Grandage, Inishmaan, and Daniel Radcliffe

Daniel Radcliffe is one of those actors that don't need an introduction. A star since he started playing Harry Potter, the movie series saw him grow from child to man. He then made his memorable stage appearance in Equus. Next came his singing debut in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He is a bag full of surprises. And now he plays a cripple in the West End.

Daniel Radcliffe in The Cripple of Inishmaan

 

Daniel Radcliffe plays the Cripple of Inishmaan in Michael Grandage's West End production in the Noel Coward Theatre of the play by Martin McDonagh. While the good people of Inishmaan think it a famous joke that the lad known as Cripple Billy has dreams of becoming a movie star. Billy's aunts agree that any girl who would consider kissing him would have to be both blind and backward. They have a list of what makes their nephew so unprepossessing; it's not just his deformed body but his face, eyes and personality, too.

Maybe you think that looker Daniel Radcliffe is not the obvious choice for that role. You would also think that a cripple is not the obvious choice for a leading part in a comedy. The two improbabilities go together exceedingly well. It works because Daniel Radcliffe blends right into the scenery on stage and the cast. Cripple Billy is an anomaly on Inishmaan. His physical deformity sets him apart from all other inhabitants. But on this remote island being bored is the dominant pastime. Billy is not so much an outsider as part of the same old landscape in the same old village of familiar and therefore irritating people.

Martin McDonagh’s uses the remote setting on an Island off the Irish coast to evolve a acute analysis of what makes human tick. Nothing ever happens on Inishmaan, not even the news. It follows that the most humdrum gossip gets inflated into big and necessarily distorted news. When word spreads that Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is shooting a film on nearby Inishmore, the excitement knows no bounds. (The Cripple of Inishmaan is set at the time of the making of Robert Flaherty’s 1934 movie Man of Aran.)

Martin McDonagh revels in the art of creating myths out of nothing. He has a gift for inventing village tittle-tattle. He then takes is and through repeated phrases and actions gives it a liturgical cadence. At this point, rumour becomes truth. The play lives of this and switchback narratives that keep changing directions on the spectator.

The Cripple of Inishmaan is the third production from the newly formed Michael Grandage Company residing at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End. The troupe is notable for its illustrious leading actors and actresses playing alongside raw talent and journeyman players.The two previous plays were Privates on Parade by Peter Nichols starring Simon Russell Beale, and the premiere of Peter and Alice by John Logan with Dame Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw. There is a treat to come in November with Jude Law as Henry V.

Further reading

Brideshead Revisited
Douglas Booth
Politically Incorrect

James Bond 007 Quantum of Solace

James Bond is back. I mean the real James Bond 007, not some washed up replica from the eighties trundling around with his gadgets. I got news to share on the film to come: Quantum of Solace.

Daniel Craig as James Bond 007

Casino Royale took us back successfully to a darker and grittier Bond, nearer to Ian Fleming’s original vision, as I believe. Quantum of Solace goes even further back, so far as to take up citations from other Bond films in its story and its pictures. The death of one of the major characters is a direct quote to Goldfinger’s most iconic shot, where Jill Masterson was left dead covered in gold paint. Here, Agent Fields is covered in oil. Gemma Arterton said, she couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe or hear because the oil went into her ears. Leaves us to the question which drama school taught her to breathe through her ears?

Oscar winning director Marc Foster has tried and managed to do a movie much simpler and therefore more real than his high tech predecessors. By using green screen only where really necessary he created reality instead of humbug gadgetry. With full support from producer Barbara Broccoli he went back to the sixties’ Bond to find the imagery for the story.

At the end of Casino Royale, Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd gave her multimillion pound poker winnings to the shadowy villain Mr White, conveniently dying before explaining why. Bond tracked White to a lakeside villa in Italy and shot him in the leg, setting up the cliff-hanger for the sequel.

As Quantum of Solace opens, Bond and M are interrogating White to find that the organisation that turned Vesper is called Quantum with agents infiltrating the CIA and the British government. In Siena, Bond chases and corners one of these rogues linked to a bank in Haiti. This chase starting in the bowels of the city, crossing the Palio (an ancient horse race dating back to the 14^thcentury and carried out without saddles) goes on across the rooftops of Siena ending on top of a bus. It shows all Daniel Craig’s own stunts, so it is well worth watching. Even though Marc Foster admits that the bit with the bus was just put in because nobody could figure out any other way to get Bond to Mitchell, the agent he was chasing.

The action moves to South America where Bond meets (and sleeps with) Agent Fields. He gives her, a novice agent, a brush over as well, buying her a Prada dress. The pictures remind one very much of Breakfast at Tiffany’s one more shot quotation by Foster.

Together, Bond and Fields attend a fundraiser for Greene Planet, a supposedly eco-friendly organisation headed by the charming Dominic Greene. The scene was shot in the Old Union Club in Panama City bombed out by the Americans under one pretext or another. There, Bond also encounters Camille who conducts her own personal vendetta against Greene. Camille is played by Olga Kurylenko who does most of her own stunts, too. During filming, she learned how to strip a pistol in 8 seconds, and to put it back together again in 11.

Bond later rescues Camille from a kidnapping, widely overstepping his mission parameters and angering the Foreign Office to the extent of being put on the capture or kill list of M. This leads to a wild ride on motorcycles and a spectacular boat race, all supposedly set in Haiti but filmed in Panama.

Illicitly following Greene to Austria, Bond learns more of his plans – Greene will finance a bloody coup by an exiled Bolivian General in exchange for a seemingly worthless plot of land in the desert. The final shot is then done in Chile’s Atacama Desert where Bond and Camille land still in Opera clothes. The final scene is a major explosion in a desert hotel, but is filmed actually at the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile.

For Swiss director Marc Foster this film was an adventure. Coming from high art low budget films, the change into low art high budget venture must have been stunning. But he manages well to bring art into this purely commercial movie. I am sure he will not regret to have followed Orson Welles’ advice that he regretted most in his live never to have made a commercial movie.

Further reading

Quantum of Solace: The Source

James Bond: Behind the Movies

Roger Moore Biography