This week, we will be looking at reviews.
A Monster
Calls review – wrenchingly effective
4 / 5 stars 4 out of 5 stars.
Lewis MacDougall is remarkable as a young boy dealing with grief in an excellent adaptation of the
Patrick Ness novel
Sun 8 Jan 2017 08.00 GMT Last modified on Wed 21 Mar
2018 23.55 GMT
A piercing sadness runs through this impressive adaptation, by
Patrick Ness, of his acclaimed young adult novel. You ache for Conor, the 13-year-old boy at the
heart of the story, as he struggles
to process bereavement. You
will be likely to weep with him as he comes to terms with the loss of his
mother. This emotional authenticity, the palpable pain in a remarkable central performance from relative newcomer Lewis
MacDougall, is both the film’s main asset and a factor that makes it a
tough sell. This is not just a film about grief; it’s a film that immerses you
in grief’s journey.
With his huge, hungry eyes, MacDougall has the vulnerability of David Bradley’s Billy
in Kes. He tackles a complex,
conflicted role with a confidence far beyond his years. There is a wonderful scene in
which Conor and his ailing mother (Felicity Jones) watch the 1933 version
of King Kong
together. Rooting for the monster, Conor is stunned by King Kong’s defeat. The camera rests
on his face as, in a few short seconds, he realises that the narrative doesn’t
always end the way he wants it to, and the implications of this for his own
life.
Conor’s own monster, voiced by a gravelly Liam Neeson, is an ancient, pagan tree spirit
that visits just after midnight with the promise of three stories, told through
lovely
watercolour-inspired animation, in return for a fourth story from Conor
– the truth that he is denying. The design of the monster evokes the earthy
magic of Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth – perhaps
not surprisingly, given that del Toro was an executive producer
on director JA Bayona’s feature debut, The Orphanage.
Elsewhere, the design is equally articulate. The house that Conor shares with his
mother is chaotic but homely, with the mossy colour palette of a forest glade,
and a riot of clashing flower prints. In contrast, all the wood in his uptight
grandmother’s house is dead; bent and sculpted into gloomy antique furniture.
It doesn’t all work. The bullies who plague Conor feel more like
a plot device than authentic characters, and Sigourney Weaver is an uneasy fit as the stuffy, controlling
grandmother. But the film is wrenchingly
effective nonetheless.
Points for discussion:
See if you can identify the following conventions, which are
typical of review writing:
-
Use of the second person narrative
(using “you” to address the reader)
-
Use of the present tense
to describe the story
-Use of adjectives and adverbs
to express the writer’s opinion of the film
- Use of extended noun
phrases
Now, have a
go at comparing this review to the review below from The Independent:
A Monster Calls review: Emotionally searing film
which isn't afraid to let the monster out
What
makes it so distinctive is its very barbed storytelling style - its readiness
to show its characters at their most vicious and destructive rather than to
make them objects of pity
·
Thursday 29 December 2016 10:45
A
Monster Calls is the
story of a 12-year-old boy (“too old to be a kid, too young to be man”) trying
to come to terms with the fact that his mother is dying. Its extraordinary power lies in the interweaving
of the fantastical and the everyday.
Adapted from
Patrick Ness’s novel, this is a very British affair, set in a small provincial
town (it is isn’t specified exactly where) but the film is made by a Spanish
director JA Bayona, known for his visual flamboyance.
The boy, Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall), has a wretched life. He is bullied at school by
classmates who resent his habit of escaping off into his own “little dream
world”. He doesn’t
like his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver), who is assuming a more and more prominent role in his
upbringing as his mother Lizzie (Felicity Jones) becomes weaker and weaker.
In a more conventional Disney-style weepie, the
filmmakers would have gone out of their way to console their audiences. A Monster Calls takes the reverse tack. The first moment
that Conor experiences anything approaching pleasure is when his mother rigs up
an old movie projector and screens King Kong.
