movie-review

I Swear

I honestly think I woke up this morning with a new film added to my favourites category. John and I went to watch I Swear yesterday evening, and I don’t think I have been to a more powerful, rewarding film in a long, long time. It is the story of a man with Tourettes syndrome in the eighties, and as such it is essentially a film about disability and disability acceptance: we watch a young man with fairly severe Tourettes, John Davidson, growing up in a small Scottish town. It would be impossible not to find the amount of discrimination and bullying we see John face compelling, from the arrogant mockery he gets from other kids to loosing an opportunity to play football as a goalkeeper.

It becomes clear quite early in the film that John faces a hard, marginalised life. But where the film succeeds, rather magnificently, is in the emphasis it puts on the fact that all John really needs is understanding. He doesn’t need to ‘get better’, he doesn’t need a cure; all he needs is for people to understand his Tourettes (he refuses to call it a disability). He just needs people to understand that he can’t help his involuntary tics, they are just part of who he is, and are nothing to mock or worry about. As such, I Swear is one of the best pieces of disability representation and inclusion I have seen in a long, long time. It avoids the nasty temptation to make fun of John’s condition, handling the subject tenderly and with great humanity.

The film indeed opens with a shot of John receiving his MBE in 2019, a testimony to his fortitude, and all in all the film leaves the viewer extremely gratified and uplifted. There is sometimes a tendency for films like this to wallow in pity, but I Swear quite expertly avoids it, leaving the viewer uplifted, satisfied and enlightened. It is the story of a man overcoming horrendous persecution to achieve his potential, as well as his education of those around him to achieve enlightenment, and as such I now think it is definitely one of the ‘must see’ films of the season.

One From Shives’ Heart

I think I really need to flag this Steve Shives video up today. As you may know, I’ve been watching Shives’ videos for a while: I think he’s one of the best film and TV analysts on Youtube, especially when it comes to franchises like Star Trek. In this vid, however, he discusses his adoration for Superman, particularly he earlier Superman films when he was played by Christopher Reeve. What interests me about this video is how, as Shives himself admits, he forgoes any in-depth discussion and instead just tries to convey his love and fascination with what he sees on screen. He knows that what he is watching is silly, campy and far fetched, but that somehow does not matter: Shives feels intrigued and compelled to watch. He does not use the term, but to me that is instantly recognisable as cinephilia, the discourse of filmic love I spent seven years analysing and writing about.

In a way this is cinephilia in it’s purest form. The way Shives picks out films, actors or just moments of film and speaks about them so adoringly is quintessentially cinephiliac. I was particularly struck by the moment when, two and a half to three minutes into the piece, Shives deviates slightly and starts talking about the moment he first saw Atticus Finch appear on screen. He had apparently been studying Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird at school, but this was the first time Shives had seen the film adaptation. Shives describes how he was struck by how Gregory Peck’s portrayal of Finch looked uncannily like he had imagined the character; how he had to stop himself ‘audibly gasping’; how amazed he felt at the sight of a character he had previously only imagined brought to life on screen. Shives might not use the term – or even know it – but what he is describing is a cinephiliac moment: a moment in a film when the viewer is absolutely taken by what they are seeing, although they can’t quite articulate why. It touches them on a deep, personal level; they feel compelled to explain and talk about it, even though it somehow seems to go beyond words.

To be honest I find it incredible to see one being expressed so clearly and obviously. Shives probably hasn’t read the literature surrounding cinephilia, let alone my zarking thesis, but this is a primary example of it’s development, and how it is emerging online more and more. The thing is, until Shives and commenters like him recognise what they produce as such, and start to talk about their love of film in and of itself, what they produce will always remain a form of fandom.

DVDs Still Rule

By rights I should love streaming: it makes films and television programs so easy to watch. All you need to do is sit down at your computer, and you can now watch virtually anything you can think of, no matter how obscure. There is no need to muck around hunting down rare videos or DVDs, and no need to store them on shelves and put them into drives whenever you want to watch them. From my perspective, streaming should be awesome.

The thing is, I still don’t think it actually is. Of course, as I wrote here, streaming has many advantages, especially if like me you can’t physically use things like DVDs. Yet it seems to me that the rise of streaming has brought about an entirely new paradigm in how we consume film. Before now, if you wanted to watch a specific film, you just either went to the cinema or bought a video or DVD from a shop. It would then be yours to keep. It wouldn’t matter which shop you bought it from or the chain of cinemas you went to; the same films were available anywhere.

What bothers me these days, however, is the way in which certain streaming services are effectively the gatekeepers of certain films or programs. Instead of owning a film on disk which I could then watch whenever I wanted, Ad Infinitum, these days to watch certain films you have to subscribe to certain streaming services. The only way you can maintain access to that film is to keep up your subscription to the streaming service it is hosted by, of which there are now several.

I can’t help thinking that this is a fundamental change in how we consume and access film. Whereas we might previously have had a shelf of videos or DVDs alongside our shelves of books, to watch certain films we now need to be subscribed to certain streaming services. They are now no longer texts which we can get off the shelf whenever we want, but the products of streaming platforms without which we cannot access certain films. In a way this renders them products, like forcing people to keep buying bottles of water when previously it had been always available through taps.

A couple of days ago I bought all three seasons of Picard on DVD. I have seen all the episodes before of course, and it was little more than an impulse buy. Yet I think the purchase is something I will now cherish. Obviously, to watch the episodes I will need to ask someone to put them in my DVD drive. Yet simply to own them as a physical artefact, just as I own box sets of James Bond and The Lord of the Rings, is something I find very satisfying: simply to know the episodes are there, ready for me to access and indulge in whenever I want, without having to update a membership or keep paying a subscription, gives me a sense of contentment.

I love film, of course: I love how it really ignites the imagination, taking us to a plethora of different places. I love how different directors use it to express their selves and say different things. Yet instead of being the expression of directors, film now seems to be the product of online platforms, without which we cannot watch certain films. This renders them commercial products rather than works of art; pieces of entertainment to pay for rather than meaningful expression of thought.