25 Şubat 2014 Salı

ESSIE SPEAKS OF OLD THINGS AND NEW

Well that's pretty much the theme of my life at the moment. Tomorrow, God willing, I travel half way around the globe to visit a very dear friend in a very new country - that's an old-new combo if I ever saw one. 

It's also the reason I am so shamefully late this week. I'm sorry but what can I say. It's my first long-haul flight ever. I'm excited and I have a LOT of packing to do. 

This week's movie is also a very sucessful combo of something old and something new. What do I mean? Scroll down to find out...

Happy viewing!
Essie 

JUST DOIN' THE "AMERICAN HUSTLE" TO SURVIVE...

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about” complained Mom as I talked to her on the phone the other day. “It’s just another heist movie isn’t it? I got bored, quite frankly, I didn’t even finish it.” I tutted at that, I highly disapprove of not finishing films. I have done it only two or three times in my life, usually when I felt a migraine coming on. Having recently watched American Hustle, I feel the team putting the film together was well aware that there are a lot of heist films out there. It’s a tricky one really, because heist films have a legitimate fan base for their own sake. But if you want to step above and beyond that fan base you need to do something different.       Something different that, at the same time, is not going to change the basic structure so much that it doesn’t alienate the fan base. American Hustle has actually negotiated that fine line very successfully – hence the Oscar nomination. There are those who, like Mom, are completely sick of heist movies but well… You get those in every genre…
Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale)  has a nice life all in all. He has a beautiful wife (Jennifer Lawrence) with whom he “fights and f.cks” but ultimately cannot seem to separate from; he has a nice little business running laundrettes with some art dealing on the side… Oh and he’s got a second little side line as a con artist, taking from the rich and desperate and giving to himself. Ok himself and his gorgeous business partner and lover Sydney (Amy Addams). So there he is, rolling along, making a “decent” living when… SLAM. The FBI. He is “nailed” by one of the FBI’s brightest, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Now, every hustler knows that everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY has a weakness. The secret to survival lies in finding and abusing it. Richie is over-ambitious. What starts off with a simple trade off with Irving and Sydney – You get me a couple of big fish and I’ll make your charges go away – spirals slowly and steadily out of control as Richie forever sees opportunities to get bigger fish… Irving tries to warn him, not unsubtly, that he is heading into very murky waters but Richie remains stubbornly blinded by future glory… The question is, how far is he prepared to chase these dreams for and how far will he end up falling from?
Now, in one sense this is a common or garden heist film. I can, in that sense, see why Mom got so bored of it. But then, let us not dwell on the similarities. We have already covered that, the movie HAD to do it. The fans would get bored. Let’s concentrate on the stuff the movie did differently. Because, let’s be fair to the movie, it has done a substantial amount.
Now, first up, our hero.  You guys know how much of a Leo DiCaprio fan I am right? Right. I have to begrudgingly admit that although Leo is the main guy I support this year… Well… I won’t be that upset of Christian Bale gets it. I may even be rooting for him a tiny bit. Because as the heroes of heist movies go, Irving is quite a character. First of all, no Ocean’s 11 style smooth, handsome hero here. Irving is overweight and has a “killer” comb-over that gets a good few pages of dialogue all to itself. He has a beautiful blonde “dolly bird” wife sure. But what is different is, he has a COMPLICATED relationship with her. It’s a love-hate relationship, she’s depressed, is she an adequate mother? These are matters that ACTUALLY preoccupy us. We get to really know our characters in this film, as opposed to just reverting to stock characters and using all our previous knowledge to just assume what they’re like and move on. I mean then there’s Sydney. Her relationship with all the characters involved. You literally never know where she’s going to turn next, I mean you do, but the story is so cleverly designed that even a cynic like me had her misgivings.
And while we’re on the subject of characters, let’s have a word or two about Richie DiMaso. There are two types of possible cop in these movies. Ye can have the conscientious “good cop”, the hard-working, beetling antithesis to our “wise guy” heroes, like the police officers in The Wolf of Wall Street. These guys ultimately either win the day a la Wall Street or our heroes run rings round them, kinda like a Road Runner cartoon. Or, we are made to “hate” the cop so that we love the villain all the more – and ultimately the villain usually gets away. Richie… Is neither!  I mean ok, he is a sub-genre of the second variety. Ultimately he does get on our nerves. He is that over-ambitious type in the office who thinks, after taking two successful steps he is basically the best there is. Better than everyone. He has it coming to him a mile away and you know what, you kinda enjoy the smugness being wiped off his face. But at the same time… I’ll let you discover it for yourself but he has a bit of tough life. He is a bit of a “loser” in movie terms (and God knows I hate that term in real life but I’m trying to make a point here) but… Eh, he’s grey. He’s not black or white. Which makes this movie so great.

