Post by Nicholas on Jul 16, 2016 3:50:59 GMT
Did anyone see Simon Stone’s The Wild Duck at the Barbican in 2014 (I know the answer’s yes, I remember it being (rightly) very well received on here), and has anyone seen this, his movie adaptation? It only just arrived at my local cinema, caught it a couple of days ago. 2014’s The Wild Duck felt to me like a very domesticated, down to earth, down under take on Ibsen’s highfalutin masterpiece, and thus a humane, human, devastating piece about consequences, with the subtle naturalism of Stanlislavsky but the unstoppable tragic inevitability of Sophocles; The Daughter is exactly that on celluloid, and almost as good. Stone proves a natural with and master of the camera – with a still observational approach, really canny overlapping editing, and occasional handheld Dogme diversions, Stone has this unfolding (as he did on stage) with effortless naturalism (not some faux-documentary style, just invisible unobtrusive observation and a real sense of catching these characters uninhibited, as they felt at the Barbican in that set) – it helps that Stone’s ear for naturalistic dialogue is so on the ball, so – as with on stage – the dialogue just flows (indeed, there’s almost something Mike Leigh-y to some scenes in this movie). It’s well interspersed with shots of nature, shots of communities, shots of life going on, which I think is Stone’s way of cinematising his roughly reflexive glass box from the Barbican: to show this not as high drama on a high stage but implicating you and me as bystanders, domesticating it, and showing how high drama happens not on a high stage but high drama happens in its own little world whilst life goes on around it. That much is beautifully done.
I had qualms about the ending, not because he rewrote the Ibsen (I believe he did that at the Barbican anyway, not an Ibsen I know well) but because of how he rewrote the Ibsen – Hedvig’s suicide is built up to with musical cues and melodrama which the film’s thus far eschewed, then Stone replaces the honest, quiet, devastating ending from the Barbican with something that at best approaches arthouse uncertainty and at worst apes Hollywood sentimentality. It works, but I preferred the tragic follow-through and familial honesty with which the final scene was played at the Barbican.
Beyond that, very much recommended, not least a hitherto unmentioned stunning cast (no-one from the Barbican, unless the duck was recast) – Geoffrey Rush vile as only he can be (why hasn’t he been on the London stage?), Sam Neill sad as only he can be, Mark Brendanawicz surprisingly moving, and Odessa Young a name to remember in the future. I’ll be really excited to see what Stone cinematically does next – the movie was a very strong mood-piece, his writing’s effortlessly natural and cinematic, and he’s clearly very intelligent in how he puts tab A into slot B. I’m sure this will be on DVD soon, well worth catching, whether you saw and liked it at the Barbican or not.
P.S. Thinking about it, alongside this, the two best films I’ve seen so far this year have both been debut efforts – The Witch and Son of Saul. Probably just fortunate release schedules, but really exciting to see burgeoning talents granted wide exposure for their first works when they’re this good. Incidentally, while I’m waffling about cinema, as theatregoers you should see both those movies as well: the Arthur Miller aping in The Witch makes it very fun for a theatregoer, akin to The Crucible meets The Thing, with a fantastically witty, fantastically scary way of saying something rather religiously and politically important (if my interpretation is correct, which of course it is); Son of Saul is just devastating.
