I’m not sure how I feel about coming-of-age dramas. I suppose, like rom-coms, even if they turn out to be below-par they’re generally watcheable and pleasant enough. I guess every movie genre, be it action or thriller or fantasy, has to adhere to a certain narrative or thematic arc whilst striving to be original and capture the viewers’ imagination… basically, it has to justify it’s existence.
Submarine is adapted for the screen and directed by Richard Ayoade, known to many as Moss from The IT Crowd but, with his ever growing list of impressively subversive directing credits, is by no means content with spending the rest of his career as a comedic sidekick. What he’s proven so far with his tv and music video work is that he has a knack for making comedy visual (or is that making comedic visuals?) and isn’t afraid to have a knowing glance at the camera… cinematically speaking, of course.
So, what’s Submarine got that all the others haven’t? Well, on paper not a lot: it tells the well trod tale of secondary school hardship, first love, family breakdown and the onset of adolescence, but the key weapon at Ayoade’s disposal here is his leading man’s relationship with Ayoade’s camera. Craig Roberts as Oliver is charmingly off-beat and was able to make me laugh out loud with a simple turning of his head or with the fumbled murmur of badly timed sweet nothings. He’s a genuine find and the camera adores him and his comic timing.
Elsewhere is the oddball but delightful casting of Australian actor Noah Taylor as Oliver’s dad (who’s barely recognisable as an Open University presenter has-been who’s physical resemblance to his son is almost non-existent) and Paddy Considine who turns in yet another delightful weirdo played to subtle/unsubtle (I’m still not sure) perfection.
The story is told from Oliver’s point-of-view who seems to be directing his own self-indulgent biopic, even going so far as to drop-in editing cues into his narration. He’s constantly thinking and analysing everything that happens to him every minute that it happens (as one does as a self-involved teenager) not realising that there will come a day when he’ll stop thinking about everything so much and just get on with it.
Or will he?
Now here’s where I started to think about the cyclical nature of the story. You see, Oliver’s dad suffers from depression and has done so since, as he explains himself, he was about his son’s age. Both father and son are cerebral, maudlin sorts who end up capturing the heart of a girl who’s currently in the clutches of an unworthy oik, an endeavour which eventually comes back to haunt them. There are many circles in the visual make-up of the film: ceiling light shades, firework blooms, merry-go-rounds, bicycle wheels, tea mugs… Oliver even runs in a circle in joyous celebration of his new found love at one point. Is Submarine then a film about the inevitability of genetics and how we often inherit undesirable traits from our parents and are in no way masters of our own fates; or is Oliver really the fictional embodiment of his own father who is simply recounting his childhood back to us; or is time really cyclical and has, this time around at least, overlapped with a person embodying both father and son at the same time?
Yeah, ok, I’m reading far too much into it… but that’s what Oliver would do.
Fade to black…
4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment