Maine (2018)

29 Friday Mar 2019

Tags

Appalachian Trail, Drama, Hiking, Indie movie, Laia Costa, Matthew Brown, Review, Thomas Mann

D: Matthew Brown / 86m

Cast: Laia Costa, Thomas Mann

Bluebird (Costa) is a young Spanish woman who has come to America to distance herself from her marriage, and to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. On the trail she meets Lake (Mann), and they travel on together, getting to know each other (albeit slowly) and developing an odd kind of friendship. Along the way they meet other hikers who mistake them for a couple, but Bluebird is always quick to dispel this impression. This frustrates and annoys Lake who has developed a crush on Bluebird, and although she is friendly and conspiratorial toward him, she’s also distant and often unresponsive. As the hike continues, Lake tries to forge a closer, stronger relationship with her, but Bluebird remains emotionally reserved, and their uneasy friendship begins to unravel. But when an unexpected turn of events makes it seem as if they’re about to become closer still, the lure of a nearby town prompts Bluebird to abandon her hike without completing it. It also means the probable end of her relationship with Lake, something that he doesn’t know how to deal with. As they head into town in the back of a pick-up truck, the fate of their friendship seems entirely decided…

Opening with a wordless ten-minute sequence that places its main character firmly in the movie’s physical setting, Maine is a low-budget indie offering with a surfeit of ambition that is only fitfully exploited. On the surface, it’s about Bluebird and her search for some kind of meaning to her life – the reason she’s left Spain and her husband is never revealed – but as Matthew Brown’s debut feature (he also wrote the script) unfolds with slow, painful deliberation, whether this is really the case becomes open to question. Much of this is down to Bluebird’s wayward behaviour and the inconsistency that punctuates the time we spend with her. And though it’s always possible that said wayward behaviour could be indicative of a mind that is struggling to make sense of the thoughts inside it, because Brown chooses to make Bluebird’s motivations more ephemeral than concrete, the viewer has no choice but to interpret matters on their own and hope for the best. For many this will mean a frustrating, disappointing viewing experience that tests their patience, and much like Bluebird herself, will mean whether or not they see things through until the end. Though Brown may be aiming for ambiguity, when it’s all there is, it’s not as satisfying as it might sound.

This being essentially a two-hander – other hikers and later, a handful of townspeople, drift in and out of the narrative – much depends on the performances of Costa and Mann. Costa made a big impact in Victoria (2015), and since then has made consistently interesting choices, but here she’s saddled with a character whose arc goes nowhere (though that may be a deliberate choice – who knows?). As a result she gives a spirited yet mannered portrayal that hints at Bluebird being bi-polar, while Mann can only respond by looking confused, upset or defeated by her often callous attitude towards Lake. Their relationship flits between friendly and adversarial, optimistic and regressive, but with all these disparate elements in play it’s hard to know which are sincere and which are diversionary tactics employed by Brown to give the semblance of greater depth to the characters and the material overall. In the end, and despite everyone’s best efforts, Maine remains the kind of movie where getting to know and understand the main protagonists feels as if more effort is required than is necessary, and Brown’s directorial choices serve only to highlight how distant Bluebird and Lake remain from an audience that can’t really connect with them.

Rating: 5/10 – an unsuccessful foray into “trail movie” territory that hints at long-buried emotional traumas in both its main characters, but which refuses to explore them except superficially, Maine undermines audience expectations at every turn by remaining oblique and often dramatically inert; blessed though by Donald R. Monroe’s movement of the camera, and a succession of perfectly framed shots of the Appalachian Trail itself, this will no doubt have its supporters, but this is one time where the Emperor really has forgotten to dress himself before going out in public.

Mini-Review: The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015)

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Dev Patel, Drama, Jeremy Irons, Mathematics, Matthew Brown, Partitions, Proofs, Review, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Trinity College, True story, World War I

D: Matthew Brown / 108m

Cast: Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Devika Bhise, Toby Jones, Jeremy Northam, Kevin McNally, Richard Johnson, Anthony Calf, Raghuvir Joshi, Stephen Fry

Madras, India, 1914. Humble clerk Srinivasa Ramanujan (Patel) has a special affinity for mathematics; he can see formulas in his head, and he can write them down without having to pause or check what he’s writing. Spurred on by his employer, he writes to the British mathematician, and professor at Trinity College, Cambridge, G.H. Hardy (Irons). Hardy is impressed enough to pay for Ramanujan’s passage to England, and with a promise of ensuring the young Indian’s work is published. Once at the college however, Ramanujan finds himself pressed to explain just how his formulas work. Hardy needs him to provide “proofs” – how he works things out – but at first it’s an alien concept that Ramanujan fights against.

Back in Madras, Ramanujan’s wife, Janaki (Bhise) is reliant on his letters for news of when she can travel to be with him. But his jealous mother, Narasimha (Joshi), hides his letters and confiscates hers. In England, his wife’s apparent silence adds to his further woes: experiencing institutionalised racism, the delays in being published, and the onset of tuberculosis. As he struggles to meet the demands that Hardy imposes, Ramanujan begins to feel despair at the thought that all his theories and formulas will die with him. It’s only when he and Hardy challenge another member of the faculty, Major MacMahon (McNally), over partitions, that his work begins to be recognised, and his position as a gifted mathematician is guaranteed.

A true story about a most remarkable man, The Man Who Knew Infinity is a fairly standard biopic that benefits greatly from the participation of Patel and Irons, both of whom give strong, inspiring performances, and from the work of production designer Luciana Arrighi Rajeevan, who recreates the period covering World War I with style and attention to detail. Beyond this, though, this is very much a standard tale of one remarkable man’s struggle to be heard and understood against an environment that appears unable to entertain original thought. There are many such stories throughout history, and many have been into serviceable movies, and while The Man Who Knew Infinity is certainly an interesting story, it’s too similar to many other stories to have much of an impact.

Partly this is due to the period of time over which the movie takes place – six years – which leaves the narrative necessarily fragmented. As a result, Ramanujan’s story feels incomplete, with too many scenes that are replays of earlier ones (Hardy’s insistence on proofs is played out on several occasions). The movie isn’t too subtle in depicting the racism of the time, doling out exactly the kind of scenes you’d expect to see in a movie such as this – Ramanujan is verbally abused, physically assaulted, and generally despised by the majority of the teaching staff – and there’s the classic movie moment where after a number of scenes where Ramanujan is prone to coughing fits, he finally coughs up blood into a handkerchief. Watching the movie, you can practically predict every beat of the narrative, and every advance in the material. But on a basic level it remains entirely watchable – just don’t expect too much from it.

Rating: 6/10 – an inspiring tale told with a minimum of passion, The Man Who Knew Infinity relies on a number of biopic clichés in telling its story, and in doing so, dulls the drama inherent in Ramanujan’s life; boasting two clever, intelligent central performances, and often glorious cinematography by Larry Smith, the movie feels as if it was aiming for more, but didn’t quite have the resources to achieve it – but at least it tried.