American Hustle is a fun, solid mix of something old and something new. It very successfully take a genre where it’s generally “goodies vs baddies” and made it… Well made it closer to real life. All the characters across the board have very real personalities and original personal tales. No one is a “stock” character. There is a lot of grey and not much in the way of black and white. I mean yes, this has meant giving up on originality in other areas sometimes but, like we said at the beginning, we can’t afford to lose the fans now, can we? J Soo yeah. I guess I’m ok with it getting a pat on the head. I’m not “outraged” about the nominations. I’ll have something to say if it actually gets all ten Oscars® it is nominated for but for that, dear ones, we have to wait for next week… 

17 Şubat 2014 Pazartesi

ESSIE PROWLS THE OSCARS

Ok, something exciting is happening in my life right now : I'M GOING TO JAPAN. In eight days to be precise. I'm super-excited, preparations are going at break-neck speed and fear-not I am stock-piling reviews so I can keep you amused and entertained even as I paint Osaka red. Ain't I the little multi-tasker? 

That's basically why this week was a bit late. Sorry about that. It's also why my next few reviews might be a bit skew-wiff timings-wise. But they will come. Oh fear not, they will come. 

And they will be largely centered around the Oscar season. I have started with a film I have really, really wanted to see for a long time. It has encited fierce debate and discussion - so I thought I might as well join the frey... Ladies and gentlemen, scroll on down for The Wolf of Wall Street!

happy viewing,
Essie

"THE WOLF OF WALL STREET" PROWLS THE OSCARS

I remember when I first saw the trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street. I was working on something or other with multiple social media websites running in the background when Twitter gave a shiver and a jump. Within the space of ten minutes over half the people I follow (and trust me, I follow a fair few) had shared the trailer. If that isn’t an invitation to click on the link, I really don’t know what is. The moment I saw it, I knew. Oh goodness, big, bold and larger than life : The Wolf of Wall Street was going to take us all by storm and I could NOT wait…
Now, unless you have been living under a stone for the last few months, you will know full well by now that this is the real-life story of Jordan Belfort. Played by the once again brilliant Leonardo DiCaprio (and I REALLY want him to get the Oscar® for this one) we watch the unbelievable rags to riches story of Belfort and his cronies. Jordan is a young man with a gleam in his eye when arrives at Wall Street all those years ago. That gleam is ambition and greed. Now, we all know how Wall Street works. For those who are willing to be “flexible” and with a talent in sales there are many back ways up the career ladder – and Jordan uses and abuses every. Single. Step. Life is one big drug and booze fuelled party at first. Jordan himself has trouble adapting to it – but like most humans, he adapts quite quickly to the finer things in life and after that, honestly, there is really no turning back. Or so it seems. Because for every over-ambitious young man clawing in the cash by any means possible, no matter how outrageous those means are, there is an FBI agent watching very closely and patiently waiting for a slip-up…
There are several reasons this film is brilliant. Now, you may have read my entry on The Great Gatsby last week where I classed the film as an attempt to be larger than life on an emotional and visual scale that failed – at least on the emotional scale. This film is larger than life emotions done right. I mused for a minute over what made the difference as I watched the Wolf of Wall Street. Because God knows the setting is modernised but not that different : Jordan lives in a huge fairy tale mansion with his trophy wife, kids, cars, yachts, helicopters and God alone knows what besides. The parties are unbelievable but not “classy” like Gatsbys – more sleazy. But still, larger than life. And for me, it felt right. But why did Lhurman’s film feel beautiful but fake while Scorsese’s felt completely real? It hit me as I watched a little further. And it’s a lot simpler than you might think. Belfort’s life is one we actually live. No, we do. It is very much a story of our times. First up, we have lived Jordan’s life on a much smaller scale- and possibly not quite in the sequence he does things. But most of us have been to a few truly wild parties where we got rip-roaring drunk back in our day. Some of us even experimented with narcotics. Who doesn’t know that “graduating to the big league” feel of your first pay check? You remember your first apartment? Yeah? Did it not feel like Jordan’s mansion when you first moved out of your parents’ place? Your first beat-up car, remember that? Not the hand-me- down from your Dad but the one you BOUGHT with your own money?  Was that not the coolest ride ever, for all the GIP it gave you breaking down every other day? Yeah… We all know that feeling. Well that and the fact that, come on. I’m not saying we would all go around boozing, doing drugs and defrauding people but who doesn’t want to be rich? I know, I know, there are a lot of hippies out there, like myself, who would fiercely argue that money isn’t everything and it really, really isn’t but… You would enjoy that life. You would love your life to be one long party. Hopefully one you didn’t have to fuel by lying and cheating but the pure “party” aspect of it? You’d love it. You know you would.
Maybe if we watched Gatsby or indeed Lhurman’s other films, Moulin Rouge for example, in a different era it would feel different. Imagining cinema was as it is today back in Gatsby’s day, the audience may well have reacted to the film the way we are reacting to Wolf of Wall Street right now. That would be such an interesting experiment actually. I must remember this for when I have a time machine.
This is also why, I reckon, critics are in such a panic about Wolf of Wall Street glorifying a certain lifestyle. It does not matter that Belfort and his cronies are painted with almost no redeeming features. It’s the “realness” of it all that creates the strongest temptation. DiCaprio and Scorsese may well complain about this particular bit of the backlash but it was, I suspect, a risk they knowingly took. It was the fact that they were tapping into this already existing dream that makes the film sell so well. Critics can lambast the film all they like. As The Wolf of Wall Street says, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
I mean, apart from anything else, including the quite serious messages it encloses, The Wolf of Wall Street is basically a heist movie mixed with a drunken-boozey- hangover comedy. I refer you, for one example, to the EPIC scene portraying Jordan and the “delayed action” drugs – you know that particular event that marks the beginning of his downfall. I do not laugh out loud much at this kind of comedy but this… Oh my God I was in STITCHES. The entire film is worth watching for DiCaprio’s performance alone.

