Cultural Mining

Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

This week, I’m looking at three coming of age stories. There’s a gangster confronting his son in England during WWII; teens from Syracuse visiting Ottawa in the 80s for their last hurrah; and a teenaged girl spending time with her grandpa in a cabin in Canada’s north.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

Dir: Tom Harper

It’s 1940 in Birmingham, and Britain is at war. But Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) — the former boss of the notorious Peaky Blinders gang— is nowhere to be seen. He was once revered and feared by the people of that city, but most of his family, including his brother and partner-in-crime Arthur, are dead. There’s only his sister Ada, a local MP (Sophie Rundle), and his nihilistic son Duke (Barry Keoghan), the result of an affair Tommy had with a Roma woman. He lives all alone, now, in a crumbling palatial estate somewhere in the countryside — with only his faithful manservant/bodyguard to keep him company. He spends his time writing his memoirs and fending off visions of his violent past. Until, one day, his late lover’s identical-twin sister shows up with a request: Talk some sense into your son Duke, or we will all suffer from his terrible choices.

The Blitz — the German bombing of cities across the UK — is severely damaging morale. It’s not just the bombing; Nazi Germany —  as represented by an English collaborator named Beckett (Tim Roth) — is planning another insidious scheme to further crush the war effort and their economy by flooding the country with counterfeit banknotes. And they’ll be using Peaky Blinders — now run by Duke — to dump 70 million pounds worth of counterfeit bills on the unsuspecting public.  Can Tommy get his estranged son to see the light? Is there honour among thieves? And does Tommy’s past history as leader of the gang still hold sway in a city that has long moved on?

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is an action/thriller set in wartime Birmingham and Liverpool. It combines family relations, violent crime, and international espionage all set within the fog of war. It’s a sequel to the long-running TV series set a decade or two earlier. I’m sure fans of the show are interested in what became of all the previous characters. But I only watched a few episodes many years ago, and have never been a fan of adulating violent criminal families. But it still can be entertaining.

Does Peaky Blinder work as a movie? Sure: it provides lots of adventures with big explosions and shootouts, over bridges and through tunnels. And some memorable scenes, like a confrontation in a brothel, and a wrestling match in the mud of a pigsty. Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan both play their parts very well. What’s missing, though, is heart. I honestly didn’t care deeply about which of the main characters live or die; I had no vested interest in them. You can watch it now for some light entertainment on the big screen, or wait a week or two till it starts streaming on TV.

Hair of the Bear

Co-Wri/Co-Dir: James McLellan, Alexandre Trudeau

It’s a cold winter day in Manitoba. Tori (Malia Baker) is a 16 year-old who lives in the city but refuses go to school  or even interact. Riddled with self-doubt and closed to the outside world, even the smallest decision can lead to a paralyzing panic attack. And her wrists bear the scars of self-harm. So her mother decides to take action by driving her out to a remote cottage on a frozen lake in the vast Canadian Shield, and leave her there with her uncle Ben (Roy Dupuis). He’s a no-nonsense, back- to-the-land, who still uses a landline. He eats what he can trap or shoot, and in the winter he travels by skidoo. At first Tori is resistant to any efforts by her grandpa to teach her how to get along in the wild. “I’m not a survivalist,” she says. But soon, he has taught her how to track a bear, blaze a trail, shoot a deer and light a fire. He even gets her to ride a snowmobile on her own, something even days earlier she would have considered impossible. Tori is finally coming out of her shell. Maybe it’s being alone in the bush…

She manages to help he grandpa rescue two brothers, Sam and Miles (Robert Naylor, Jonathan Lawrence) trapped on the lake, one of whom has hypothermia — and would have frozen death if they hadn’t spotted them. They brought them back to the cabin, managed to raise Miles’ body temperature and then served them a hot meal of venison stew. But the brothers aren’t who they appear to be, and when her grandpa is incapacitated it’s up to Tori to survive on her own, and fight off the two intruders. But who will survive?

Hair of the Bear is a dramatic coming-of-age thriller about a withdrawn teenager facing a harsh climate and standing up to potentially dangerous strangers. It starts out pretty slow, with clunky dialogue and a dragging pace. It felt more like an afterschool special about a depressed and insecure kid than a Cabin in the Woods thriller. But somewhere along the way, it starts getting interesting, and by the end, it provides a shocking jolt of adrenaline. The cinematography is spare with gorgeous scenic views. The acting is very uneven, but by the end, you do feel for the characters. And it’s co-written and co-directed by none other than Sacha Trudeau, one of Maggie and Pierre’s three famous sons.

You should consider Hair of the Bear as a much-needed dose of Canadiana.

This Too Shall Pass

Co-Wri/Dir: Rob Grant

It’s the late 1980s at the end of the school year in Syracuse, NY. Simon (Maxwell Jenkins) is a shy and naive 17 year-old, who lives a sheltered life with his overprotective Mormon parents. He likes playing baseball, strumming his guitar and hanging with his friends. His Mom and Dad keep him on a short leash, only allowing him to go outside for school, church, and sports teams. But he manages to sneak away to a party, where he meets a girl named Shelly who actually shows interest in him. She’s leaving the next day for Ottawa for the summer, but casually suggests he should come up and see her sometime. But Simon’s parents already have his whole year mapped out: driving to a religious event and then working at a boring desk job, and returning home each day after work for more prayin’. So gathering his courage, he convinces his four best friends to drive with him to Canada where they can stay for free with his new “girlfriend”; it will be Simon’s last chance to do something before a spending a lifetime in metaphoric jail. And the drinking age is much lower up there! He promises this will be their Ferris Buehler weekend. (He doesn’t mention the wad of cash he stole from his dad.)

So off they go: Tim, his goth friend (Ben Cockell) Chris, the fat one, (Jeremy Ray Taylor) James, the Black guy (Jaylin Webb), and John the cool one (Aidan Laprete). Once across the border, they manage to find two sketchy guys to buy them some hooch. But that’s where things get bad. They end up broke and homeless in a foreign city. But then they meet a group of cool women, including Misty (Katie Douglas) who offer to help them shoplift from a record store to pay for a motel room. And from there, things get really wild. Which of the boys will lose their virginity, and which ones will wind up in jail?

This Too Shall Pass is a coming of age story set in the 1980s. It’s told in a series of flashbacks, by Simon who confesses everything to a sympathetic cop. It’s cute, sweet and endearing. It present an idealized 1980s, filtered through a John Hughes lens, full of anachronisms. But it’s still very entertaining. And the whole movie was shot in Alberta. 

I liked this one a lot.

Peaky Blinders and Hair of the Bear both open this weekend in Toronto, check your local listings; and This Too Shall Pass is now available on VOD.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com