| for this week's Tribune : 'Fish Tank' [7/10] and 'The Thing' (1982) [9/10] |
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 The Thing Director: John Carpenter Fish Tank Director: Andrea Arnold Almost certainly the best movie to obtain UK distribution this summer, The Thing - re-released in a digitally-restored version almost exactly 27 years after its debut run - is a five-star masterpiece of science-fiction horror from one of America's greatest film-makers. Though now something of a neglected figure, writer/director/composer John Carpenter between 1974 (Dark Star) and 1998 (They Live) churned out eleven features that included genre classics such as Halloween, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13 and Prince of Darkness. Things went somewhat amiss in the 1990s, and Carpenter has only one feature-film - 2001's Ghosts of Mars - to his credit in the last decade. But now he's reportedly shooting a ghost-story entitled The Ward for planned release next year, making this a timely juncture for non-aficionados to catch up on his work. And The Thing isn't a bad place to start. Bill Lancaster's script was based on John W Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?, which had loosely inspired 1951's The Thing From Another World. In Lancaster and Carpenter's rather more downbeat version, a group of scientists and technicians at an isolated US base in Antarctica are picked off one by one after their camp is infiltrated by a murderous shape-shifting alien. As the intruder can perfectly replicate itself to look like any life-form (including individual humans) the group must also contend with rampaging mistrust and paranoia if they're to have any hope of survival. Notably well cast, The Thing features an all-male ensemble - who, with only a couple of exceptions (including Kurt Russell's world-weary helicopter-pilot McReady) comprise a gallery of quirky, unfamiliar character-players. They give ballast and grounding to a terrifically claustrophobic nightmare of a movie, eerily scored in down-beat, low-key style by Ennio Morricone (slyly mimicking Carpenter's own well-established moody-synth sound) and with flashes of dark humour that serve to strengthen rather than defuse the build-up of tension. Back in the early eighties Rob Bottin's stomach-churning special effects were the big talking-point - and they still remain startlingly impressive, though many have always found them a little too inventively gory for comfort. Viewers of a sensitive disposition will stay away - but everyone else really should try to catch this picture in cinemas while they can: Carpenter's brilliant use of the widescreen image doesn't really come across via DVD, though buying the latter is nevertheless recommended as it features a commentary from Carpenter and Russell that's justifiably regarded as a classic of its type. The only slight cause for regret is that The Thing is apparently being re-released solely via digital versions. You don't have to be a purist to reckon that classics of celluloid should ideally be shown from 35mm prints, and not via some kind of high-tech simulacrum. Then again, given The Thing's premise, experiencing it via a near-perfect imitation is arguably rather apt. Three years ago, Red Road - named the 19th best British feature of the last quarter-decade in last week's (pointless) poll of 'experts' in The Observer - propelled writer-director Andrea Arnold into the ranks of the most talked-about UK film-makers. The supposedly gritty drama about surveillance and revenge in contemporary working-class Glasgow - based on a typically larkish jeu d'esprit from the ever-fertile brain of Lars Von Trier - squandered strong performances and steely direction on a script hamstrung by coincidence, contrivance and melodrama. It came as little surprise to learn that Arnold, 44 at the time of filming (and who'd won the Academy Award for her 2003 short Wasp) had apparently never set foot in Scotland - never mind Glasgow - before the start of shooting. Her much-anticipated (in certain quarters) followup Fish Tank - which world-premiered at Cannes in May, emulating Red Road by landing the Prix du Jury - is, thankfully, a major leap forward in pretty much every regard. The director, for one thing, evidently feels much more comfortable on what is, relatively speaking, "home turf": she's from Dartford in Kent, the film takes place only a few miles away in Barking, East London. Here we find 15-year-old schoolgirl Mia (Katie Jarvis), who lives with her younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths) and mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing) in an unremarkable, somewhat cramped tower-block flat. The situation becomes even more crowded - physically and emotionally - when Joanne starts seeing affable security-guard Connor (Michael Fassbender), who takes a shine to Mia and encourages her in her ambitions to become a dancer. Indeed, he seems rather too good to be true... Essentially a series of interlocking character-studies unfolding over the course of two hours - newcomer Jarvis's raw urgency propels the narrative along with impressive force - Fish Tank is a convincing examination of tough lives in a grimly believable corner of underclass Britain. The title, by the way (which is never mentioned in the script) would seem to be a fairly direct nod to Richard Billingham, the photographer whose celebrated images of his working-class family in their run-down Cradley Heath tower-block flat led to a 1998 TV commission, Fishtank. There is actually one prominent actual fish in Arnold's film - one which the dextrous Connor, in a characteristic moment of aw-shucks show-offery, manages to catch by hand in a lake. As he forces a twig through its body and throat, the onlooking Tyler is heard to dryly comment "That's harsh" - a line that sounds so natural, so perfect for the situation, that you can't imagine anyone writing it down as part of a screenplay, can't imagine its delivery being the result of "acting" (Jarvis is outstanding; Griffiths at least as good as a scrappy motormouth who's on the nice edge of feral.) The fish business, though effective, is one of numerous images of confinement and entrapment scattered through a film which does lay on the symbolism a little thick at times: Mia becomes concerned with the plight of a tethered horse that's obviously as "trapped" as she is in her unprepossessing urban milieu, and the film's very last shot is an unfortunate mis-step. But there's more than enough going on here to justify the praise that was heaped - somewhat prematurely, as it turns out - on Arnold's shoulders last time round. Neil Young 1st September, 2009 written for 10th September issue of Tribune magazine  FISH TANK : [7/10] : UK 2009 : Andrea ARNOLD : 123m (BBFC) : seen at Odeon cinema, Nuneaton, 12th June 2009 - press show - 61st CinemaDays event. THE THING : [9/10] : aka John Carpenter's The Thing : USA 1982 : John CARPENTER : 109m approx (BBFC) : previous review (2002)
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