Well, so what can we say? The film does tell a very “materialistic” story but hey… Guess what, that is the world we live in. If we’re all going to start griping about art’s duty to change the world, let’s please remember that art is also a reflection of the society we live in, albeit the larger than life subconscious. The Wolf of Wall Street is precisely that. I mean, in the same vein, I remember a rather bitter tweet stating (I paraphrase because I can’t for the life of me retrieve the Tweet) “I never go to a Scorsese film if I want to see strong female characters”. Err No. Honestly, neither do I. But then again, that’s the way Scorsese’s films have always been. He has always been a “lads” type of filmmaker and has always done what it said on the tin. His female characters are always sketchy stereotypes with no real “meaty” part in the story and the whole affair is generally full to bursting with testosterone. The Wolf of Wall Street makes no exception. Jordan’s wife is the typical trophy wife in all ways, as for his employees, there’s the sassy secretary character –who is refreshing but has about two handfuls of lines – and one single female stockbroker. One. I mean I know this was the ‘80s but come on people, surely in real life there were more than one per floor? At least God I hope there were… I mean, honestly, this almost is the topic of a whole new blog post but you know what? Long story short, again, art is a reflection of the society it is created in. So is this film. We need to change the society we live in before we start griping about what we see in the mirror art holds up to us. I mean, if you look into the mirror and see the warts… It’s not REALLY the mirror’s fault… You can see that – right?  

10 Şubat 2014 Pazartesi

ESSIE PLAYS CATCH UP

Hi there folks! 

Well, look, I told you, I did tell you catch up would be played this year. I am a little behind and need to get fully stuck into the Oscar nominees, this I know but let's stick to chronological order just for this week shall we? 

I've got a couple of real stunners for you - oh yes I said a couple!  We're back to double updates! 

We've got dashing beaux (Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon), stunning locations and travels through time and space for your delectation, so let the fun begin! 

Scroll right down on in!

