London Road (15.)
Directed by Rufus Norris.
Starring Olivia Colman, Paul Thornley, Anita Dobson, Kate Fleetwood, Eloise Lawrence and Tom Hardy. 91 mins.
London Road, being a film adaptation of a stage production of a verbatim musical about a community caught at the centre of the serial killing of five women in Ipswich in 2006, is an awkward proposition to sell to an audience. It's a difficult concept to grasp; and once grasped it difficult to shake the assumption that its sounds like a really terrible idea. Actually it isn't: the result is an insightful, daring, provocative even stirring look at ordinary lives disrupted by extraordinary evil. But it is also slightly reductive, and arguably patronising.
First off, this is an actual film. The prominence of the NT logo, may lead you to expect this is one of those live broadcasts from the London stage, which have become popular in recent years. The director of the original stage production has transferred it to the big screen with much of the original cast and a few big name additions. After the arrest of Steven Wright, writer Alecky Blythe went to Ipswich to interview some of the surviving sex workers and the residents of London Road, where Wright had briefly lived and where many of the women that he murdered worked as prostitutes. All the dialogue and the song lyrics (set to music by Adam Cork) are taken directly from her recordings of those interviews.
What is marvellous about London Road is that it is a true ensemble piece: it is the story of the community not of a few emblematic characters. At the beginning we see how life in Ipswich has been traumatized by the killing. Two school girls walk around town, warily weighing up every male as a potential psycho. “You automatically think it could be him/ It could be anyone here/ I'm just gonna, like, cry,” they sing. Then Tom Hardy appears as a cab driver with a special interest in serial killers and you assume it must be him but, spoiler, it isn't. (He may have star billing on the posters but Hardy's role amounts to two scenes.) Wright is never seen, and only the most minimal details of his crimes are outlined. In a society that glories in slaughter it's a blessed relief to see a drama where people who aren't killers or cops have some value beyond fodder.
But the songs are an issue. It is much more like opera than traditional musical theatre. Individual lines from the interviews are taken and repeated. The lines though are delivered with exactly the same faltering intonation and clumsy sentence structure. So it wont be, “It was something to do with those poor girls,” but, “It was something, you know, to do with those poor girls.” None of the You Knows and Likes, are cut out. Celebrating the strength and fortitude of ordinary people, in their own words is a noble, original and exciting idea but the repetition of their everyday inarticulacies makes the film sometimes feels like an officious teacher making students repeat a stupid remark out loud a hundred times in front of the class.
London Road (15.)
Directed by Rufus Norris.
Starring Olivia Colman, Paul Thornley, Anita Dobson, Kate Fleetwood, Eloise Lawrence and Tom Hardy. 91 mins.
London Road, being a film adaptation of a stage production of a verbatim musical about a community caught at the centre of the serial killing of five women in Ipswich in 2006, is an awkward proposition to sell to an audience. It's a difficult concept to grasp; and once grasped it difficult to shake the assumption that its sounds like a really terrible idea. Actually it isn't: the result is an insightful, daring, provocative even stirring look at ordinary lives disrupted by extraordinary evil. But it is also slightly reductive, and arguably patronising.
First off, this is an actual film. The prominence of the NT logo, may lead you to expect this is one of those live broadcasts from the London stage, which have become popular in recent years. The director of the original stage production has transferred it to the big screen with much of the original cast and a few big name additions. After the arrest of Steven Wright, writer Alecky Blythe went to Ipswich to interview some of the surviving sex workers and the residents of London Road, where Wright had briefly lived and where many of the women that he murdered worked as prostitutes. All the dialogue and the song lyrics (set to music by Adam Cork) are taken directly from her recordings of those interviews.
What is marvellous about London Road is that it is a true ensemble piece: it is the story of the community not of a few emblematic characters. At the beginning we see how life in Ipswich has been traumatized by the killing. Two school girls walk around town, warily weighing up every male as a potential psycho. “You automatically think it could be him/ It could be anyone here/ I'm just gonna, like, cry,” they sing. Then Tom Hardy appears as a cab driver with a special interest in serial killers and you assume it must be him but, spoiler, it isn't. (He may have star billing on the posters but Hardy's role amounts to two scenes.) Wright is never seen, and only the most minimal details of his crimes are outlined. In a society that glories in slaughter it's a blessed relief to see a drama where people who aren't killers or cops have some value beyond fodder.
But the songs are an issue. It is much more like opera than traditional musical theatre. Individual lines from the interviews are taken and repeated. The lines though are delivered with exactly the same faltering intonation and clumsy sentence structure. So it wont be, “It was something to do with those poor girls,” but, “It was something, you know, to do with those poor girls.” None of the You Knows and Likes, are cut out. Celebrating the strength and fortitude of ordinary people, in their own words is a noble, original and exciting idea but the repetition of their everyday inarticulacies makes the film sometimes feels like an officious teacher making students repeat a stupid remark out loud a hundred times in front of the class.
