graeme_fairchild Reviews

Sweet Sixteen (I) (2002)

Poverty corrupts and absolute poverty corrupts absolutely (contains minor spoilers)

[5 November 2002]

Sweet Sixteen is a very powerful, thought-provoking drama set in Greenock, a small town in the West of Scotland. The film opens with the main character, a fifteen year old boy called Liam, being taken to visit his mother in prison. It becomes clear that she and her boyfriend are both junkies, and that her boyfriend is also a small time heroin dealer. Liam is asked to kiss his mother and transfer a sachet of heroin into her mouth, so that she can sell it to the other inmates. He refuses, believing that it will get her into trouble, and is beaten to a pulp by the boyfriend as a result. This sets the tone for the rest of the film, as Liam tries to make a better life for his mother but increasingly becomes drawn into a dangerous underworld of drug dealing and gang violence.

Martin Compston gives an excellent, and thoroughly believable, performance in the role of Liam, and he is ably supported by a superb cast, particularly Annmarie Fulton who plays Liam's sister, Chantelle. Although the theme of the film is a somewhat depressing one, there is plenty of black humour in the picture.

Sweet Sixteen is one of Loach's best films, and it presents a searing account of a society mired in poverty and drug addiction, a society in which heroin is the universal currency and the community has been almost entirely eroded.

Pollock (2000)

Superb biopic of a fascinating, infuriating man

[8/10 · 25 July 2002]

Ed Harris both directs and acts in this excellent film of the life of the American artist Jackson Pollock. The film is an unsentimental account of Pollock's most productive years, his relationship with Lee Krasner, and his subsequent decline. I think the chief achievement of the film is that it manages to convey the excitement of the creative process. Marcia Gay Harden wholly deserves her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and Ed Harris is in stunning form in the main role.

Definitely worth seeing if you are in any way interested in modern art.

Ratcatcher (1999)

a stunning debut from Lynne Ramsey

[5 June 2001]

One of the best British films of the nineties, Ratcatcher is a powerful evocation of the uncertainty and surreal nature of childhood. The film also has something to say about family relationships, death, and the toll poverty takes on people (in this case, in the Glasgow of the seventies).

Although the film could be criticised for being fairly slow-paced, I think this is entirely missing the point. The film is more about atmosphere than a linear plot, and the lingering, intriguing glimpses it offers of the young character's life will stay in your memory like a particularly vivid dream.

I expect great things of Lynne Ramsay in the future.