When gormless teen Joshua or ‘J’ Cody’s mum dies, he has little choice but to move in with the side of the family that she had previously shielded him from. It’s not a good time for him to do so. It probably never was. His uncle Andrew or ‘Pope’ is/was an armed robber, now trying to keep a low profile. With their house being watched by the cops, drug dealing and the stock market are becoming more tempting forms of employment for what’s left of the gang, and relations in the house are becoming increasingly fractious, barely kept together by ever loving ‘Grandma Smurf’ Janine. When the most level-headed member of the gang is removed from the picture, the more unstable relations are left in charge, led by Pope, who instigates an insane blood feud with the police force, a war that J inevitably becomes part of, becoming an accessory to dark deeds, and viewed by investigating officer Leckie (Guy Pearce) as the loose link of the Cody clan to use as a weapon against his newly adopted family…

David Michôd’s Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom is wholly credible right from the first shot, which sets up the film’s world perfectly, a blend of grim tragedy and the suburban mundane, with a trace of jet black humour. No one sports a sharp suit here. We are in a Melbourne of plywood and breezeblock, of bungalows and barbeques, and Michôd continuously avoids conventional genre scenes to emphasise odd moments of character business and domestic detail. The family chat and bicker about noise, the use of a blender in the morning, bathroom hygiene and proper drug etiquette. A SWAT team raid occurs without warning immediately after an awkward attempt at nephew/uncle bonding in front of the TV. A scene involving a middle-class dad getting his kids’ shoes on to go on a car trip becomes imbued with unbearable tension. Most of the business that would take place in, say, a Michael Mann epic is either ignored or played out against a backdrop of mantelpiece kitsch and ill-considered lawn furniture. Performances tend towards the naturalistic and low key. There are very few wide shots or chances to get a bigger perspective. And this grubby little world of banal terrors seems to close in on us as the intensity level rises, trust begins to wither, and there’s nowhere left to go.

Outside of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I can’t think of a more corrosive portrayal of family life, where ties of loyalty are tools of coercion. The Cody’s are a nest of paranoia and substance abuse. And Ben Mendelsohn’s uncle Pope is a quietly chilling creation, all the more so for his lack of physical muscle. He has a weaselly inability to meet anybody’s eye, or voice what’s on his mind, masking a truly depraved heart that his brothers are unwilling to confront or control. Mother dearest only goes so far as to suggest that he ought to start taking his pills again. Jacki Weaver is fantastic as the matriarch, all bleached blonde hair and lipstick, demanding kisses and cuddles from her sons, calling everyone ‘sweetie’, her true reptile nature only emerging when her boys are threatened, and is all the more disturbing for being logical and controlled. At least her sons are mentally unstable drug abusers, she knows exactly what she’s doing.

J (played by James Frecheville) asserts in a piece of voice-over early in the film that he accepts all of this craziness as normal, in the manner of most teenagers’ attitude to their families. His taciturn, dull-eyed demeanour rarely betrays what we suspect, that this isn’t true. Exactly how much J is a typical Cody is left ambiguous. He could be, as Leckie asserts, looking for a place to fit, but all options seem wanting. What’s normal, anyway? Different families and value systems are contrasted and brought into conflict throughout. The police are corrupt and murderous and the legal system is morally bankrupt. His girlfriend’s folks look like pretty decent people, but from Animal Kingdom‘s point of view they seem ignorant of the real world, until it comes crashing horribly into their lives. It’s left to Guy Pearce’s solid cop with a wife and family to provide the picture with an ethical magnetic North. Nothing else is on the level, life is messy and chaotic, and idiocy and miscommunication have as much impact on events as intentions and desires. As the plot twists and turns and characters reveal their true colours, Animal Kingdom shocks, surprises and amazes but never seems false or unreal. A great film.

Mark Stafford

‘You can’t translate poetry into prose. That is why it is poetry,’ explains a witness in the spectacular 1957 obscenity trial against Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and publisher of ‘Howl’, when asked by the prosecution to help make sense of some verses in Allen Ginsberg’s expansive, powerful 3,600-word outcry against conformity and injustice. It’s a compelling argument, and the fact that documentary filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman decided to make it early on in Howl, a portrait of the late Beat poet and an illustrated vision of his most famous work, suggests the writing-directing duo is well aware of the bold venture they’ve undertaken in their first fictional film. It inevitably raises the question of whether it is indeed possible to visualise the passion, heart and soul of a poem such as ‘Howl’, which, in its entirety, reads as a man’s fierce inner monologue, a confession of his controversial thoughts, his deepest desires, his fantasies and anxieties, all carefully drafted in sharp, candid, yet mostly surreal language.

Combining recreated scenes from the courtroom with animated sequences that accompany parts of the poem, and a docu-style dramatisation of Ginsberg’s life, Howl is striking for its deftly interwoven structure. But what makes the film captivating is the surprisingly convincing performance by James Franco, who seems to have found true inspiration in the young, intellectually complex Ginsberg, impersonating him with an understated charm that shows his potential as a great character actor. Deliberate yet subtly persuasive, and fuelled with an overwhelming passion, Franco as Ginsberg reads the poem for the first time at Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, sits in his New York apartment while talking to an unseen interviewer and recalls flashbacks from the past - in particular, the time he spent with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and his long-time lover, Peter Orlovsky, searching for truth and the meaning of life, and his own voice and personal liberation.

As in Ginsberg’s poetry, there is not really a beginning, middle or end to the film, apart from the verdict that is eventually revealed in the courtroom scenes. Instead, Epstein and Friedman compose the different narrative elements almost like a great piece of jazz: repeatedly drifting back and forth, varying style and technique, and free-associating ideas, especially in the animated sequences. In addition to the free-floating visual fluidity with which the poem unravels, what is essential to the film’s subversive charm is the rhythm of Franco’s voice: as he reads the entire ‘Howl’ in slow, radiantly emphatic intervals, his recitation is underpinned by a fiercely energetic verve that vividly brings the words to life, though without necessarily forcing their meaning upon the audience.

In their attempt to create a celebration of one of the most influential American poets and his revolutionary work, Epstein and Friedman aim high both aesthetically and conceptually, but they only really dazzle on the former level. Yet, although Howl sometimes feels long-winded and the animation might not work for everyone, the film remains in the mind as a visceral amalgam of words, images, streams of thoughts, confessions and feelings, employed in a daring fashion. Do you need to care about poetry to be able to enjoy the film? It might help. But even if you don’t, it is still a beautifully shot, softly nostalgic look into an artist’s imaginative, intense and troubled life. And just like the poem, the film is also much richer than any attempt to describe it.

Pamela Jahn

Alex Garland writes a screenplay based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Mark Romanek directs. A slow-burning nightmare, as a strange boarding school in a timeless limbo England raises children for a sinister purpose. It’s a film about the evils that can be concealed behind politeness and bureaucracy, and the horrors society is prepared to tolerate if it suits our purposes.

If I was the ridiculous smart arse that I clearly am I’d try to draw parallels between the film’s theme, where official euphemisms (‘donors’, ‘completion’ etc) are used to make all manner of nastiness acceptable, and the film itself, where a quality cast, a string quartet soundtrack and a little cinematic restraint can be seen to be covering up the fact that this is essentially The Clonus Horror/The Island with a university degree.

But I won’t, because it’s actually pretty bloody good, the tastefulness and restraint making the nasty stuff all the more horrible and moving. Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley and Charlotte Rampling all do good work, Carey Mulligan is great. I think the film loses something and becomes more clearly an adaptation of a novel after it leaves the weird bubble of Hailsham House. But it still weaves a disconcerting spell.

Mark Stafford

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