Everyman Bristol
I was somewhat tempted to review I Swear in the style of the main character:
“I Swear is a sensitive, heart-warming, educational treatment**it’s a fucking manipulative formula driven feel good shit fest**of a very difficult subject**it’s a wank stained infomercial pretending to be a movie**with a virtuoso performance at its core**which can’t see an obvious plot beat without buggering it up the arse.”
But I decided not to do that.
On the positive side: the film educated me about Tourette’s Syndrome. I guess, like everyone else, I thought of Tourette’s as a slightly comical, though doubtless distressing, compulsion to use bad language. I now understand that it is a whole collection of symptoms (hence “syndrome”) involving physical ticks, obsessive compulsive behaviour, and a tendency to say or do the least appropriate thing in particular circumstances. So John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) doesn’t just say “fuck” and “cunt” a lot: he also kisses lamp posts, can’t cope with chairs laid out in uneven positions, and has to have bars put on the window of his upper floor council flat in case he can’t stop himself from jumping out. The film makes the point very clearly that the big problem is not the illness, but people’s reaction to the illness. The sympathetic characters all learn to ignore John’s blurts; and I think that as the film progresses, the audience does as well -- in much the same way that one can usually tune out, say, a stammerer's speech impediment.
Aramayo completely inhabits the role. Sometimes these kinds of movies invite you to admire the way that, say, Dustin Hoffman is skilfully pretending to be a severely autistic person. But in this case I had no sense of a craftsman demonstrating a trick: I believed that I was really watching someone who couldn’t control what he said; and was perpetually embarrassed on his behalf when what he couldn't stop himself from saying was wildly inappropriate. The individual vignettes are frequently funny and poignant, although most of the best “jokes” are in the trailer, and the rest have been quoted ad nauseam in reviews. So as not to compound the problem, I will only quote one example: when living on his own in a council flat for the first time, John stupidly becomes involved with a small-time drug dealer. He is persuaded to carry what he thinks is crack cocaine across town to prove his reliability. The first time he sees a police officer, he can’t prevent himself from shouting out “Pigs!” and then “I’m carrying drugs!”
The subordinate characters are brilliantly well drawn: Tommy (Peter Mullan) the caretaker who is able to see straight through the ticks and swearing and offers John his first job Dotty (Maxine Peake) the matter-of-fact mental health nurse who becomes a kind of foster-mother to him. But perhaps they are both just a little bit too saintly? When John blurts out “You’re going to die of cancer!” to the terminally ill Dotty, she just responds that it is nice that someone is finally being honest with her.
The final section of the movie, when John starts organising retreats and workshops to help other people with his condition— in particular the glimpses we get of him giving talks to school assemblies and to groups of police officers — is convincing an compelling. I was very much rooting for him in these scenes; and wished they had amounted to more than an extended montage.
But I think I turned against the film in the opening seconds. It’s told in flashback (of course), and we jump in when John is about to get his medal from the late Queen for his charitable and campaigning work. If you don’t know or can’t guess how this plays out, I shan’t tell you. But after the establishing shots of Holyrood Palace, we see John and Dotty in the lobby; with Dotty reminding him that he is about to meet the Queen and that an MBE is a very great honour; and John telling her that he is afraid that if he goes in, he will say something inappropriate. Do we really need this set up? Wouldn’t the more interesting presentation have been to show us the solemn occasion from the point of view of another person being decorated; or indeed, of Her Maj, so that (and I do not want to give anything away) if John does, in fact, say something wildly inappropriate, we could share in their shock rather than his embarrassment? And if (again no spoilers) he does blurt something out; don’t you owe the audience a payoff in which we see Queen Elizabeth's reaction? (“Oh, don’t worry, dear Phillip says much worse things to me at the breakfast table every morning”.)
Clips of the real John Davidson play over the closing credits. In one of those, he explains that in particular situations, the urge to say something inappropriate builds and builds inside him until he can’t resist it. Elsewhere, the urge to swear is compared with a very, very large sneeze. So perhaps it is part of the film-makers design that, in scene after scene, the audience can see exactly what is going to happen before it does. Of course when the headmaster sits down with some boys in the school canteen, John calls him a cunt. Of course when he goes into a night club for the first time, he throws a drink over someone and calls someone else a slag. We saw that coming, he saw that coming, everyone saw it coming.
But the obviousness of set-ups and pay-offs run right through the movie. If we're in a Scottish school, than of course someone is going to get the belt. If we are in a 1980s cinema, of course the Pearl and Dean music will be playing in the background. If John carries an expensive take away along a dark canal path, then of course someone is going to beat him up. (With a crowbar!) If it's Christmas, of course Slade will be blaring on the sound track. Of course there will be cans of Irn-Bru on people's desks to remind us where we are. There was no chance that saintly Tommy would be all nice and smiley to John at the interview and then give the job to someone else, was there? It may very well be true that in Real Life the good news about the job; the very good news about Dotty’s condition; and the very unfortunate beating up incident all happened within three minutes of each other, but in a movie, I just don't buy it.
In a coda, John is given a wrist-mounted neuro-modulation device which appears to make the condition go away like a puff of magic pixie dust. Wikipedia suggests that (for some people at least) the effect really can be that immediate. So John goes into the sunset, able to walk past a “Quiet Please” sign in a library and chat with a stranger on a train for the first time in his life. I did feel a profound sense of relief when the credits rolled: for a dreadful, terrible moment I thought that he was going to send the wrist-band back because Tourette’s was an important part of who he was.
