The Limehouse Golem

Directed by Juan Carlos Medina and based on Peter Ackroyd’s 1994 book Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, this film is a must for fans of TV’s Ripper Street series in particular (also set in 1880s London), or indeed Victorian melodrama in general.

The story is a double-pronged criminal intrigue encompassing both a domestic poisoning and a series of other seemingly unconnected and (trust me) grisly serial murders. Assigned the task of solving these crimes is the suave Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy). The film opens with the domestic incident - the death by poisoning of John Cree, husband of Lizzie. Although she is arrested and tried for her husband’s killing, Kildare is convinced throughout of her innocence. As he fights to keep her from the gallows, we find ourselves gradually drawn into the tragic story of ‘Lambeth Lizzie’s earlier life. Brought up by a cruel mother, she is later taken in by music hall folk when orphaned and it is here that she meets and marries the aspiring playwright John Cree. But why, and at whose hand, does he meet his death? Did he abuse her once too often? Or has he too been done to death by the Golem, a mythical figure from Jewish folklore who the public assume to be responsible for the other killings, so ferocious and ‘inhuman’ are the attacks?

The plot leads us up no end of blind alleys and is a baroque mixture of fictional and actual historical figures, incl. George Gissing and Karl Marx, Dan Leno and John Cree. All are frequenters of the British Library and readers of a book in which the killer has scrawled messages in his victims’ blood. They are therefore all at some time in the frame for the murders. The film’s structure takes the form of a series of multi-tiered flashbacks. Weaving our way through a complex interplay between truth and fiction, between real life (the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders of this period are referenced more than once) and the staged version, we reach a startling - and for me unexpected - conclusion.

The atmosphere of the time is well captured, giving a real sense of late 19^th century Limehouse – the poverty, destitution, widespread child cruelty and prostitution, and opium dens. And there is some great acting here too. Bill Nighy is suitably sombre (no daft twitches here!) as he sets about grappling with this seemingly intractable case. It is revealed early on that he is “not the marrying kind” and this adds an extra layer to his characterisation, as do the intimations of lesbianism around Lizzie’s character, superbly played by Olivia Cooke. Other familiar faces include Daniel Mays, his down-to-earth Constable Flood providing the perfect complement to the debonair, enigmatic Kildare. I also particularly liked the range of oddball characters in the music hall. They are all there: the randy midget, the louche transvestite, and the lascivious stage manager (“just call me Uncle”) played superbly by Eddie Marson (was there ever an actor more suited to creepy roles?). But top of the bill for me has to be the character of Dan Leno, probably the Victorian era’s most famous comedian, played by a gorgeously effete Douglas Booth.

Despite having to watch the violent bits through my fingers (the Evening Standard’s film critic describes the film as “riotously gory”), I really enjoyed this movie. The music hall scenes not only perfectly captured the sweaty crush of the hoi polloi at play - visually like something straight out of a Walter Sickert painting – I also got a bit of a singalong! Fortunately, the cinema was half empty so nobody batted an eyelid when I joined in with ‘she’d never had her ticket punched before’ in the back row. For anyone like me who is a sucker for this kind of penny-dreadful-style entertainment, The Limehouse Golem makes for a very satisfying hour and a half.

 

*See the official trailer here: https://youtu.be/MCJp8-MebGY

 

Their Finest

Looking for a movie to fill a dull bank holiday afternoon, and not being averse to a rattling good wartime yarn, we decided to give Danish director Lone Scherfig’s latest offering a look. Movies set in the dark days of the 1940s seem to be de rigeur at the moment (with Dunkirk coming down the line later this year) and Their Finest’s stellar cast, plus the promise of “a smart, witty, top-notch comedy” boded well for our afternoon’s entertainment.

Based on the 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans, the film’s action takes place in the London of 1940. Despite applying for a purely secretarial role, Welsh lovely Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) finds herself unexpectedly taken on for a job writing films for the Ministry of Information. She and chief screenwriter Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) are forced into close quarters when working together on a propaganda film for the Ministry of Information about the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. Predictably, the two grow romantically close, but this is wartime and the path of true love cannot be expected to run smoothly…

Essentially, this is a film about film-making. But there are other (to me more interesting) themes. As any self-respecting war movie should, Their Finest - for all its shortcomings - does capture the uncertainty of life during this period. The true-to-life setting (very impressive) is also matched by attitudes to women that it is easy to forget were once prevalent. The casual sexism of the period is flagged up early on with Tom Buckley unapologetically hiring Catrin solely for the purposes of adding a female perspective to the work in hand, basically what amounts to the ability to write “slop”, i.e. women’s dialogue. Yet the film is chock full of women taking on and ably fulfilling traditionally male roles, women who patently had no intention of “climbing back into their boxes” once the war was over. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we know this is precisely what they were expected to do and it was to take many years before any sort of real equality could be achieved. Even Ellis Cole (played by Jack Huston), Catrin’s ‘husband’, who she claims espouses radical political views and therefore might be expected to be in favour of advancing the female cause, turns out to be just another chauvinist pig who feels his male ego threatened when Catrin takes to her new role with gusto.

