The Girl on the Train

Warning: contains spoilers for The Girl On The Train
 Seems odd to write about this so soon after The Girl with All the Gifts, a very different film with a very similar title.  Be very careful about the ticket you ask for at the cinema, folks.  But it also falls into the category of “films based on books I have read”, so it’s also odd to write about this so soon after watching Room.  Maybe next I will read The Girl with All the Gifts, and this will come full circle in some way…

The Girl on the Train is based on the 2015 novel by Paula Hawkins and was one of best-selling books of last year.  In a nutshell, it’s the story of Rachel (Emily Blunt), an alcoholic divorced woman who becomes involved in a missing persons investigation after noticing and fantasising about a couple that she sees every day from the train window.  She’s sure she knows something about the missing person, but is piecing together fragments of memories from her drink-addled mind.

Disclaimer: I’m not sure what I think of this film, and my hesitation is partially due to my viewing experience (in which a drunk man repeatedly disrupted the film because he had lost the beer he had brought with him and was most insistent that he should find it again*).  So I’m not as convinced by my own opinion on this, but my overall feeling was that I didn’t particularly care for the film.  Part of the rationale for that is that the film employs a couple of tropes that just really bug me.  I don’t know if they’re universal issues, or just specific to me, and wouldn’t mind hearing what you – dear reader – think about these.

Issue 1:  Inner Monologues. 

When a book has been made into a film, it is difficult to take a character’s inner monologue and make it evident on screen.  The quickest and most used method of doing this is for there to be a series of shots of the main character doing various innocuous things while a voiceover basically reads out the appropriate “character exposition” chunks of the book.  And then we get on with the action.  The problem with this, for me, is that it’s usually the first thing that happens on screen and I’m not quite settled into the film yet.  The closest analogy I can make to explain is introducing a character is a bit like a conversation – there’s a bit of inconsequential small talk in which you can learn a little about the other person – and after rapport has been established, you can then move into more significant chat.  If someone was just to walk up to you and start telling you the contents of their heads (“hello – I’m an alcoholic and I always take this train and I like the look of this couple I see when I look out the window”), you would not engage much further with that person, short of finding out if there was someone with them who would look after them, before beating a hasty retreat.  An exception to this is children (“hello – I like dinosaurs and I like the flying ones best and my friend is Jack and he has a fine hat but he stole my crayons today and I have a cat!”).  For some reason, it’s fine when children do this, although the adult response is usually the same...

Actually, I might watch that film...

The Girl on the Train is guilty of this when introducing not one, but three of the main characters.  All of whom appear on screen and spell out their motivations.  I really dislike this – I’m watching a film, so I expect to see this play out.  If a film can’t convey this to me in any other way than reading me the book, should it be made into a film?  Arguably not.

Maybe this woman could just tell me the film.  That's another option

Issue 2:  Info-dumps.

This seems to be something that’s becoming more and more prevalent, or maybe I’m just becoming more aware of it.  It’s particularly widespread in films that involve crime, politics or superheroes.  Main characters will spell everything out, once, usually 5 minutes into the film, leaving a very confused me halfway into the film thinking “wait – which side is he on?  Who is that?  What was the very important plot point I had to remember?”

I would argue that the average viewer needs a Donna Moss character – one who mainly functions to ask “what did you say half an hour ago?  Why’s that important?  What happens if we blow this up exactly?”  Or for the story to be told better – example 1: The Girl With All The Gifts where significant plot points are introduced gradually, as the audience gets to grips with each in turn.  Example 2:  The Magnificent Seven (2016): will they explain exactly why everything’s going on?  No.  It’s not important and you don’t need to know.

Needless to say, The Girl on the Train takes a few info dumps and I disapprove.

Emily Blunt is a good enough actress that you’ll follow this character and be interested, but her character is a very clean functioning alcoholic.  You can tell when she’s drunk because she has cracked lips and slightly messy hair.  Sobriety is indicated by lipstick and a hairbrush.

Oh no, she's such a terrible mess(!).  How has she let herself get in this state?!

 

Flashbacks are used frequently and confusingly so that it’s difficult to tell what’s actually going on, and when and how.  Arguably, this could be tremendously symbolic of the incomprehensible lifestyle of the main character, except that the same techniques are used for the other (not alcoholic) characters, so this is not a deliberate motif.  Which is a shame.

The final third suddenly lurches into focus, and things become tense, taut and interesting, but after sitting through nearly two hours of meandering, it’s too little too late.

It’s not a dreadful film, and certainly not the worst I’ve seen (not even the worst I’ve seen this year), but it’s disappointing because it could have been better.  It could have been thrilling.  I was not thrilled.  I was more interested in the shenanigans of the drunk man in the cinema on his quest for beer*, and that’s not a great review for any film.
 

*  My husband insists I make it clear at this point that I am not referring to him

The Magnificent Seven

(Warning: contains spoilers for The Magnificent Seven.  And Suicide Squad a bit)

I’m really confused by this film.  I’ve seen the trailer a few times in the cinema and it looked like wacky Western hijinks with wisecracking cowboys.  And it isn’t that.  That’s not the films fault, it’s an issue with the promotion, but as a result I’m still not sure what I think.  So let’s talk it out and see what conclusions we can round up.