Happy viewing,
Essie 

REACH FOR THE STARS... "ELYSIUM"

I wonder if Neill Blomkamp was at all nervous when he rolled Elysium out? I don’t say this because he is (or may have been) incompetent as a director. He is not. We all saw that as clear as day in District 9. In fact that is, in a nutshell, the problem. District 9 was categorically awesome. Most of the planet agreed. Anything he did after that was bound to be compared to it, especially since they have, visually speaking at least, such similar premises. And I mean heck, the similarities are not just visual, if you turned your head and squinted slightly, you could argue that he had simply replaced the aliens of District 9 with “non-citizens” in this film. Now I’m not saying that Elysium is a bad film, it definitely is not. But I do wish he had done it BEFORE District 9, not after…
But what is this Elysium of which we all speak? Well, in the late 21st century, the world has been devastated by disease and poverty. So much so that the rich and wealthy (the 1%, as it were) have moved to a space station in the sky called Elysium. Here the elite live the high life (see what I did there ?) and enjoy many benefits, not least that of an almost magical medical system which allows them to stay young and beautiful almost indefinitely. I mean, it’s not immortality, but it’s darn close. Darn close. But all that is just on Elysium you see. On earth, people get ill, suffer and die the way they always have – we can’t have the plebs getting their dirty paws on this technology, right?  Anyway, Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-con and orphan who lives on earth and can only dream  of ever going to Elysium one day (because, as you may have guessed, it ain’t all that easy to become a citizen of Elysium).  But one day, just as he is genuinely trying to turn his life around a freak accident at work leaves him with a matter of days to live… There is one thing that can save Max now : the medical attention available on Elysium. With days left to live, Max is ready to take on any risk to get to Elysium… But his efforts will start a chain reaction that will threaten to shift the entire balance of the world he lives in…
Now, this film gets a lot of things right, I have to say, because Blomkamp is, like I said, a very talented and capable director. I especially love the fact that we have a strong female villain in the shape of Jodie Foster. She plays Delacourt (and I don’t know if it’s a dig in the ribs to old conventions or a genuine re-birth of the phenomenon but our elitist villains are mostly French or French-speaking) the Defense secretary who has her eyes firmly glued to the president’s seat. In the proceedings Delacourt has what we generally term “male characteristics” – she is ambitious, decisive and although she is up to her neck in political scheming (but that’s more because she is a politician and less because she is a woman if you see what I mean) she does not so much as bat an eyelid as she orders two shuttles full of innocent civilians (innocent civilians who are trying to sneak over the border into Elysium… Oh wait does that remind you of something?) to be shot and annihilated. So brownie points for reversing gender roles.

But now onto the social commentary. Because this is mainly what Blomkamp is “all about”.  But the film would have fared so much better if Blomkamp had actually done something artistic to put it across as opposed to make something that very strongly resembles his own rather brilliant previous film and a typical Hollywood action  / sci-fi film and tack on some social commentary. Ok, I’m being a bit harsh here but seriously… There is virtually nothing original about the film at all… It even has a surrogate family unit:  Max, his love interest and her daughter. I mean ok, fair dues, the family unit does NOT come together at the end and the villain is the victim of her own political scheming and not our hero but still… Yes there are some very good original notes in there but at the end of the day I saw this as Blomkamp taking a huge step back. And given the success of District 9, I don’t understand why… I mean never mind how much the “world” in Elysium resembles the shanty towns in District 9. Never mind the fact that they repeated the marketing tactics they used for District 9 too… (You must have seen the “no aliens” stickers when district 9 came out right? Did you catch the spoof ads for vacancies in Elysium? I saw a few on the tube myself ) Do you know what it felt like to me? Blomkamp reckoned we “didn’t get” his message the first time. So he “dumbed it down” and re-stated it. And, much like watery soup, it still tasted ok but for those of us who were a fan of the real thing we kinda wanted a decent meal. And we were kinda looking forward to tasting something new. I mean the least Blomkamp could have done is to leave the soup well alone and wait a bit if he couldn’t think of something new… Ok I may have run a little too far with this analogy but you get the picture… 

HOPE, DESPERATION AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN : "THE GREAT GATSBY"

