Mister Foe
Directed by David Mackenzie
At Angelika Film Center, Running Time: 95 min.
David Mackenzie’s quaintly murky aesthetic takes a strange turn in his adaptation of Peter Jinks’ Mister Foe. It’s the first time in his feature-length career—which was kick-started in 2003 by his alternately ungainly and transfixing Young Adam—that he’s felt the need to rehabilitate his curiously grimy antiheroes.
Here he pardons and explicates young Hallam Foe’s (Jamie Bell) psyche with, of all things, an obnoxiously blaring soundtrack. You know you’re in trouble when The Junior Boys’ “Double Shadow” is used to shed light on how Hallam envisions his drunken seduction of Kate (Sophia Myles), the young lady that he’s convinced looks like his mother.
The film’s award-winning pop soundtrack (winner of the 2007 Silver Berlin Bear for Best Film Music) is impossible to ignore. It not only pronounces the fact that this is the first contemporary feature Mackenzie has made since Young Adam, but also practically smothers some of Foe’s most affecting scenes.
In his attempt to make the audience sympathize with Hallam, Mackenzie uses the cheapest trick in the book: attempting to give the audience a link into his head with a manic soundtrack. Apparently hearing Hallam’s angst in song form adds complexity to his character by highlighting otherwise unseen aspects of Mackenzie’s sweeping camerawork. Because you’re my double shaaa-dooow.
It’s also one of the most glaring and upsetting ways Mackenzie struggles to make Hallam almost presentable, a sort of sympathetic sociopath. Apart from being a peeping Tom, he suspects that his stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) killed his biological mother, and Hallam is now so desperate to have his mother back that he is stalking/working for/flirting with a young look-alike. He wears a dead skunk on his head and his mother’s make-up when under pressure and lives in a clock tower after having been thrown out of his tree house. Oh, and he almost has sex with his stepmother. Thanks to the Junior Boys, the dark pretensions of Hallam’s heart are made clear in a catchy and easily digestible way.
Considering the weight of Hallam’s emotional baggage, it’s not only surprising but more than a little exasperating to watch Kate forcefully return his advances (“I like creepy guys,” she protests drunkenly before suggesting that she take him back to her place). Kate’s inconceivable affection is the audience’s second-most-irritating reassurance that Hallam is actually a regular guy.
While it’s possible to accept that even creepy guys get girls, her chipper attitude toward Hallam’s distressing behavior becomes unbearable when she declares her love while apologizing on his behalf: “Sometimes I want sweet. Sometimes I want sour. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. My shit stinks. I’m going to die one day.” Apparently, flagrantly wigged-out is the new boyishly puckish.
Unfortunately, Kate’s shockingly quick acceptance of Hallam’s quirks and the equally bothersome soundtrack isn’t the only way Mackenzie struggles to objectively tame Hallam’s subjective woes. No, there’s also Hallam’s father Julius (Ciaran Hinds), whose double take upon meeting Kate is unquestionable proof that Hallam is not just dreaming up her resemblance to his dead mother. Julius also provides two mind-numbingly patronizing speeches that demolish Hallam’s paranoid conspiracy theory about Verity and spell out the awful truth about his mother’s death in big, bold capital letters.
Julius is the least of Mackenzie’s most nauseating means reassuring the viewer of Hallam’s mental anguish. Mackenzie does not want to leave behind the teensiest shred of ambiguity as to the normalcy of Hallam Foe’s afflictions. Though he has a questionable character, he is, as Kate sophistically explains, just as disturbed as anyone else.
That kind of coddling, sentimental backslapping seems particularly strange coming from Mackenzie. Both Young Adam and his dismal follow-up, Asylum (2005), accentuate and unsuccessfully exploit a central visual metaphor that likens his protagonists’ minds to broken mirrors. Their personalities are shattered by events that are intriguing so long as they remain a mystery. Mister Foe obliterates any such sense of mystery, gluing Hallam’s reflection back together with cheap material and well wishes.
