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My wife recently started a new job, which is located close by the endangered Laemmle theater in Claremont, CA, and noticed that it was playing this pic, which she'd wanted to see since reading about it last fall. So we made a Sunday afternoon expedition of it, both to see the movie and to offer some support to the theater.
Sadly, it wasn't difficult to see why this place is struggling. I counted twelve in the audience for a Sunday afternoon show. If an arthouse movie in a college town, playing in a theater surrounded by a dozen trendy restaurants, can't pull a decent crowd at that time slot, it's hard to imagine when it ever could. The presentation was OK: maybe not quite 14ft-l, but good focus and convergence, and no hot spots. A keystone was clearly visible around the edges of the image: whether that was because Laemmle had made the conscious decision to show the whole frame with no cropping, or simply that the installer did not make a lens position and screen file to zoom and crop the image to fit the screen with the down angle, I don't know.
As for the movie itself, it's a dramatization of the events that led to the discovery and exhumation of the remains of King Richard III under a parking lot in Leicester, England, in 2013. The political controversy surrounding his death, the circumstances of it, and the regime change it led to has made this a hugely important moment in British history: establishing exactly what was done with his remains after he was killed in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 had become one of those enduring mysteries, analogous to those who devote their lives to trying to find Amelia Earhart here (best comparison I can think of).
What makes this all the more remarkable is that it was an amateur historian, with no formal training in either historical research or archeology, who figured out where he was buried, after generations of professionals had tried and failed. This movie is essentially a hatchet job on all the professionals involved, and is especially critical of the involvement of the University of Leicester in the final phases of the project.
Whereas I generally like "underdog against the establishment" narratives, this one didn't really work for me. I simply could not empathize with Sally Hawkins's portrayal of Phillipa Langley: rather than feeling that she was a visionary being victimized by short-sighted skeptics, I found myself asking myself why she was determined to risk her family's financial security and alienate most of those who knew her over her obsession, and also being triggered by my natural intolerance of people who use their health issues as a weapon with which to guilt you into to falling into line with their agenda. That having been said, the slimy university administrator who stabs Langley in the back really did strike a chord: having worked for several years in British universities before emigrating to America, I've encountered way too many characters exactly like him: indeed, they are a big part of the reason why it'll be snowing in Hell before I ever work in education again.
Though the script, acting, and direction did not rise above competent for me, other elements of the production values did: in particular, Alexandre Desplat's music, adapting medieval dance tunes with jazz and syncopation, and the editing, which included some very elegant jump cuts on action (e.g. from a car door closing in Edinburgh to a close up of a JCB's claw cutting into concrete in Leicester). The opening titles appeared to be inspired by Saul Bass's for Psycho, too: whether that was supposed to be a comment about Richard III or not, I couldn't figure out.
The film has caused controversy: unsurprisingly, it pissed off the University of Leicester well and truly.
It should perform solidly with the arthouse crowd: I can only presume that there are local dynamics that make it very difficult to make the theater in which I saw it a success.
Sadly, it wasn't difficult to see why this place is struggling. I counted twelve in the audience for a Sunday afternoon show. If an arthouse movie in a college town, playing in a theater surrounded by a dozen trendy restaurants, can't pull a decent crowd at that time slot, it's hard to imagine when it ever could. The presentation was OK: maybe not quite 14ft-l, but good focus and convergence, and no hot spots. A keystone was clearly visible around the edges of the image: whether that was because Laemmle had made the conscious decision to show the whole frame with no cropping, or simply that the installer did not make a lens position and screen file to zoom and crop the image to fit the screen with the down angle, I don't know.
As for the movie itself, it's a dramatization of the events that led to the discovery and exhumation of the remains of King Richard III under a parking lot in Leicester, England, in 2013. The political controversy surrounding his death, the circumstances of it, and the regime change it led to has made this a hugely important moment in British history: establishing exactly what was done with his remains after he was killed in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 had become one of those enduring mysteries, analogous to those who devote their lives to trying to find Amelia Earhart here (best comparison I can think of).
What makes this all the more remarkable is that it was an amateur historian, with no formal training in either historical research or archeology, who figured out where he was buried, after generations of professionals had tried and failed. This movie is essentially a hatchet job on all the professionals involved, and is especially critical of the involvement of the University of Leicester in the final phases of the project.
Whereas I generally like "underdog against the establishment" narratives, this one didn't really work for me. I simply could not empathize with Sally Hawkins's portrayal of Phillipa Langley: rather than feeling that she was a visionary being victimized by short-sighted skeptics, I found myself asking myself why she was determined to risk her family's financial security and alienate most of those who knew her over her obsession, and also being triggered by my natural intolerance of people who use their health issues as a weapon with which to guilt you into to falling into line with their agenda. That having been said, the slimy university administrator who stabs Langley in the back really did strike a chord: having worked for several years in British universities before emigrating to America, I've encountered way too many characters exactly like him: indeed, they are a big part of the reason why it'll be snowing in Hell before I ever work in education again.
Though the script, acting, and direction did not rise above competent for me, other elements of the production values did: in particular, Alexandre Desplat's music, adapting medieval dance tunes with jazz and syncopation, and the editing, which included some very elegant jump cuts on action (e.g. from a car door closing in Edinburgh to a close up of a JCB's claw cutting into concrete in Leicester). The opening titles appeared to be inspired by Saul Bass's for Psycho, too: whether that was supposed to be a comment about Richard III or not, I couldn't figure out.
The film has caused controversy: unsurprisingly, it pissed off the University of Leicester well and truly.
It should perform solidly with the arthouse crowd: I can only presume that there are local dynamics that make it very difficult to make the theater in which I saw it a success.
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