There are lots of big names involved in this film. The wonderful Helen McCrory and Rachael Stirling both make an appearance, as do Richard E. Grant and Jeremy Irons, though the latter two parts are so sketchily drawn as to be eminently forgettable. Bill Nighy, perfectly (if somewhat predictably) cast as ageing, narcissistic ex-matinee idol Ambrose Hilliard, is very funny. Arterton is lovely (natch!) but, dare I say it, I found her character pretty boring. In fact, I felt there was a lot of room for further development of all the major figures in the story.

Reviews of Their Finest are generally very positive, particularly those from over the pond. I have a suspicion that there is maybe more of an appetite for this kind of “plucky Brits with their backs to the wall” movie there. One critic from the Detroit News even goes so far as to describe the film as “sizzling with chemistry”. Mmm, I’m not sure this was felt in our cinema, in contrast to the decidedly palpable sizzle that went round the room when watching Allied recently (see last review!). Robbie Collin of the Telegraph also heaps praise, calling Their Finest "sparklingly adapted" and a "handsome, rousing, rigorous entertainment you can’t help but play along with".

For me, though, this was a film that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. I found the ‘romance’ pallid and contrived, the plot a bit flimsy (though Tom’s death under a rogue lighting rig at least rescued it from complete predictability!) and the comedy (it is, after all, billed as such) a bit underwhelming… apart from Bill Nighy who has been allowed to steal the show yet again! As the film ends, with our heroine’s completed movie also coming to a close, Catrin’s neighbour turns to her and says: “watch it a second time and you’ll get more laughs”. Mmm, maybe.

 

*Watch a trailer here: https://youtu.be/id0HEelDIuk

 

Denial

If ever there was a time to applaud the efforts of individuals who stand up against people who pervert the truth for their own ends, it’s surely now. To my mind the release of David Hare’s film ‘Denial’ could not be more apposite…

The film revolves around two principle characters. The first is the historian and Hitler apologist, David Irving, who has had made it his life’s work to tell the story of the Holocaust ‘from the other side’. The other main character is Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1977, Irving published “Hitler’s War”, in which he argued that Hitler initially had not known about the Final Solution and later tried to stop it. His contention, expressed in even more extreme terms in a later (1991) version of the book, was that Hitler did not order the systematic extermination of the Jews and that camps such as Auschwitz were never death camps (just labour camps), and that the mass gassings never took place. In his eyes these events were fabricated to satisfy the Jews’ own agenda. In response Lipstadt in 1993 published “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory”, in which she accused Irving of being a dangerous Holocaust denier, distorting the truth to conform to his own ideological leanings.

‘Denial’ picks up the story in 1996 as Irving decides to bring a libel case against Lipstadt (and her publisher Penguin Books) for what he perceives as serious damage to his professional reputation. Unlike in other cases, the onus with libel is on the defendant to prove his/her innocence, i.e. Lipstadt is faced with having to prove the Holocaust happened. But how to do that when the Nazis destroyed evidence of their actions when their defeat was imminent, blowing up the gas ovens as they retreated?

The first half of the movie (we know it actually took four years to prepare the case) shows us Lipstadt assembling her team of lawyers, while Irving prosecutes his own case. The second half of the film deals with the case itself. But, though this was a complex trial lasting ten weeks, there are no lengthy courtroom scenes here and the film never gets bogged down with legalese. By skilful cross-examination, Rampton is able to expose Irving’s various claims as absurd and prove Lipstadt’s contention that his work shows him to be a racist, anti-Semite and a distorter of historical evidence for his own ends.

The title chosen for the film of course refers first and foremost to the central plank of the film, Irving’s denial of the Holocaust, but also Lipstadt’s self-denial in having to keep quiet throughout the trial process. Her legal team decide early on that neither she nor any Holocaust survivors will be called as witnesses – they wanted it to be Irving who was on trial and not the survivors, who they felt would be vulnerable in the face of humiliating cross-examination by a clever man such as Irving. Only during the press conference that follows the verdict is Lipstadt able to voice her feelings and explain her motivation. In response to inevitable accusations that she was seeking to block free speech, she says: “Now, some people are saying that the result of this trial will threaten free speech. I don't accept that. I'm not attacking free speech. On the contrary, I've been defending it against someone who wanted to abuse it. Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want. What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it. Not all opinions are equal. And some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive.”

There are several stand-out performances in ‘Denial’. Tom Wilkinson (a brilliant, but much taken-for-granted actor) is superb as Lipstadt’s defence barrister Richard Rampton QC. Rachel Weisz plays Lipstadt with great energy, her fierce intellect and passion for her cause coming to the fore even in the opening scene. But most credit has to go to Timothy Spall for his depiction of the chilling figure of David Irving. Ineffably civil, smart and well-spoken, he nevertheless sends a chill down the spine. The Guardian critic Wendy Ide describes him neatly as “effectively repellent”.

So why, some may ask, are we still watching films about the Holocaust? What is the relevance to our situation today? I think recent political events are testimony enough to the need for an ongoing and dogged pursuit of truth in an age where politicians can spout “alternative” facts at times when the truth doesn’t quite suit them. And, of course, Holocaust denial still goes on. Just last week, the White House released a statement on Holocaust Memorial Day that completely omitted any reference to Jews or anti-Semitism, talking instead simply of “innocent victims”. A spokesman said this language was used in the interests of “inclusivity”; Lipstadt herself called it “softcore Holocaust denial”.

 

Watch a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH7ktvUWaYo