Directed by David Mackenzie
At Angelika Film Center, Running Time: 95 min.
David Mackenzie’s quaintly murky aesthetic takes a strange turn in his adaptation of Peter Jinks’ Mister Foe. It’s the first time in his feature-length career—which was kick-started in 2003 by his alternately ungainly and transfixing Young Adam—that he’s felt the need to rehabilitate his curiously grimy antiheroes.
Here he pardons and explicates young Hallam Foe’s (Jamie Bell) psyche with, of all things, an obnoxiously blaring soundtrack. You know you’re in trouble when The Junior Boys’ “Double Shadow” is used to shed light on how Hallam envisions his drunken seduction of Kate (Sophia Myles), the young lady that he’s convinced looks like his mother.
The film’s award-winning pop soundtrack (winner of the 2007 Silver Berlin Bear for Best Film Music) is impossible to ignore. It not only pronounces the fact that this is the first contemporary feature Mackenzie has made since Young Adam, but also practically smothers some of Foe’s most affecting scenes.
In his attempt to make the audience sympathize with Hallam, Mackenzie uses the cheapest trick in the book: attempting to give the audience a link into his head with a manic soundtrack. Apparently hearing Hallam’s angst in song form adds complexity to his character by highlighting otherwise unseen aspects of Mackenzie’s sweeping camerawork. Because you’re my double shaaa-dooow.
It’s also one of the most glaring and upsetting ways Mackenzie struggles to make Hallam almost presentable, a sort of sympathetic sociopath. Apart from being a peeping Tom, he suspects that his stepmother Verity (Claire Forlani) killed his biological mother, and Hallam is now so desperate to have his mother back that he is stalking/working for/flirting with a young look-alike. He wears a dead skunk on his head and his mother’s make-up when under pressure and lives in a clock tower after having been thrown out of his tree house. Oh, and he almost has sex with his stepmother. Thanks to the Junior Boys, the dark pretensions of Hallam’s heart are made clear in a catchy and easily digestible way.
Considering the weight of Hallam’s emotional baggage, it’s not only surprising but more than a little exasperating to watch Kate forcefully return his advances (“I like creepy guys,” she protests drunkenly before suggesting that she take him back to her place). Kate’s inconceivable affection is the audience’s second-most-irritating reassurance that Hallam is actually a regular guy.
While it’s possible to accept that even creepy guys get girls, her chipper attitude toward Hallam’s distressing behavior becomes unbearable when she declares her love while apologizing on his behalf: “Sometimes I want sweet. Sometimes I want sour. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. My shit stinks. I’m going to die one day.” Apparently, flagrantly wigged-out is the new boyishly puckish.
Unfortunately, Kate’s shockingly quick acceptance of Hallam’s quirks and the equally bothersome soundtrack isn’t the only way Mackenzie struggles to objectively tame Hallam’s subjective woes. No, there’s also Hallam’s father Julius (Ciaran Hinds), whose double take upon meeting Kate is unquestionable proof that Hallam is not just dreaming up her resemblance to his dead mother. Julius also provides two mind-numbingly patronizing speeches that demolish Hallam’s paranoid conspiracy theory about Verity and spell out the awful truth about his mother’s death in big, bold capital letters.
Julius is the least of Mackenzie’s most nauseating means reassuring the viewer of Hallam’s mental anguish. Mackenzie does not want to leave behind the teensiest shred of ambiguity as to the normalcy of Hallam Foe’s afflictions. Though he has a questionable character, he is, as Kate sophistically explains, just as disturbed as anyone else.
That kind of coddling, sentimental backslapping seems particularly strange coming from Mackenzie. Both Young Adam and his dismal follow-up, Asylum (2005), accentuate and unsuccessfully exploit a central visual metaphor that likens his protagonists’ minds to broken mirrors. Their personalities are shattered by events that are intriguing so long as they remain a mystery. Mister Foe obliterates any such sense of mystery, gluing Hallam’s reflection back together with cheap material and well wishes.