The Magnificent Seven (2016) is a remake (The Magnificent Seven – 1960) of a remake (Seven Samurai – 1954), neither of which I have seen, so I’m not in a position to comment about how they all stack up against each other.  The basic premise is this:

Bad guy Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) wants to buy the land from the residents of Rose Creek so he can mine it for gold.  When they refuse, he kills a group of locals and tells those remaining that he will be back in three weeks where they can either leave, or he will kill them all.  Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), whose husband is one of the residents killed, sets about looking for someone who can help them (“I seek righteousness, as I should.  But I’ll take revenge.”) and happens upon Denzil Washington’s Sam Chisholm, a bounty hunter.  He is not particularly interested in her plight until she mentions Bogue’s name, and then he goes about assembling the eponymous Seven.

They come in the form of gambler Joshua Faraday (Chris Pratt), sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), knife-thrower Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), tracker Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Comanche Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) and Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo).  The Seven try to train the town to defend themselves against Bogue’s imminent return.

Plus points:

The casting has rightly been noted as being remarkably diverse – a conscious decision on the part of director Antoine Fuqua, who noted that this was an attempt to more accurately depict historical reality ("There were a lot of black cowboys, a lot of Native Americans; Asians working on the railroads. The truth of the West is more modern than the movies have been.”)  It’s sad that this is a noteworthy point in 2016, but diversity in the media seems to be more like a tide moving in and out, rather than a fixed race to a fixed goal.  A discussion for another day.

Magnificent diversity

Diverse or not, they’re an intriguing bunch and I enjoyed spending time with them.  They’re introduced quickly and efficiently, without a lot of time being given over to heavy exposition (take note Suicide Squad) – we learn who these characters are by seeing it, rather than being told.  In fact, I’d go as far as to suggest that this is the film Suicide Squad could have been.  And by the end of the film, you know them all a little better.  But not loads.  Because you don’t need to. 

Notably, there are real consequences in this film.  There is real peril, from real guns.  Anyone can die, anyone can be harmed.  And the film doesn’t shy away from (warning: impending pun) pulling that trigger.  This fact offers a decent level of jeopardy and is very different from – for example – a superhero film, where people die because the plot says their time is up (despite the fact that they’ve just survived bombs, guns, falling off cliffs and being blasted into the sun).  It’s a Western.  Not everybody will make it out alive. 

Also, it’s a film that absolutely zips along.  A little over 2 hours, but feels like a much shorter amount of time, and crams a lot of efficient storytelling in.  Even as I type this, I’m aware of how easy it is to explain the plot.  It’s not overly complicated.  There’s something very pleasing about that, compared to, for example Batman vs Superman.  Explain me that plot in less than 200 words.  Dare you. 

Minus points:

Treatment of women.  For a cast so diverse, I half expected Haley Bennett to be one of the Seven.  She’s not.  She spends the entire film proving her worth, being as good as the men, driving the film.  She’s the reason that the Magnificent Seven are assembled, yet her role is muddled.  She actively asks to be counted amongst the men as someone who can shoot and fight, and is found in the midst of the action, yet is repeatedly and subtly told “no” – she is relegated to fetching food and drinks for the men when the plans are being discussed and drawn up, and after “Her Big Moment”, her gun (her gun.  Not one she’d borrowed or just randomly picked up.  The one we’ve seen her shooting with throughout) is firmly taken off her and given to an unnamed man for no reason that I understood.  She’s the only named woman in the entire film.

Emma - apparently not magnificent

And I’m confused by this because they seem to be such active choices by the filmmakers that I assumed that they were there for a reason and that the film was building to a point.  But it wasn’t.  So what was all that about?

The grey points in between:
The film is rated as a 12A.  And the trailer, as briefly mentioned, makes this film look as though it’s going to be a lot more fun, and a lot funnier.  It’s not.  There’s a lot of violence and a lot of death.  There’s a fair bit of blood.  I’m not sure about the 12A rating.  There seemed to be a lot of parents with kids in the screening I went to and I think they assumed the same thing I did.  But on the other hand, film ratings are handed out based on the frequency and strength of violence, language and sex, and this breaks down as such:

Sex: presence of prostitutes, rape alluded to and then directly mentioned.  Nothing sexual overtly seen.

Language: one use of the word “shit”.

Violence:  lots and lots.  But, in mitigation, they’re “clean” deaths (you get shot, you die pretty much) with no excessive or additional torture (by which I mean there’s no people being ripped apart by wild animals, or people having hot pokers being stuck in their eyes or suchlike).

So I kind of understand why it’s a 12A, but definitely an example of why parental discretion should be used in a 12A.  Parents take note.

Backstories and issues – there’s some “Issues” that come up in passing as the film progresses.  And the introduction of those issues feels natural, given that a bunch of strangers are all thrown together in a stressful situation.  However, some of those issues land well (for example, Robicheaux and PTSD) and others feel hackneyed and heavy handed (for example, Chisholm and revenge).  A bit mixed, which is a shame.

So, in conclusion, not exactly magnificent, and there’s not exactly seven of them.  But it’s enough that I intend to seek out the originals.