I was genuinely excited when I heard this film was being made. Especially since it was starring Leonardo Di Caprio AND Tobey Maguire… They are two of my favourite actors and The Great Gatsby is one of my favourite books. I was a little unsure of what I thought of Baz Lhurman directing it…  I mean don’t get me wrong, Moulin Rouge (the film he is the most remembered for as far as I can see) was beautiful but… Well it that was it really. It was beautiful. A film needs to be beautiful but in an ideal world it needs to have a bit more meat than that on its bones. And I have to say, the film (The Great Gatsby) has been lambasted quite badly by the critics, in some circles at least. I was eager to see what it was about – and have decidedly been stricken by the film – but I can’t say I blame the critics either…
Ok for those of you who aren’t big into literature, a brief summary.  Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) is a budding author who has left his artistic aspirations to one side to sell bonds on Wall street. It is the 1920’s, the golden age of Wall Street and Nick is quickly swept up into a world of fast living and boozey parties (all this despite Prohibition of course). Nick’s head is turned by the glamour and glory that assails him for all sides but he is unaware – at least at first – that the true “place to be” in New York of the 1920’s is on his very doorstep. His neighbour, an elusive man called James Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) who has seemingly never-ending financial means that he uses to throw the most spectacular parties New York has ever seen, week after week. Nick is drawn into these parties… But he is treated to something a little more than the usual guests: the confidences of Gatsby himself… Because although it may seem to the untrained eye that Gatsby is simply living a carefree and privileged life the way so many are, but in actual fact, Gatsby is a man with a plan…
Now first up: There is a reason this film was nominated for Oscars for Costume and Production Design. It is hands down one of the most beautiful films I have seen in a very, very, VERY long time.  Now don’t tut or dismiss this as “make-up” because it really isn’t as simple as all that. Gatsby’s whole mentality and whole struggle with society is based on that beautiful exterior. The fanfare, the trappings and, according to Tom Buchanan (the husband of the ill-fated Daisy)  marks him out clearly as a “nouveau riche”. The whole point is that, at the end of the day, Gatsby is “different” from all his party guests and all those stunning trappings are shams. Tom Buchanan sees this as a bad thing – the trappings hide a simple bootlegger and a crass man according to him… We however, through the eyes of Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) see that while there is indeed, a different Gatsby under the trappings and fanfare – it is not as simple a matter as Tom paints it…
Or at least we should. I hate to say this, I really do. But this particular film does a STUNNING rendition of what Gatsby’s trappings looked like… And gets tangled up in them. I could plainly see the efforts to put that depth across but it’s just not working. What annoyed me the most about the whole thing was the way he got Nick Carraway to narrate over plot points that are made supremely clear through the actor’s performances. I mean I know that modern Hollywood does, from time to time, feel the need to take a neon sign and point at what we are “meant to be feeling” but the way Lhurman does it almost harks back to the “chorus” in Greek tragedies of yore. I fully realise that this is, in the end, entertainment and we don’t necessarily want the film to pose us mental puzzles that we work out over 3 or 4 viewings but come on… Leave something to the audience. I mean heck, leave something to the actors! Between the pomp and circumstance and the rather forced narration, in the 2 hours and 20 minutes of film there is surprisingly little room left to show the depth of character Gatsby truly possessed.  I mean ok, we are shown clips from his childhood where he is shown (literally) reaching for the stars; a cute if rather stock image, but is it really sufficient proof he had vision and ambition? It’s the same problem – a beautiful picture: a blond blue eyes scallywag reaching up into a beautiful starry sky – but it doesn’t really tell the story does it? I feel it happens to a lot of key scenes in the film. In so many places, all the emotions are put across in the most cliché way possible… Executed with grace and beauty but still, not one iota of originality; and that is such a strange thing to say about a film that has as stunning visuals as The Great Gatsby…  I guess the fact that the film is based on a book as emotionally “filling” as Fitsgerald’s classic just makes things worse. I wonder if that was why the narration bit was added? You know, a desperate attempt to capture that atmosphere of the book by actually reading sections from it.

I’m especially disappointed because the film was SO visually striking, I was actually under the influence of the atmos a day or two after I watched it… If it was only half as striking emotionally as it was visually we’d have a masterpiece on our hands. As such, it breaks my heart to say this, but it’s the victory of style over content… 

3 Şubat 2014 Pazartesi

ESSIE SPEAKS OF NEVER GIVING UP

"I'm still here you bastards!" Who would have thought that tiny sentence would end up mening so much to me!

This week is all about never giving up for me. I was so touched by this week's film I just... Gushed... And you know... About 1000 - ish words a week is about my upper limit. We all go through tough bits. Some of us go through very tough bits indeed... It is so important to find the strength within us to shake our fist at whatever is trying to drag us down and go "I'm still here you bastard!" (or whatever exclamation you prefer if you're not into swearing)

So here you go. Scroll right on down. And trust me, it's a classic for a reason...

happy viewing,

Essie

PAPILLON - ON THE IMPORTANCE OF NEVER LOSING HOPE... NO MATTER WHAT...

