Dir. Greg Hall, UK, 2005, 104 mins
Cast: Samuel Anoyke, Che Grant, Brett Harris, Jeetandra Lathigra, Nur Alam Rahman, Jackson Wright, Skinnyman, DJ Flip
Review by Oli Lewington
Film tastes are very personal in nature – each of us likes our own particular things and while those tastes may stretch wide across the spectrum of genre, age and style, it is impossible to say what one person sees in something that another may not.
Mike Leigh, in awarding the inaugural Katrin Cartlidge Award to Greg Hall’s no-budget Brit-flick, The Plague, described it as,'serious, funny, real and surreal', while 'Variety' goes for 'streetwise' and 'impressive'. There will be no addition to that list of positives in this review.
When this reviewer first started watching movies with a mind to writing them up, there was a vow that there would never be an old, cynical critic who pulled apart someone’s hard work sat comfortably behind a desk tapping away at an iBook. Too often, it seems, reviewers are quick to shred apart films with little artistic merit but at least a little entertainment value, or to destroy as folly the substance-over-style of the arthouse movement.
Which is why such an attempt was made to find some good in The Plague and why there was so much disappointment not to be able to see in it what Mike Leigh did.
The film concerns the lives of a multi-racial group of four young friends making their way through life at a saunter as they search for something to add meaning. They move at the same glacial pace. The film only occasionally manages to hint at a plot but it never really engages until it gathers a sense of urgency at the bitter end.
It’s an ending sadly telegraphed from the beginning, providing nothing this genre hasn’t seen before and the confusion caused by poor narrative structure proves to be too much of a barrier to either understanding or caring about the story the characters were living.
Perhaps it’s just not my kind of film, but I can’t find the merit in it that Leigh did, as either art or entertainment.
Shot in rough-and-ready DV, a format the audience may struggle with artistically at the best of times, The Plague seldom raises itself above a college film school project in inventiveness, originality or visual flare.
The improvised feel of the dialogue makes the through-line of any one scene loose and flabby, with no sense of dramatic momentum. Characters’ speeches frequently overlap in an unintelligible manner and the unrestrained reactions of the young cast push too far against the boundaries of reality to carry any truthful impact.
The poor sound, coupled with limited camera work from the school of place, point and shoot, give it an amateurish air which pervades the whole movie up to the final flourish, where Hall veers violently off into kinetic camera moves and quirky angles seemingly motivated by the ramping up of the plot and soundtrack. If only the first 90 minutes had been treated with the same consideration.
It's not a good feeling to dismiss up-and-coming British filmmakers out of hand, nor does this reviewer enjoy being a dissenting voice when others have clearly found something to savour in this widely acclaimed project. Maybe it really is all down to what one person can or can’t engage with and in that respect who can turn anyone away from this flick?
Personally it’s a miss, and a wide one at that, but what the British film industry needs more than anything is for the public to take a chance on movies like this and see for themselves whether they speak to, for, or about issues close to their heart.
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