The British helmer has shot eighteen feature-length films since his 1995 debut with “Butterfly Kiss” (two of which are documentaries made with Mat Whitecross) and he’s barely slowed down to take a breather since, taking on disparate project after project, of different styles, genres, and tones, including a moody, existential sci-fi film (“Code 46”), a rock concert porn film (“9 Songs”), a bleak chamber drama (“Jude”), a serial killer film (‘Butterfly Kiss’), the post-modern Madchester music scene saga (“24 Hour Party People”) a Western (“The Claim”) and his latest, a pulpy and dazzling noir (“The Killer Inside Me”) to name just a few.
In many ways, the creatively restless and aesthetically omnivorous filmmaker is the British version of a chameleon-like Steven Soderbergh, constantly on the move and continually taking on new challenges. And while his batting average may not be quite as high as his American counterpart, all Winterbottom films are at the very least interesting experiments. The man is clearly not afraid to fail and to keep the analogous thing going. His production company Revolution Films is not that different from Soderbergh’s now defunct Section 8, which develops its own projects instead of looking to studios or others to give him ideas.
On the day of “The Killer Inside Me” hitting theaters (Friday, June 18 in limited release) we thought we’d take a look into the oeuvre of a highly productive, yet still underappreciated auteur who’s possibly just starting to produce the best work of his career right now.
“The Killer Inside Me” (2010)
Winterbottom’s latest is stirring up a considerable amount of controversy, largely thanks to a pair of brutal beatings and what some critics see as the movie’s overwhelming nihilism which covers the picture like a heavy wool blanket. But fixating on the violence, which Winterbottom rightfully told us was so disgusting because of its “emotional” underpinnings, is missing the point. “Killer” is a rollicking film noir, a Jim Thompson novel with all the bleakness and humor left intact that lends it an operatic air sometimes reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick. As Lou, a policeman with a dark void where his heart should be, Casey Affleck schemes and plots with a subtle, gnawing wit. And the way the filmmaker puts the whole thing together, with jaunty, period pop songs juxtaposed by classical works, subtle performances that in the wrong hands could have been arch, and gorgeously fluid camera movements, you become an accomplice in Lou’s crimes: you’re having such a good time watching him work, you kind of want to see him get away with it. [A]
“Genova” (2008)
The little-seen “Genova” is a neglected gem for those who like their films elegiac, impeccably acted and filled with the drama of small moments. The story is deceptively simple: a father (Colin Firth), at the behest of an old college friend (Catherine “mark of quality” Keener), moves with his two daughters to Genoa, Italy, after his wife (Hope Davis) dies in an accident (for which the younger of the two kids was, in an entirely innocent way, partially responsible). This writer has never been a fan of the ‘WASP transfigured by Italy’ subgenre — but thankfully Winterbottom’s mazelike Genoa is more akin to the Venice of “Don’t Look Now” in the hint of threat that permeates its picturesqueness, than to the heritage cinema prettiness of Florence in “A Room With A View.” And while it deals in part with a teenage girl’s sexual awakening, this is no “Stealing Beauty.” In fact the film belies its title: it is enamored of Genoa’s streets, beaches and cliffs, but it is not about the city. The narrative of this grieving family unit dissolving under stresses real and imaginary could have played out anywhere “foreign” where the dynamics between them as individuals become magnified because of the cultural otherness of the world outside their door. “Genova” may not be hugely original (it is thematically similar to 2007’s “Grace is Gone,”), and it is far from action-packed, but it is a truthful and thoughtful meditation on the quiet resilience of a weakened family trying to find its new shape, in the sudden and painful absence of a central member. [B-]
“A Mighty Heart” (2007)
Released in the summer of 2007, it was a bid at smart counter-programming that failed to connect with an audience, but it’s a bold, wholly brilliant docu-drama that creates a Paul Greengrass-ian air of fevered, jittery reality. The story of missing journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered while on assignment in the Middle East, the film is based on his wife’s memoir of the same name. Angelina Jolie plays Mariane Pearl in her very best performance (Jolie was actually pregnant at the time of filming) and Winterbottom wisely makes the decision to parallel the frantic search for Daniel, which takes on the shape and general feel of a suspense movie, with the story of Mariane, a wholly emotional arc that follows her longing and worry and ultimate acceptance of her husband’s fate. The sequence where she learns what happens to Daniel is one of the most emotionally wracking scenes in recent memory, and both Jolie and Winterbottom pull the whole thing off beautifully. It’s a shame it was so overlooked on a whole including Jolie’s performances which failed to even nab an Oscar nod. [B+]