He delights in the way that the giant ape “smashes” his
adversaries and “breaks them into a million pieces”. That’s precisely what he
wants to do with his grandmother, teachers and schoolmates.
Bayona uses horror movie conventions. We see Conor alone in his
room when the furniture begins to creak, pencils roll around of their own
accord and heavy breathing is heard on the soundtrack. This is where the
monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) puts in its first appearance. It/he is a
gigantic yew tree from a church graveyard which seems to have lava flowing
through its roots and branches. Whenever the monster moves, it leaves destruction
in its wake. “I have come to get you,” it growls at Conor, as if it wants to
kill him. The monster, though, is Conor’s ally. It has stories to tell him,
brutal little fables that will help him to cope with the bigger truth he simply
can’t face, namely that he is powerless to protect his mother.
The film is seen
almost entirely from Conor’s perspective. He’s a sensitive, observant but very petulant kid, seething with resentment and baffled by the injustice of his mother’s
illness. Bayona throws in continual close-ups of him with his sad face and big,
expressive eyes, staring outward at a world he so distrusts.
Felicity Jones,
currently on our screens as the
badass heroine of the new Star Wars movie, here plays a woman so sickly
(presumably with cancer, although it is never named) that her hair is falling
out and she can barely stand upright. Jones gives an understated but very
affecting performance, treating her illness in a matter of fact way, avoiding
self pity at all times and always trying to protect Conor.
Bayona uses animation to bring the Monster’s stories to life.
They are perplexing tales in which there isn’t an obvious hero and in which
characters aren’t always what they seem. Evil stepmothers aren’t as bad as
they appear. Farmers’ daughters die for no reason, handsome princes behave in a
furtive or even cowardly fashion, and wizards don’t provide magical cures.
“There is not
always a good guy and nor is there always a bad one ... most people are
somewhere in between,” the monster tells the perplexed boy.
The parallels with
the boy’s own life are apparent but there isn’t an obvious moral to the
stories. What the monster seems to be telling the boy is that he has to learn
to endure. He must accept the pain of his likely bereavement. He also has to
stop judging people, whether the stern grandmother whose motives he doesn’t
really understand or his ne’er do well father (Toby Kebbell) who has long since
remarried and started a new life in LA.
Every bit as
therapeutic as the monster’s stories is the chance for the boy to go on a
wrecking spree – to smash everything in sight including his grandmother’s
precious grandfather clock which has kept time for generations.
Of course, A Monster Calls is as manipulative
in its own way as any more conventional
tearjerker. What makes it so distinctive is its very barbed storytelling style – its
readiness to show its characters at their most vicious and destructive rather
than to make them objects of pity.
The monster himself
looks a little like Marvel’s Thing. He could easily have seemed a ridiculous
figure, too cartoonish to scare us but too coarse and angry to be ingratiating.
Instead, as voiced by Neeson, he has dignity and gravitas.
Inevitably,
sentimentality does eventually seep into the storytelling. There is mournful piano music on the
soundtrack, characters utter trite
one-liners about the nature of love and time, and there are fraught scenes in hospitals.
Nonetheless, this is a subtle
and very cleverly crafted
film which has a searing emotional impact precisely because it isn’t scared to
let the monster out - to acknowledge the boy’s rage and his guilt as well as
his grief.
Look again at where similar conventions are used in
both:
-
Use of the present tense
to describe the story
-Use of adjectives and adverbs
to express the writer’s opinion of the film
- Use of extended noun
phrases
Do the two
writers agree in their opinion of the film?
Are there
any ways in which they disagree?
How does
this link to the GCSE?
In Paper 2, you will be asked to compare the views and
perspectives of two writers, so it is a good idea to begin to practise drawing
comparisons and contrasts between two texts.
Additionally, if you are using the Edexcel exam board, you may
be asked to write a review for Paper 2, question 5 (Transactional Writing).
If you are interested in
reading more, have a look at these two reviews of the stage adaptation of A
Monster Calls:
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