DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner:
The National Gallery’s English New Wave retrospective closes this weekend with, as far as this writer is concerned, the best film of the period. Alan Sillitoe’s screenplay (from his own short story) concerns Colin Smith, a British youth whose skill for distance running is only matched by his ability to get himself into trouble. It’s an unfortunate hereditary trait. “Running’s always been a big thing in our family,” says Tom Courtenay as Colin, “especially running away from the police.” When a small time bakery heist goes wrong, Colin finds himself in a reformatory where his fleet feet set him apart from his peers and catch the eye of the institution’s Governor, who wants to use Colin to show up the rich wankers from a local private school. The movie hinges on a beautifully executed sequence in which Colin must choose whether or not he’ll allow himself to be used as a pawn, even if it might ultimately be to his own benefit.
Courtenay is a revelation in his first major role. He might have lacked the matinee-idol good looks, but as the wiry athlete of the title he one-ups even James Dean’s portrayal of youthful rebellion and resistance to authority. Like the eponymous hero of his subsequent (and somewhat better known) role in Billy Liar, Colin is a dreamer. But rather than Billy’s fantastical flights of fancy, Colin broods and glowers on his own memories, and when Courtenay’s eyes switch from mischief to darker moods, his character suddenly seems more weary of the world than his age should allow. Tony Richardson’s exuberant direction, full of skillfully woven flashbacks and flashes of remembrance during Colin’s runs, perfectly reflects the restlessness within the story’s hero.
Screens Sunday at 4:30 p.m. (with the Lindsay Anderson short subject documentary Every Day Except Christmas) at the National Gallery‘s East Building Auditorium.
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One of the best-reviewed films of last year (no “foreign” qualifier needed) was Christian Mungiu’s unflinching drama about a young woman seeking an abortion in Ceauşescu’s Romania, where not only abortion was illegal, but even contraception was banned. Mungiu pulls no punches in his depiction of the brutality of both the Communist regime in the country in the late 1980s and of the shady hotel room abortions desperate women were forced to endure. The film beat out stiff competition this year to pick up the Palme d’Or at Cannes, but is conspicuously absent from the reliably stuffy Best Foreign Language Film ballot at the Academy Awards. Hopefully that oversight won’t adversely affect the film’s distribution here in the States, as this is the latest and greatest entry in the current Romian film renaissance.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Cinema.