Following the playful “Tristram Shandy,” Winterbottom teamed up with longtime colleague Mat Whitecross to tackle the story of the Tipton Three, a trio of young British Muslims who in the aftermath of the chaos of 9/11, were scooped up while in Afghanistan and ended up at Guantanamo Bay as suspected members of Al-Qaeda. Utilizing an experimental format that combines interviews with the actual Tipton Three with re-enactments and archival footage, “The Road To Guantanamo” is part survival story, part documentary and part drama but never really adds up. Winterbottom’s immediate access to the Tipton Three is also the film’s biggest Achilles’ heel. As they tell their story about how an impromptu trip to attend a friend’s arranged marriage found them lost in Afghanistan, some serious questions and holes begin to form in their story that their explanations don’t easily brush aside. But Winterbottom and Whitecross’ clear belief in the innocence of these three, and the lack of counter-point from any official personnel or agencies leave some seriously gaping holes in logic and common sense. The re-enactments also suffer simply because we know the fate of the three — they are being interviewed for the film, so they obviously got out — leaving the film a serious lack of dramatic tension. More often than not, “The Road To Guantanamo” drags, particularly during the lengthy mixups in Afghanistan. The film becomes intriguing once it finally lands at Guantanamo; even though it’s a recreation of the camp and conditions, it’s still gripping and upsetting. There is an indictment of reactionary politics and foreign policy lurking somewhere here but projecting blindly through the Tipton Three simply doesn’t work. While ambitious and very often intriguing, Winterbottom and Whitecross’ faith and support in their subjects blinds them from truly digging into the story. [B-]
Sex and rock ‘n’ roll are two longtime Winterbottom preoccupations and the filmmaker married them experimentally in the controversial “9 Songs,” which was essentially porn insofar as the two lead actors in the film — Kieran O’Brien and Margo Stilley — actually had sex on screen. The film is perhaps not very complex to say the least. The couple fuck in between the performances of nine songs by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Elbow, Super Furry Animals, Franz Ferdinand, Michael Nyman, Primal Scream, and the Dandy Warhols (and most of them at live concerts where the songs play out in full). It’s an interesting if not entirely successful mix of the rock concert film mixed in with a relationship drama played out in between gigs with lots and lots of sex. [C+]
One of our favorite Winterbottom films is the deeply underappreciated and atmospheric sci-fi-ish romance drama, “Code 46.” A stylized mystery and a loose film noir about a doomed romance because of genetic incompatibility (which determines procreation in this dystopian-realm), set in the not-too-distant future, the picture stars Tim Robbins as an intuition-based insurance fraud investigator sent to Shanghai to investigate employees that work at a company that manufactures insurance cover documents. The world the film inhabits is one of “pappelles,” which essentially divides the population into two classes: those who can afford health cover documents that allow travel access in the now heavily restricted planet and those who are shit out of luck and live in as “outsiders” susceptible to all the modern day hazards such as sunlight. It may sound dense, but it’s not (that’s just the set up) and Robbins, an expert at his job, suddenly becomes bewitched and feigns ignorance of the crimes committed by a young cover forger (Samantha Morton) who he can easily detect because of his empathy virus (again, it sounds sci-fi goopy, but it’s a very low-key sci-fi-ish film). On top of being beautifully photographed and employing a woozy mood, the picture also benefits from a resplendent ambient soundtrack composed by David Holmes under the name “Free Association” that is one of our favorites from the decade (even though it didn’t quite make our Best 25 list). [A-]
Or maybe not with the whole comedy thing, as this meta-textual farce (again starring Steve Coogan) covers similar territory as “24 Hour Party People,” but with less glorious results. “Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story” shares several cast members, and a writer (Frank Cottrell Boyce in his final collaboration — he took his name off the picture and wrote under a pseudonym); as such, it’s very much a companion piece to the earlier film, but taking a great, seemingly unadaptable literary masterpiece about procrastination as its subject matter, rather than the Manchester music scene. Taking that film’s post-modern approach even further, it features Coogan and fellow British comedy star Rob Brydon playing exaggerated versions of themselves, as they film an adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” directed by Michael Winterbottom (as played by Jeremy Northam). The central conceit works well as an extension of the novel; indeed, it’s a surprisingly successful adaptation, all told. There are many pleasures to be found in the picture; Brydon steals the show, Naomie Harris contributes a lively, sexy cameo, and it’s as accurate and entertaining a look behind-the-scenes on a film set as has been seen in recent years. But it’s a movie with ambition beyond its reach, and never quite escapes the feeling that it’s an above-average episode of “Extras,” rather than a fully-fledged movie. [B-]
