, Jacki Weaver who plays his grandmother, and Ben Mendelsohn who plays one of Joshua's Uncles.
I found the role of Joshua to be quite interesting. On one hand the character plays very much like how a teen would react to such a situation. Obviously this wouldn't be the typical method of dealing with strain for everyone, but Frecheville's stone-faced performance really pulls it off. The subtleties of expression are carried out to such perfection that the audience really can feel what Joshua is going through. The other aspect of this character I found was that of a vantage point for the audience. Usually the audience is given someone to relate to or to sympathize with for this sort of character. We become invested in them in this way and therefore are able to follow the movie through their perspective. It could be argued that Joshua is presented to us as a sympathetic character, but I found that the film sort of glosses over the death of his mother. It is just something that happens to push him into this new situation, and isn't given any weight throughout the whole movie. Joshua comes into the film as almost a non-entity, and this works wonderfully to give the audience a unique vehicle to experience the narrative. His lack of emotion and deadpan delivery allow us to view the film with some sort of neutrality, and I believe this adds to the realism and overall effectiveness of the film. He is a character we can relate to, but it is done in a way that deeply roots us into his world while still not setting him up as a hero. Through Joshua, I was able to move through the film without being forced anywhere.
Ben Mendelsohn who plays Pope, Joshua's Uncle is a very different character. The psychosis that he displays is presented with such a careful touch that it becomes completely believable. As with all the performances in the film, there is nothing outlandish about this character. Despite this, I couldn't help but react viscerally to many of the encounters between Pope and various characters. The performance did not illicit a huge reaction from me, but it was enough to have me squirming at points. The character himself is very well developed. I was able to fully understand why Pope was reacting the way he was. There was nothing that left me wondering. His actions were sometimes surprising, but once they occurred it fell right into what the character had grown to be. The same is true for Jacki Weaver's character, Janine. She seems to teeter between the strength of her control over all the characters, and the weakness of her dependency on those same people. Even from her first encounter with Joshua she projects a sort of inner strength that we see magnified as the film progresses.
The character's often toned down performances is reflected in David Michôd's take on the crime genre. One of the first things I thought about after leaving the theatre was the lack of violence in the film. Violence is mostly sprung on the audience. Quick displays of violence that burst on-screen and are finished just as quickly. There is only one complete scene of violence that I can recall, and even then it would be hard to deem it visually graphic. Regardless, this scene, in which Joshua's girlfriend encounters Pope, packs a huge punch. The whole film plays off this lack of violence very well. It suits the actions of the character and, in my case, left me very anxious about when things would start to get bloody. This made for some very suspenseful moments, and built on the realism that defined the film. It was a nice change to see someone deal with a story of a life in crime without having to blow gaping holes in every character. David Michôd clearly knows how to be reserved enough to make the actual intensity of his film really stand out.
With all that said, the film was not without flaws. The pacing overall was a bit slow for me. I didn't mind it for the most part, but there were a few times where it took me out of the movie. The film moves so slow at times that I began to lose what was progressing the plot and what was motivating the characters. It wasn't that I couldn't follow the story, it was more that all the character motivations in regards to the overall narrative seemed so distant that the story began to fall flat. Thankfully all of the characters were strong enough on their own to keep my full interest. This was most noticeable towards the end of the film. The pacing was so slow and deliberate and then it speeds up to a point that I found a little disorienting. There is also a point where a new character is introduced that we have never seen before (please correct me if I'm wrong), and simply walks in and commands the respect of every character in the scene. She is there for a stated reason, but her entrance is so abrupt that it caused me to pause and really took me out of the scene. This scene also comes right before the film begins to speed up, and the coupling of the two felt very off in comparison to the rest of the film.
I did enjoy this film, but I believe I did more in hindsight than while I was actually in the theatre. I really loved every character presented in the film, and I thought that every role was superbly acted. The slow pacing was a lot easier to accept after finishing the film and all of the intricacies seemed to present themselves to me upon reflection. I don't believe that this is a bad thing though. The film still gripped me for the majority of the screening, and the originality of concept really kept me thinking throughout and afterwards.
If you have any comments, or suggestions for films to watch, please leave some feedback.
