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[Quick note about the massive break since I posted anything here lol – as usual, sorry… I kept meaning to catch up on my reviews, indeed, I have almost 30 sketched out in Evernote which will appear here eventually, probably when I watch the movies in question a second time. I like to keep my reviews coming concurrent with the order in which I watch them and that always results in these massive gaps when some movie comes along about which I’ve nothing immediate to say and holds up the queue lol. But, then, a month passes, the queue becomes unmanageable, and I decide – as I have today – to just start afresh from the movie/s at hand. Let’s see how long I keep up with myself this time. I will probably update my 2010 list soon with this in mind, despite most of the movies on that list not yet having been reviewed. Anyhoo… onwards…]
The moment I saw a short clip of this movie featuring the main character Oliver – a self-absorbed outsider teen (and aren’t they all) played by Craig Roberts looking uncannily like Bud Cort in Harold and Maude in a setting that looked equally similar in almost every way to that masterpiece and personal favourite – I knew I just had to see it. The first thing to say about Submarine is… it’s absolutely not *Harold and Maude*… Yet though its clear visual references are almost unfortunate because of this otherwise total unsimilarity of the two movies, they remain the aspect I’m most eager to praise.
I’d read plenty before finally dragging myself to the arthouse to see this that had worried me plenty that it might, afterall, not be my cup of tea. That there were no unlikable characters in it. That it was wannabe-(and, in some people’s minds, nottabe-) Wes Anderson (bad enough if you’re a fan of his; worse if, like me, you’ve never really been impressed with that guy). Just a general implication that if this was remotely like its clear influences, it might only be in a far too clever, possibly ironic, insular, showy – let’s just say it, hipster – way.
The accusations aren’t far off. These characters – all of them – aren’t what you’d call likeable. But I found myself mostly flitting between not quite wanting to call them “unlikeable” and, more, feeling like the movie was doing a fine job of portraying them as no more or less than simply as flawed, helpless, and ridiculous in their behaviours as any of us, particularly as teenagers. Richard Ayoade takes a leaf out of Sofia Coppola’s book in this respect – it’s not hard to argue that if the movie feels difficult to get along with at times, it’s only because it’s reflecting entirely the mores of its protagonists. I include, by the way, in those protagonists the adult characters – the teachers at school, Oliver’s parents (played heartbreakingly well by Noah Taylor – an ex-Open University presenter – and Sally Hawkins, whose billowy attire most fully betrays any sense of when the movie is set), and Paddy Considine’s psychic entertainer – all of whom are, if anything, so much “worse” than the kids that they, too, reduce any irritation the kids might cause.
The movie is well-made enough that it’s able to get away with teetering on this line between honestly presenting its undesirable world and simply becoming just as undesirable for almost its whole duration, and the feeling I left the cinema most filled with for Submarine is admiration – the same admiration I found when listening to recent interviews Ayoade has done, particularly on Mark Kermode’s radio show, where he spoke of his early rejection of extreme emotion in a way that was both comic and slightly inspiring. If there’s a problem for me it’s really an unfair thing to have a problem with, given Ayaode’s clear intention to never go there – I personally like a good rush of extreme sweeping emotion in the cinema; and in a movie such as this, so otherwise devoid of such a thing, it would – even if fleetingly – have been all the more effective. But the movie never lets itself tip over into any hint of sentimentality… if it even comes close it quickly checks itself and comments on the fact. Some people will cite this as the reason it’s so good. Like I say, I’m more inclined to simply admire its consistency. What’s clear is that Ayaode is a director whose future work we should look forward to – if he can do so much good with a story as difficult as this, I think with different material he might one day blow me away completely.
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