“The Claim” (2000)
Shot in wintry Northern Canada on Winterbottom’s largest budget, while that number is relatively small compared to most studio pictures ($20 million), the sprawl and scope of the picture is epic compared to most of his work. Both a Western and a romance, the picture’s icy setting is reminiscent of the end of “The Assassination of Jesse James,” but the similarities end there and the film has almost no traces of that film’s elegiac aesthetics. Yet another Frank Cottrell Boyce collaboration, the picture is about an Irish immigrant who settled in the high mountains of California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and how a dark secret during that heyday comes back to haunt him later in life. The picture starred the always excellent Peter Mullan, plus Milla Jovovich, Wes Bentley, Nastassja Kinski, Sarah Polley, Julian Richings and Shirley Henderson. While again, interesting, the dramatic stakes seem low despite the inherent secret and the tempo is sometimes semi-glacial. Not a bad film by any means, and once more, a great Michael Nyman score, but just not that remarkable either. [C]
Winterbottom is that rare director who doesn’t shy away from portraying sex on the big screen; from the start of his career through the semi-porn experiment “9 Songs” to the kinky S&M encounters in “The Killer Inside Me,” it’s almost always been present in his work to some degree. And nowhere is it more true than in his early noir effort “I Want You.” Featuring, and clearly to some degree inspired and informed by the great Elvis Costello song, this noirish tale of sexual obsession is terribly underseen (never receiving a U.S. theatrical release, or even being issued on Region 1 DVD). Set in a British seaside town, and following the relationship between a young woman (Rachel Weisz, in one of her earliest roles) and her ex-boyfriend (Alessandro Nivola), recently released from prison after killing her father, through the eyes of a 14-year-old Yugoslavian immigrant, it’s very much a mood piece, shot incredibly beautifully by Kieslowski collaborator Slawomir Idziak. It’s not quite substantial enough to rank among the director’s best work, but its harrowing tone and tragic, inevitable conclusion has haunted us for years. [B]
Shot on location just months after the notorious mid-9os siege of Sarajevo during the Clinton administration, the 1997 drama starring Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson, Kerry Fox, Goran Višnjić, Emily Lloyd and Marisa Tomei is still easily one of his most enduring works (the picture played in competition at Cannes that year). Penned by frequent collaborator Frank Cottrell Boyce (“24 Hour Party People,” “Hilary and Jackie,” Danny Boyle’s “Millions”) who has written six Winterbottom films in total, the picture centers on the (true) story of a British reporter who spirited away a young orphan girl out of the war zone to safety in Britain. Juxtaposing real-life television footage of ineffectual politicians next to the tragedy of a war torn country, the filmmaker deftly portrays a poignant chronicle of misery and ultimately, hope. While Woody Harrelson’s cavalier American reporter character threatens to undermine the picture early on with his stereotypical demeanor, the film is actually carried quite impressively by Stephen Dillane so much so, we’ve got to ask why he hasn’t gotten more big screen work (he’s currently appearing on stage in London, being directed by Sam Mendes). [A-]
Before Kate Winslet blew up the film world with her “Titanic” talents she was still quietly dazzling audiences who were blown away with her feature-length debut “Heavenly Creatures” and her incredible performance in her fourth film, “Jude” alongside the also, mostly-unknown, but very remarkable Christopher Eccleston. An adaptation of the novel “Jude the Obscure” by Thomas Hardy as written by screenwriter Hossein Amini, the film stuck closely to the tragic storyline about a working-class man (Eccleston) with academic dreams, who scandalizes his village when he leaves his wife for his beautiful and bewitching cousin (Winslet). Without being too spoiler-ish, the film is as bleak as all get out and ends with one of their older children hanging himself and the rest of his smaller siblings because of how destitute they are. Winslet’s character then leaves the relationship claiming this was their karmic retribution for getting into such a relationship. It’s a powerful film, but one so dark, we pretty much never want to revisit. [B]
Constantly on the move, Winterbottom has at least two projects on the go. One is his forthcoming tale of terrorism in British-ruled Palestine, “The Promised Land,” starring Jim Sturgess, Matthew MacFadyen and Colin Firth, and the other is a long term project called, “Seven Days” which stars John Simm as a man imprisoned for drug-smuggling and charts his relationship with his wife, played by longtime Winterbottom collaborator Shirley Henderson. The film is being shot sporadically over a five-year period. The director himself recently told us the project still has two more years to go. — Oliver Lyttelton, RP, Kevin Jagernauth, Drew Taylor and Jessica Kiang.
