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| Saturday, October 24, 2009 02:08 PM |
| On the Viewer - 18 1/2 Philadelphia Film Festival: Sunday, October 18th |
 by Fëanor |
Sunday I spent the entire day watching the Red Riding trilogy, which is made up of three BBC TV movie adaptations of novels by David Peace. Each is a fictionalized story about corruption and conspiracy surrounding real-life crimes.
Red Riding: 1974
The first film takes as its main character a frustratingly naive young newspaper reporter named Eddie Dunford. He becomes fascinated with the story of a young girl's disappearance, especially when one of his fellow reporters - who's a bit of a paranoid conspiracy nut - points out similarities between this disappearance and the disappearances some years ago of other little girls in the area. Despite repeated interference from his boss, other reporters, and the police, Dunford keeps digging deeper and deeper into the case, and keeps finding more and more disturbing details which seem to point to a much larger conspiracy in which many people of power are involved, including the real estate magnate John Dawson (Sean Bean) and the Yorkshire police force itself. The movie takes the form of a classic detective noir story, with the reporter in the role of the detective. His investigation takes him into the sordid underbelly of the world, revealing the horrid truth about how things really work. It's a well-acted film, with Sean Bean doing his usual excellent work, and the story is reasonably engaging. But it's also extremely slow, relentlessly depressing, and really more cliche than archetypal. Plus our main character is almost impossibly stupid, especially at the end of the tale (you really thought she would run away with you, and that they'd let the both of you go?). Also unbelievable: that the villains allow Eddie to live as long as they do. After he's caused enormous amounts of trouble, and they've realized how much he knows and how dangerous he could be, instead of eliminating him once and for all, they put a weapon in his hand and let him run free, apparently with the assumption that he's learned his lesson. Um... what?
Overall, a disappointing film.
Red Riding: 1980
When the police search for a serial killer in Yorkshire seems to be going nowhere, the bosses send in a team to investigate the investigation. The leader of the team was sent into Yorkshire once before to investigate a mass killing at a bar (this killing, we realize later on, is directly connected to the climactic events of the previous film). He was stopped before he could finish his work that time, so this time he's doubly determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. But of course because he's an outsider who's essentially there to double-check their work, all the Yorkshire police hate him. And things are further complicated for him by the fact that he's chosen as one of the partners in his investigation a woman he once had an affair with, and that his disturbed and needy wife is constantly contacting him and asking for him to come home.
This film's plot structure is quite similar to that of the first film. Again it's a classic detective noir in which a determined, flawed character sticks his nose in where it doesn't belong and disturbs a dangerous and terrifying web of corruption and conspiracy and death which ultimately swallows him. Thankfully this film has a faster pace and is more believable than the first one, and also has a plot with more surprising twists and turns, but it remains relentlessly sordid and depressing.
Red Riding: 1983
The first two films gave us only glimpses of the conspiracy that lies at the heart of everything, but this film finally gives us a look at that conspiracy from the inside, as a member of the secret group pulling the strings is now one of our main characters. He's possibly the first person in any of the films who actually feels remorse about the things he's done wrong. Our other main character is a lonely slob of a lawyer named John Piggott (Mark Addy). John is probably the most likable character in the entire series, as he's the first person we've met who has no horrific character flaws. Sure, he's apathetic at first and unwilling to help people in need, but it's hard to blame him after seeing what we've seen so far, and anyway by the end of the film his apathy has dissolved and been transformed into a desperate determination to see justice done. And indeed this film is the first one in the series to actually see some justice done, and to allow some of its characters to live long enough to enjoy it. All of which makes it probably the best movie in the series - although still not entirely satisfying for some reason.
I'd heard great things about the Red Riding trilogy, and given that it's a series of crime noir movies about serial killers, I thought for sure I'd love it. Sadly, that was not the case. But I did learn one thing: never go to Yorkshire! Seriously, this is like an anti-tourism piece for that area of Britain. |
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