Archipelago is exceptionally well-shot, very well-acted, and filmed with such realism that you could be watching a documentary. It has so much potential, in fact, that I would like to gush about it for the entirety of this review. The catch? The pace is so lethargic that it might put you to sleep if you're not careful.
I know, I know. You've heard this all before. OMG! This movie is so BORING. I almost fell asleep. Zzzzz LMAO! But I can assure you, I am not one of those people who needs Michael Bay CGI masturbation to be entertained. I like drama. I like independent filmmaking.
But a film needs to have a hook. A family disintegrating is not a hook. As you and I both know, there are so many depictions of movie families disintegrating that the depiction of the disintegration itself has become a rather ho-hum affair.
Not to say this movie is a completely tepid experience. It's a good three-star movie, well acted, with a very likable performance from Tom Hiddleston (best known as the villainous Loki from Thor and The Avengers) as Edward, an awkward but good-hearted philanthropist. Kate Fahy (the bed-ridden matriarch in The Living and the Dead) plays Edward's mother, Patricia, stretched taut by the strain of her absent husband.
Not your first pick for Mother's Day, The Living and the Dead is morbid and horrifying, and I mean that, strangely, as a compliment. It is a family drama, a psychological thriller, a tragedy, an art film, all these things at once, and and despite it's flaws, it doesn't overextend.
The film opens with Lord Donald Brocklebank (Roger Lloyd-Pack), a worn-down, silent shell of an old man, pushing an empty wheelchair through a quiet room. The image delivers the same feeling as a dark grey painting, lonely and despondent.
He watches, lip quivering, as an ambulance pulls into his massive estate. Cut back an undetermined amount of time. Donald stands straighter. He maintains a kind of pride that must come with being one of the British elite, but he is grieving. He has a lot to grieve about.
His wife, Lady Nancy Brocklebank, is terribly sick and probably won't be with him much longer. The bills are piling up, and they will soon lose their mansion. His son James (Leo Bill, in an over-the-top performance that works), dashes around the house with little clear purpose.
James is in his mid-to-late twenties. He is stuck in a kind of permanent childhood, the kind of childhood that is made up of nightmares, not whimsy. Although Simon Rumley, the director, describes him as "mentally challenged," I suspect paranoid schizophrenia.
James is by far my favorite character in the film. He is a complicated movie creation, and his emotional limitations do not hold back his complexity or ambiguity as a person.
Donald treats James with the casual cruelty that is most likely inflicted on the mentally ill more often than we think, condescending to him, forbidding him to use the phone or answer the door.
James is desperate to prove to his father that he is an independent adult and plans to do so by taking care of his mother.
His father understandably rejects the idea.
In an matter of days, James will have locked the door, shut out the nurse, skipped his pills, and may have destroyed the lives of those closest to him. Soon, as his lucidity deteriorates, the viewer begins to wonder if the past events were only in James' head.
This is a film for a patient audience -- it's a while before anything happens and the reality of the events is questionable.
The atmosphere is palpable, and the characters are well developed.
There are many plot holes and unanswered questions throughout the film, as the story itself seems on the edge of reality, with its Gothic features and abstract images.
People have had different opinions on whether James is "good" or "bad." He is a disturbing character, to be sure. He is not a sex maniac, mad slasher, or stony-faced killer, but an exceptionally childlike and deeply disturbed man.
This movie might make you feel differently about a crime, in the paper, in which mental illness was a factor. Despite naysayers, The Living and the Dead is an emotional bombshell and thought-provoking film.
Archipelago is exceptionally well-shot, very well-acted, and filmed with such realism that you could be watching a documentary. It has so much potential, in fact, that I would like to gush about it for the entirety of this review. The catch? The pace is so lethargic that it might put you to sleep if you're not careful.
