tiff 50 BALLARD of a SMALL PLAYER: Gweilo, Ghosts and Ghuols Haunt The Macau Night. A Reflection by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

Filmmaker Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave) returns with is third Toronto International Film Festival premiere with Ballard of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell who plays Lord Doyle. A down on his luck gambler. The film is based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne and adapted by screenwriter Rown Joffe. 

It is cliche to say it however I shall say it. Anytime a film is shot on location in an amazingly cinematic local - in this case, Macau - Macau is indeed it's own character in the movie. The cinematography by James Friend (All Quiet on the Western Front) beautifully captures the sensory overload of the gambling capital of the world. 

The act of gambling is a ever increasingly successive roller coaster of highs and lows. Lord Doyle walks out of the hotel and asks the attendant for a limousine. The attendant informs the Lord that all the cars are currently tied up. Lord Doyle informs him he just needs one big win. The big score all gamblers and bank robbers are chasing. 

Lord Bryon informs us that he a gweilo. A Chinese word for white people. It literally translates to "ghoul man" or "ghost man."He is a ghost floating through the universe invisible. Perhaps so but not so invisible to the people the Lord owes money to.  

Lord Doyle's game of choice is Pai Gow. A game of insanely high stakes and insanely crazy swings. He wakes up back in the hotel hungover. Today is the first day of the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts Residents from all over the city will be attending and bringing offerings for the dead. 

Lord Doyle leaves the hotel for another night of depravity and arrives at a scene of a man who committed suicide and landed on a car on the street. A torrential downpour starts. He gets into a taxi with Dao Ming (Fala Chen) he pleads to her as only a desperate gambler can. His luck has to change. It is all statistics...right? No one can stay down for ever? Right? He offers Dao a proposition a 50/50 split. She shuts it down, "no more credit to him or anyone else." She has given up. "On life?" Lord Doyle asks. "Lending money to another addict?" She says to Doyle. 

Dao offers an offering to a shrine. The flames of the pyre light up the night. Doyle informs Dao he is about to win to win big and will pay off his debts and her debts. His ship is about to come in. A Lord never goes back on his word. Dao whispers, "I have run out of chances." 

Doyle runs into another gweilo Betty (Tilda Swinton) who snaps his picture. He wants the picture deleted. He wants five hundred USD for the picture. They have a conversation and she calls Doyle by another name.  He takes off with her purse and sets off a chase through the hotel. She gives him the money he wins 10000 grand at the table. 

Can a gambler ever get the big score? Will that ship ever arrive? What if you did hit the score? What is left? There is always...one...last...bet....

TIFF 2022: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

"War is hell." This a statement that has been attributed to General William Tecumseh Sherman. Sherman a Union General in America's civil war, this counties bloodiest war to date. War is indeed hell. Since the beginning of cinema there has been the war film. An entire genre of movie that has striven to convey General Sherman's sentiments.

Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front is third film bearing the title of Erich Maria Remarque's novel, Im Westen nichts Neuces. There was the original 1930 film directed by Lewis Milestone which sees Lew Ayres play Paul. The 1979 TV movie directed by Delbert Mann that has Richard Thomas play the lead character of Paul. 

Edward Berger has said that in regards to the previous cinematic iterations of All Quiet he just ignored them but was very aware of the historic presence of Lewis Milestone's milestone film. "I ignored it. Ascribe to the idiocy, maybe. We just went for it. While writing it and story-boarding it, I sometimes thought, "What the hell did I do this?" What big shoes to fill." Going into Berger's iteration the 1930s film indeed is on ones mind entering the theater. 

Sitting down to write about this film or any well made war-film, it is helpful to have the thesaurus handy. Harrowing, brutal, barbarous, inhuman, harsh, callous, merciless, atrocious, inhumane, horror, senseless are words to have at the ready.  

The film opens on a beautiful mountain surrounded by forest. The sun is rising. A fox and her kits huddle together for warmth. It is quiet. Looking upwards through the forest to the sky. Looking downward to a snow covered ground that is strewn with dead soldiers. Gunshots are fired intermittently. Blood from the dead are flung upwards. The camera movies into the trenches, through the barbed wire. Running through fields, no man's land through gunshots and explosions. Mud and dirt covered soldiers. War is hell.

Following the efforts and journey of recycling and reusing bloody uniforms taken from dead soldiers. The washing of the clothes in a giant bloody, soapy tub to stitching the fabric back together in a room full of women working on sewing machines. The machine of war continues waiting for new recruits to get ground up and minced by bullets and bombs. There they are. As a German leader says, "Not children but soldiers" but they are baby faced children. They are laughing and excited, the folly of youth, more gristle for the machine.

The great ominous music composed by Volker Bertelman belies where this story is going. The audience knows where this story is going. The German children now recruited soldiers are still excited unbeknownst to them where their stories are going. James Friend and his team do an exquisite job making the brutal, beautiful. That is the thing with the war film. So many times great film making technique is employed to hammer home the war is hell motif. The better the technique the more a film can unwittingly glorify war. Of course with the iconic title the novel and previous iterations are very much a part of this films talking points. However it is Elem Kilmov's Come and See that I for one was thinking about more as I watched Berger's film. There is also the other recent cinematic look at WWI through the direction of Sam Mendes and the non-stop camera of Roger Deakins.

Of course All Quiet on the Western Front is harrowing, brutal, barbarous, inhuman, harsh, callous, merciless, atrocious, inhumane, horror, senseless. It is an extremely well made film. How many times can one watch a well made film about war. Is the message not clear by now. 

Paul the lead character in the film has no real backstory. He is just another mud caked, blood splattered face that ages over the runtime of the film. We see the grisly details other war films do not focus on. The film succeeds in the details. A close up of shell cases rattling around the wooden bed of a military truck. A soldier's boots swinging off the back.  The landscape shots are breathtaking. The reusing of bloody uniforms. Paul rolling over dead soldiers and pulling off their dog tags. Recognizing one of his friends. The distant camera. The sad, melodic music. The endless horror surrounded by natural beauty.It is difficult to have an audience feel the cold of winter. This film achieves that. 

As Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl, Inglorious Basterds) the head of the German delegation is racing towards armistice and proposing a ceasefire during negotiations with the French the men we have followed from the beginning of the film have just arrived in the trenches of the front line. A General knows that the war is ending and refuses to give up any ground to the French. The French hold out a pen to sign the armistice agreement. A body lies in a pool of mud. Another body on barbed wire. The soldiers continue to run towards gunfire. The film is also about class. We see soldiers dying in grisly, brutal ways. Others are barely surviving. The higher up military people are dining in grand dining rooms, eating finely prepared meals, traveling in luxury on trains.

As Edward Berger noted, "Unfortunately this type of movie is always relevant." and as I said during my write up about Causeway, the cost we expect each generation sent to war to pay is far too great and the burden they carry far too heavy. Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front is this generation's All Quiet. The Netflix version. In twenty years there will be another version and in that, there lies the tragedy.