Love is a strange and many splendored thing. Sometimes it comes with a flash of light and a clap of thunder, engulfing us all in an instant. But sometimes it sneaks up on us quietly taking us over so gently we don’t even realise until we have been completely engulfed. This film crept up on me exactly in this way. I started off watching it almost out of a sense of duty – it’s a known classic and I felt as if I should have watched it by now – and for the first hour or so honestly wasn’t that hooked. I ended up deciding that my first tattoo will be the butterfly that gave the film it’s name – the butterfly tattooed on the main character’s chest. I have the pain threshold of a slug when it comes to needles (terrified doesn’t scratch the surface of how they make me feel as anyone who has tried to take blood from me can testify) so this is really something. Allow me to endeavour to explain how.
The film is based on the memoires of the same name of Henri “Papillon” Charriere,  a petty criminal native to France. Convicted (all his life he claimed wrongly) of killing a pimp, he is sent to the penal colony in French Guyana. This is a dismal place where the prisoners are treated little better than animals and the more unruly ones (like Charriere) are kept in solitary confinement for years ( that’s “years”, plural) so that they are “broken” (and often killed). Of course it’s completely possible to get yourself into trouble even in solitary confinement in which case you are deprived from light for up to six months… As you can imagine, Charriere is not an easy prisoner by a long shot. Two things keep him alive and (relatively) sane: his friend Dega who is a renowned forger and a man of means who can make *ehm* connections even in this most dismal of jails and his dogged obsession with escaping. The trouble is that this place is specifically designed so, as the guard so succinctly puts it, France can “wash her hands” of the men and dispose of them. For ever. It is going to take one hell of a lot more than determination for Papillon to escape…
You may have made the analogy already. And to tell the truth, yes,  in places the film has that distinct feel one gets from “escape from POW camps” type tales that were so popular around the time of the 2nd World War. You know, completely disparate characters pulling together against a common brutal enemy and almost impossible odds. The fact that we have Steve McQueen (who was the lead in The Great Escape ten years before this film was made) in the title role does nothing to alleviate this analogy. Of course genre-wise, it’s your basic buddy-movie really. The strong decisive “masculine” one (Steve McQueen) and the more effeminate, “scaredy” one who “gets things done” aka Dustin Hoffman as Dega. Technically the film is brilliant in so many ways. One of my particular favourites was that beautiful if slightly jarring contrast between the paradise island of French Guyana and the brutality of the colony. And to me, to be absolutely honest, this film stuck out with its story, more than anything else…
First of all, a tiny bit of research straight away proved what I strongly suspected: it is widely presumed that the stories Charriere tells as his life story partly come from other prisoners. You could very well argue that the story is a bit like a swashbuckling pirate story. And I do not mean that in a disrespectful way. It’s just one of those things where when you look at the list of misfortunes that befalls the hero, it is almost numerically impossible for one single person to be THAT unfortunate. But then again, I don’t think the fact that it didn’t happen to a single person detracts from their force – considering they were probably true. I’m pretty sure 6 month blackouts happened as did solitary confinement for years on end along with God knows what else besides…  I mean these stories are unbelievable, but the truth often is stranger than fiction…
And secondly, just because an event is based on reality but doesn’t match up to it 100% must we, in every single case, wag our fingers and dismiss it because it’s not “telling the truth”? This is a story about the amazing capacity human beings have to find inner strength and keep up hope. And shall I tell you something else? I don’t even think it’s that important whether Papillon made it to freedom or not…  (SPOILER ALERT!) What matters is, when he is put on Devil’s Island – a minimum security branch of the colony where the prisoners are pretty much left to their own devices on a tiny island surrounded by shark- infested waters and nowhere to launch a boat from Papillon, who is now old and grey and not a little insane after 5 extra years in solitary confinement, STILL hasn’t given up. While Degas (who has somehow landed himself on the same island) is happy to settle in and concentrate on growing carrots, Papillon is still plotting… Now call it obsession or madness if you will, I think Papillon’s tireless bids for freedom speaks to something in all of us. You know. The part that secretly “knows” that one day you will be famous. You will be rich. You will have that red Ferrari. The entire world may be telling you that that plan, whatever it is, is very probably going to end in heartache. Outwardly you agree. Inwardly, there is a tiny voice inside insistently telling you to keep plugging at it. Papillon is the story of a man who never, never lost that voice. And I think this is a far more important message than any other the film may or could contain.

I mean, look at it this way. As I write this review, Holocaust Remembrance day is almost upon us. I just finished watching a documentary about British Holocaust Survivors. They site a lot of different “ingredients” for survival in those most horrific times, blind luck being one. But the second? Optimism. A sense of humour. And if that doesn’t tell you something about what it takes to survive in this world, I don’t know what will…