On the positive side: the film educated me about Tourette’s Syndrome. I guess, like everyone else, I thought of Tourette’s as a slightly comical, though doubtless distressing, compulsion to use bad language. I now understand that it is a whole collection of symptoms (hence “syndrome”) involving physical ticks, obsessive compulsive behaviour, and a tendency to say or do the least appropriate thing in particular circumstances. So John Davidson (Robert Aramayo) doesn’t just say “fuck” and “cunt” a lot: he also kisses lamp posts, can’t cope with chairs laid out in uneven positions, and has to have bars put on the window of his upper floor council flat in case he can’t stop himself from jumping out. The film makes the point very clearly that the big problem is not the illness, but people’s reaction to the illness. The sympathetic characters all learn to ignore John’s blurts; and I think that as the film progresses, the audience does as well -- in much the same way that one can usually tune out, say, a stammerer's speech impediment.
Aramayo completely inhabits the role. Sometimes these kinds of movies invite you to admire the way that, say, Dustin Hoffman is skilfully pretending to be a severely autistic person. But in this case I had no sense of a craftsman demonstrating a trick: I believed that I was really watching someone who couldn’t control what he said; and was perpetually embarrassed on his behalf when what he couldn't stop himself from saying was wildly inappropriate. The individual vignettes are frequently funny and poignant, although most of the best “jokes” are in the trailer, and the rest have been quoted ad nauseam in reviews. So as not to compound the problem, I will only quote one example: when living on his own in a council flat for the first time, John stupidly becomes involved with a small-time drug dealer. He is persuaded to carry what he thinks is crack cocaine across town to prove his reliability. The first time he sees a police officer, he can’t prevent himself from shouting out “Pigs!” and then “I’m carrying drugs!”
The subordinate characters are brilliantly well drawn: Tommy (Peter Mullan) the caretaker who is able to see straight through the ticks and swearing and offers John his first job Dotty (Maxine Peake) the matter-of-fact mental health nurse who becomes a kind of foster-mother to him. But perhaps they are both just a little bit too saintly? When John blurts out “You’re going to die of cancer!” to the terminally ill Dotty, she just responds that it is nice that someone is finally being honest with her.
The final section of the movie, when John starts organising retreats and workshops to help other people with his condition— in particular the glimpses we get of him giving talks to school assemblies and to groups of police officers — is convincing an compelling. I was very much rooting for him in these scenes; and wished they had amounted to more than an extended montage.
But I think I turned against the film in the opening seconds. It’s told in flashback (of course), and we jump in when John is about to get his medal from the late Queen for his charitable and campaigning work. If you don’t know or can’t guess how this plays out, I shan’t tell you. But after the establishing shots of Holyrood Palace, we see John and Dotty in the lobby; with Dotty reminding him that he is about to meet the Queen and that an MBE is a very great honour; and John telling her that he is afraid that if he goes in, he will say something inappropriate. Do we really need this set up? Wouldn’t the more interesting presentation have been to show us the solemn occasion from the point of view of another person being decorated; or indeed, of Her Maj, so that (and I do not want to give anything away) if John does, in fact, say something wildly inappropriate, we could share in their shock rather than his embarrassment? And if (again no spoilers) he does blurt something out; don’t you owe the audience a payoff in which we see Queen Elizabeth's reaction? (“Oh, don’t worry, dear Phillip says much worse things to me at the breakfast table every morning”.)
Clips of the real John Davidson play over the closing credits. In one of those, he explains that in particular situations, the urge to say something inappropriate builds and builds inside him until he can’t resist it. Elsewhere, the urge to swear is compared with a very, very large sneeze. So perhaps it is part of the film-makers design that, in scene after scene, the audience can see exactly what is going to happen before it does. Of course when the headmaster sits down with some boys in the school canteen, John calls him a cunt. Of course when he goes into a night club for the first time, he throws a drink over someone and calls someone else a slag. We saw that coming, he saw that coming, everyone saw it coming.
But the obviousness of set-ups and pay-offs run right through the movie. If we're in a Scottish school, than of course someone is going to get the belt. If we are in a 1980s cinema, of course the Pearl and Dean music will be playing in the background. If John carries an expensive take away along a dark canal path, then of course someone is going to beat him up. (With a crowbar!) If it's Christmas, of course Slade will be blaring on the sound track. Of course there will be cans of Irn-Bru on people's desks to remind us where we are. There was no chance that saintly Tommy would be all nice and smiley to John at the interview and then give the job to someone else, was there? It may very well be true that in Real Life the good news about the job; the very good news about Dotty’s condition; and the very unfortunate beating up incident all happened within three minutes of each other, but in a movie, I just don't buy it.
In a coda, John is given a wrist-mounted neuro-modulation device which appears to make the condition go away like a puff of magic pixie dust. Wikipedia suggests that (for some people at least) the effect really can be that immediate. So John goes into the sunset, able to walk past a “Quiet Please” sign in a library and chat with a stranger on a train for the first time in his life. I did feel a profound sense of relief when the credits rolled: for a dreadful, terrible moment I thought that he was going to send the wrist-band back because Tourette’s was an important part of who he was.
A music critic was once reprimanded for giving David Helgott a lukewarm review: wasn’t he aware of his hugely inspirational triumph-over-adversity backstory? The critic said that he hadn’t understood that he had been at a faith-healing meeting: he thought he was watching a classical piano concert. I Swear does exactly what it sets out to do; and you probably need to see it, and you probably ought to send a few quid to help the charity mentioned at the end. But I am not sure that it is a very good movie. I would sooner have seen the documentary it was based on.
if you find this interesting? Then please...
No comments:
Post a Comment