Young Adam (2002)
Country: GB/FR
Technical: col/scope 98m
Director: David Mackenzie
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Emily Mortimer
Synopsis:
Working on a coal barge along the Clydeside canals, a frustrated writer gazes on numbly as a girl he wronged is dragged drowned from the river and another man found guilty of her murder.
Review:
Set in the 50s, this haunting film evokes a period when the death sentence was still applied, when barges were still used to transport coal and dropping out and 'going to China' seemed a romantic, unachievable dream. The antihero, like Camus's Meursault, causes a death almost inadvertently, and confounds expectation with his lack of remorse afterwards. The achievement, of both McGregor and Mackenzie, lies in eliciting neither our sympathy nor our repulsion for Joe, who behaves at other times with honesty and sensitivity. Life on the barges is beautifully evoked with browns and greens, but the characters are filmed with a dismal grey truth that recalls the corpse of the opening sequence.
Country: GB/FR
Technical: col/scope 98m
Director: David Mackenzie
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Emily Mortimer
Synopsis:
Working on a coal barge along the Clydeside canals, a frustrated writer gazes on numbly as a girl he wronged is dragged drowned from the river and another man found guilty of her murder.
Review:
Set in the 50s, this haunting film evokes a period when the death sentence was still applied, when barges were still used to transport coal and dropping out and 'going to China' seemed a romantic, unachievable dream. The antihero, like Camus's Meursault, causes a death almost inadvertently, and confounds expectation with his lack of remorse afterwards. The achievement, of both McGregor and Mackenzie, lies in eliciting neither our sympathy nor our repulsion for Joe, who behaves at other times with honesty and sensitivity. Life on the barges is beautifully evoked with browns and greens, but the characters are filmed with a dismal grey truth that recalls the corpse of the opening sequence.
Country: GB/FR
Technical: col/scope 98m
Director: David Mackenzie
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton, Peter Mullan, Emily Mortimer
Synopsis:
Working on a coal barge along the Clydeside canals, a frustrated writer gazes on numbly as a girl he wronged is dragged drowned from the river and another man found guilty of her murder.
Review:
Set in the 50s, this haunting film evokes a period when the death sentence was still applied, when barges were still used to transport coal and dropping out and 'going to China' seemed a romantic, unachievable dream. The antihero, like Camus's Meursault, causes a death almost inadvertently, and confounds expectation with his lack of remorse afterwards. The achievement, of both McGregor and Mackenzie, lies in eliciting neither our sympathy nor our repulsion for Joe, who behaves at other times with honesty and sensitivity. Life on the barges is beautifully evoked with browns and greens, but the characters are filmed with a dismal grey truth that recalls the corpse of the opening sequence.