Away We Go
Director: Sam Mendes
Three Miles North of Molkom
Directors: Robert Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane
The second film directed by Sam Mendes to be released in Britain this year, Away We Go, would make a rather fascinating double-bill with his first, the shatteringly superb Revolutionary Road. Whereas the latter, based on the classic novel by Richard Yates, was a study of crushing stasis, wherein a youngish couple in 1950s suburbia dreamt of escaping to Paris – with catastrophic results – this new movie, co-scriped by acclaimed American writer Dave Eggers (responsible for memoirs including A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and novels such as You Shall Know Our Velocity) is all about the freedom of movement enjoyed by another educated, middle-class couple, fifty years later.
Such liberty, while obviously preferable to the suffocatingly claustrophobic strait-jacket of a society endured by Revolutionary Road's bitterly feuding protagonists, is revealed as something of a mixed blessing. If you can go anywhere and do anything in this sprawling, affluent land, what should be the criteria? And time is a factor for Burt (John Krasinski) and his beloved Verona (Maya Rudolph), as their first child is already a prominent bump in Verona's stomach. The capricious, articulate, self-analytical pair take off around the country – with a detour to Canada – to visit various friends and acquaintances, each of whom have a rather different approach to life in general and to child-rearing in particular.
The two-hander scenes with Krasinski and Rudolph, while talky and somewhat soppy, work just fine – especially when Mendes trains his camera on Rudolph's marvellously expressive features. Krasinski's role is more reactive than active, but this ganglingly lanky star of American TV's The Office is as likeable as ever as a man-child whose eccentricities fall narrowly the right side of goofily charming.
Such a shame, then, that the sequences in which our lovebirds hang out with their pals fall so flat: too often the script relies on patronising caricature, broadly-played comedy, or heavy-handed tear-jerking. An array of capable actors (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Daniels, Paul Schneider) flit in and out, none of them getting the time or space to produce rounded three-dimensional characterisations.
In disappointing contrast to the sleek efficiency Mendes displayed with Revolutionary Road (the whole thing actually feels like an attempt to distance himself as far as possible from all that seething marital bile), he evinces little feel for the material here. His integration of the countless songs on the soundtrack (many of them twangling acoustica from Alexi Murdoch) isn't as smooth as it might have been, and the visuals have a flat, dunnish look – nearly all the interiors are backlit to the point of distracing mistiness. While far from a total dud, overall this is something of a misfire from Mendes - let's just hope that Revolutionary Road doesn't turn out to be that most baffling of cinematic phenomena, the fluke masterpiece.
After a decade in the spotlight, Away We Go's Mendes (known to the tabloids as Mr Kate Winslet) is well established among this country's most recognisable directorial names. Those of Robert Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane – the latter also known as simply 'Corinna McFarlane' – will probably never achieve that kind of prominence, but their debut feature Three Miles North of Molkom establishes them as two of the most promising new documentarians on the UK film-scene. Indeed, only a few months after Gideon Koppel's sleep furiously - chronicling a sleepy Welsh farming-community – it's heartening to see a distributor taking a chance on non-fiction filmmaking, especially in the current economic climate, and especially when those responsible lack the 'marquee appeal' of, say, Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock.
Molkom deserves to find an audience – it may take a little while to find its stride, but quickly emerges as an engagingly likeable little crowdpleaser. A portrait of a fortnight-long, exceedingly new-agey gathering held annually in a bosky corner of Sweden, it plays like a drolly deadpan cross between Danny Boyle's The Beach, Richard Linklater's Waking Life and TV's I'm a Celebtiry, Get Me Out of Here (or rather the less-ballyhooed non-celeb variant, Survivor) as we get know a handful of attendees at what's essentially a temporary commune: a trippy-hippy music festival where the music is only a secondary attraction to all the self-realisation exercise that are going on.
Most of the multi-national, multi-ethnic participants embrace the psychobabble with fervent ardour – but there's no pearl without grit, and the latter is here provided by one notably skeptical, very Ocker-ish Aussie. Regardless of the film's ultimate commercial fate, it could plausibly launch a successful stand-up comedy career for its scenestealing 'star,' straight-talking rugby-coach Nick (like all of the film's 'characters,' Mr Charters identified on-screen and in the end credits only by his first name.)
Horrified to find himself inadvertently surrounded by what he disparagingly refers to as 'tree-huggers,' Nick is the sole naysaying voice in an environment which strives vocally and strenuously towards a touchy-feely upbeat consensus. His combination of bluff wit and sardonic eye means he's great company and, crucially, a fine audience-surrogate as he gamely throws himself into a wide programme of group activities. These range from hot-coals firewalking to a bizarre – and very amusing – form of psychic-energy 'combat' that leaves one participant black and blue.
But while Nick is initially (and hilariously) acerbic in his dismissal of what's officially entitled the 'No Mind Festival,' he gradually realises that the event's offputtingly cultish surface conceals many worthwhile, therapeutic experiences. The film-makers, whose high-definition digital cameras enjoy intimate all-areas access, undergo something like a similar attitude-adjustment. Early scenes could be interpreted as delivering up freakish behaviour for our condescending amusement, but eventually we obtain a more rounded picture of the festival's atmosphere, its advantages and pitfalls. Documentary cinema can yield great art (James Benning, Patrick Keiller) or penetratingly angry polemics. But sometimes, as Three Miles North of Molkom amply proves, it's quite enough to simply take us to unusual places populated by vivid individuals – preferably ones that we'd probably cross the street to avoid in real life.
Neil Young
8th September, 2009
written for 17th September issue of Tribune magazine
AWAY WE GO : [5/10] : USA 2009 : Sam MENDES : 98m (BBFC) : seen at Cineworld cinema, Edinburgh, 17th June 2009 (public show – paid £9.50) Edinburgh International Film Festival. [original report]
THREE MILES NORTH OF MOLKOM : [7/10] : full title Three Miles North of Molkom… : UK 2007 : Robert CANNAN & Corinna VILLARI-McFARLANE : 107m (BBFC) : previous review (2002) : seen at Cineworld cinema, Edinburgh, 20th June 2008 (public show – paid £6.40) Edinburgh International Film Festival
