"Orphans" is a head-scratcher. An audience member watching this Scottish film may well wonder how seriously does writer-director Peter Mullan mean for us to take this turgid melodrama?
Were things to get pushed any harder, the film would topple into black comedy, which may well be what Mullan intends. But his actors keep putting on stern faces and signaling that this is all very serious stuff, that "Orphans" is indeed the story of a Glasgow family working through its grief during a violent storm that tears through the city.
The film premiered at Cannes nearly two years ago and has picked up the odd festival prize here and there since that debut. It is reaching U.S. shores thanks to a Shooting Gallery film series in 17 major domestic markets that plans to exhibit films that have received festival accolades but no distribution deals. It opened Friday in Los Angeles.
One thing for certain about the family in "Orphans": They suffer from bad genetic material. All are pathetically obnoxious, thoroughly unsympathetic and thick as two planks. The death of their mother sends three brothers and a handicapped sister into the night, seemingly determined to wreak as much havoc as possible.
Thus, pub brawls, an attempted rape and murder, destruction of church property, imprisonment of a pub landlord and threatening of small children with a shotgun are all excused under the general rubric of "expressions of grief."
Take one character, Michael, badly stabbed in a pub fight. He decides to avoid the hospital despite a considerable loss of blood so he might stagger to work in the morning and claim that his injury happened on the job, which will qualify him for workers' compensation. Hey, there's a good idea.
Many sequences are downright funny, but the problem here is one of tone. Mullan has an absurdist comedy on his hands, but keeps pushing the dramatic emotions at the expense of potential laughs.
If he truly wants us to believe all this mayhem stems from grief, then give us some black, howling, angry grief. Tell us what the mother meant to these four siblings and why her loss has thrown them into such suicidal fury. What we get here is one brief flashback to Mom on the bed laughing with the four kiddies. That's it. No mention of Dad. No mention of how she raised them. No mention of what values she stood for.
So an audience could be excused for not understanding why her death has everyone knocking over statues of the Virgin Mary and laying in wait to assassinate some poor guy who laughed at the wrong moment in a pub the night before.
Possibly this edgy uncertainty is what intrigued audiences at festivals. And more than possibly this prevented "Orphans" from securing U.S. distribution.
The Scottish dialect is thick enough that the Shooting Gallery has helpfully subtitled nearly all of the film. Production designer Campbell Gordon delivers a suitably scruffy Glasgow, and the night camera work by DP Grant Scott Cameron adds a nightmarish quality to all the emotional turbulence.
ORPHANS
The Shooting Gallery
Channel Four Films presents in association with the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund and the Glasgow Film Fund
An Antonine Green Bridge production
Producer: Frances Higson
Writer-director: Peter Mullan
Executive producer: Paddy Higson
Director of photography: Grant Scott Cameron
Production designer: Campbell Gordon
Music: Craig Armstrong
Costume designer: Lynn Aitken
Editor: Colin Monie
Color/stereo
Cast:
Thomas: Gary Lewis
Michael: Douglas Henshall
Sheila: Rosemarie Stevenson
John: Stephen McCole
Tanga: Frank Gallagher
Hanson: Alex Norton
Running time -- 102 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Were things to get pushed any harder, the film would topple into black comedy, which may well be what Mullan intends. But his actors keep putting on stern faces and signaling that this is all very serious stuff, that "Orphans" is indeed the story of a Glasgow family working through its grief during a violent storm that tears through the city.
The film premiered at Cannes nearly two years ago and has picked up the odd festival prize here and there since that debut. It is reaching U.S. shores thanks to a Shooting Gallery film series in 17 major domestic markets that plans to exhibit films that have received festival accolades but no distribution deals. It opened Friday in Los Angeles.
One thing for certain about the family in "Orphans": They suffer from bad genetic material. All are pathetically obnoxious, thoroughly unsympathetic and thick as two planks. The death of their mother sends three brothers and a handicapped sister into the night, seemingly determined to wreak as much havoc as possible.
Thus, pub brawls, an attempted rape and murder, destruction of church property, imprisonment of a pub landlord and threatening of small children with a shotgun are all excused under the general rubric of "expressions of grief."
Take one character, Michael, badly stabbed in a pub fight. He decides to avoid the hospital despite a considerable loss of blood so he might stagger to work in the morning and claim that his injury happened on the job, which will qualify him for workers' compensation. Hey, there's a good idea.
Many sequences are downright funny, but the problem here is one of tone. Mullan has an absurdist comedy on his hands, but keeps pushing the dramatic emotions at the expense of potential laughs.
If he truly wants us to believe all this mayhem stems from grief, then give us some black, howling, angry grief. Tell us what the mother meant to these four siblings and why her loss has thrown them into such suicidal fury. What we get here is one brief flashback to Mom on the bed laughing with the four kiddies. That's it. No mention of Dad. No mention of how she raised them. No mention of what values she stood for.
So an audience could be excused for not understanding why her death has everyone knocking over statues of the Virgin Mary and laying in wait to assassinate some poor guy who laughed at the wrong moment in a pub the night before.
Possibly this edgy uncertainty is what intrigued audiences at festivals. And more than possibly this prevented "Orphans" from securing U.S. distribution.
The Scottish dialect is thick enough that the Shooting Gallery has helpfully subtitled nearly all of the film. Production designer Campbell Gordon delivers a suitably scruffy Glasgow, and the night camera work by DP Grant Scott Cameron adds a nightmarish quality to all the emotional turbulence.
ORPHANS
The Shooting Gallery
Channel Four Films presents in association with the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund and the Glasgow Film Fund
An Antonine Green Bridge production
Producer: Frances Higson
Writer-director: Peter Mullan
Executive producer: Paddy Higson
Director of photography: Grant Scott Cameron
Production designer: Campbell Gordon
Music: Craig Armstrong
Costume designer: Lynn Aitken
Editor: Colin Monie
Color/stereo
Cast:
Thomas: Gary Lewis
Michael: Douglas Henshall
Sheila: Rosemarie Stevenson
John: Stephen McCole
Tanga: Frank Gallagher
Hanson: Alex Norton
Running time -- 102 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 3/13/2000
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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