European Films

If there was one talked about feature from the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, it was The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, the feature film debut of UK director Thomas Clay. The film has been described as making “Quentin Tarantino’s work look like a Britney Spears video” in terms of violence. Whilst this is not untrue for the rather gruesome final fifteen minutes, the major part of the film is not so much interested in showing the violence itself as it is in portraying and perhaps fathoming the rather easy way towards violence and criminal behaviour in the society of today.

 

Living in a small coastal town in England, Robert Carmichael (Dan Spencer) seems interested in nothing much in particular, least of all his future. He lives together with his mother Sarah (Lesley Manville) and they sometimes make music together; she plays the piano and sings, Robert plays the cello. It is not clear whether his mother wants him to play the cello or whether it is actually something he likes; again, what is striking is Robert’s apparent indifference to be moved even by art. This does not mean that he is not absorbing what goes on around him, but rather that he keeps all influences, good and bad -- if Robert makes such distinctions -- confidentially classified behind a straight poker face. Of course, if no-one reads his indifference as a cry for help or at least a cry for an understanding of good and bad, the bubble will burst.

 

The catalyst that makes the scales tip is Larry (Danny Dyer), a drug user and dealer with very little respect for other people, least of all rich people and women. Robert, who has been secretly masturbating to a book by Marquis de Sade, is a willing victim for Larry, who sucks him into the real world of drugs, violence and sex. What remains are the questions of who could have stopped him and how: why does a worrying teacher make no or not enough impression on him, what should his mother have done, how is the community responsible? Was it wise for the school board to expel the biggest troublemakers so that they could roam freely on the streets? The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael is a shocking wake-up call to remind us that criminal behaviour is not something that is hard to learn nor easy to forget.

 

Rookie director Thomas Clay gives us a cinematic punch-in-the-face that is both stylishly real and unsettling. There are echoes from the English realism of Loach and Leigh (Manville starred in several of Leigh’s films, most recently in Vera Drake) and Clay’s gory apotheosis is not shocking because it is there but because it is indeed a reflection of our society and its problems. Compliments to Clay and co-writer and producer Joseph Lang for their expert build-up of the story, their eye for detail of character and Clay's direction of the actors. A final word also on the gorgeous cinematography by Yorgos Avanitis (frequent collaborator of Theo Angelopolous), whose poignant, prolonged tracking shot (that goes backwards, remains stationary and then zooms in) in the middle of the film, in a dingy apartment of a drugs dealer, shows us what will turn out to be the point of no return in the education of Robert Carmichael.

 

 

Buy the DVD at: amazon.co.uk.  

 

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