I thought it was a good film with some great acting, and it confidently handles its central theme: the way that violence breeds and blossoms in contexts of fear, cruelty and loneliness. There were a few clunky bits, usually in the brief reprieves from misery that pass for happy moments, where a heavy soundtrack suddenly landed on the film from nowhere. Elsewhere it’s light soundtracking and use of silence is very effective, so a sudden dollop of wistful folk (backing a montage, of all things) seemed a bit hamfisted.

I was pleased that the film tackles domestic violence, and it does a pretty good job. One of the difficulties always faced by film makers is  how to portray domestic violence in a way that is shocking without it prompting the ‘but why doesn’t she just leave?’ response. Although the visual impact of the bruising on Olivia Colman’s familiar face carries most of the weight, the film was also showed the controlling behaviour of the character Hannah’s husband, and how he flexed his power over her in subtler ways than with his fists. For example when he first appears she is asleep on the sofa and he simply, almost perfunctorily, urinates on her. It showed one of his bouts of contrition and self pity, forcing Hannah to soothe his guilt and offer forgiveness. And her responses to the violence and use of alcohol to cope rang very true.

But to my mind the film didn’t really get across the reasons why Hannah and why women like her don’t and can’t leave abusive situations. Certainly her single line of dialogue about how her family and friends all think he’s perfect didn’t really address it. It’s a difficult thing to do concisely but I think it’s possible, maybe through focusing more on the psychological groundwork which underpins the physical abuse. There was one line of dialogue which I felt hinted effectively at the lengthy attack on Hannah’s self-esteem: she says she needs to leave for her work as a volunteer in a charity shop and her husband says casually “That’s not work.”

What bothered me most in an otherwise brilliant film though was the fact that Hannah wasn’t really a fully formed character the way Joseph was. Her story was obscured by her victimhood. The hints about Joseph’s past and a series of small poignant details built up a subtle but powerful story of a man seemingly unable to escape his own violence. But there was no such picture of Hannah, she was just A Victim. The lack of realistic depth or complexity in her character in a way helped to underline her isolation and the way that the threat of violence had seeped into every minute of her day, but I think better writing could have achieved that too, while giving her a past and an identity.

A related niggle: her desire for children seemed like a bit of a bolt-on, designed to make her a more tragic figure. (Hm. What do women like? Babies!) There was even a massively cliched watching-a-mother-and-child-at-the-park scene. The focus at the film’s climax was about how the abuse had prevented her from becoming a mother. Which is devastating, and difficult to watch, but something about the way it was done made it feel like it was just put in to make her more sympathetic in the light of the revelation that she has murdered her husband. As if suffering daily humiliation, terror and physical violence for years isn’t enough to win an audience’s sympathy.

At the end of the day Tyrannosaur isn’t Hannah’s story, she is primarily a plot device to allow Joseph to confront his own violent reactions. Which is a legitimate directorial decision, he is the film’s main protagonist. But I feel like it was a missed opportunity to write a three dimensional female character, in a film which deals seriously with the subject of violence against women.

Last weekend I paid a visit to the rather gorgeous Dalston Rio Cinema, to watch It Always Rains On Sunday, which was showing as part of the East End Film Festival. It was one of their ‘Silver Screen’ matinees, which are free for the over 60s and include tea and cake in the ticket price. And let me tell you, the home-made victoria sponge was DELICIOUS, and not just because it was free.

Rio Cinema is very lovely inside, with a huge pale blue arching ceiling and a proper thick red velvet curtain across the screen. It has been a cinema for nearly a century, and there’s a detailed history page on their site, including pictures of it in some of its former incarnations, as the Kingsland Empire, the Dalston Classic, and the racy Tatler.

The film was ostensibly about a Bethnal Green housewife sheltering her escaped convict ex-lover, but actually the star of the film was Ealing Studios version of East London in the 1940s (including the line “Oh, I wish there was no such place as Bethnal Green!” which got a big laugh). There was a lot of detail about the daily life of the family, with their tin bath and their Anderson shelter and cheese ration. Plus a trio of Cockney crooks, a Jewish market wheeler-dealer and a philandering saxophonist. My favourite bit, however, was the switch to a film of a toy train set for the long-view action shot when the fugitive is escaping across a railway yard

The only thing that slightly spoiled it was the commentary coming from some of the more elderly members of the audience, along the lines of: “Ooh, what’s this? He knows, he knows! Ah, blackmail yes. Yes. Oh no, don’t run! He’s coming home!” etc… But hey, I was crashing their performance, so I can’t complain.

The protagonist, a young woman called Fausta,  is ill with a disease contracted from her mother’s breast milk known as “the milk of sorrow”,  a condition that only affects those women in Peru who were abused or raped during the years of terrorist struggle.  This Grauniad review says “This Peruvian lament examining how distress passes down the generations is subtle and wonderfully moving.”

Here’s the trailer. Please go and support the screening of weird films at Stratford Picturehouse!*

* ‘Weird’ is intended to be entirely complimentary, btw

There were some really stunning pieces, beautiful and mesmerising, some were creepy, or witty, all intelligent. It was packed when we went, and the abundant duct tape, neon, chatter and clanking of machinery gave the impression of being jostled through some kind of intergalactic souk.

Given the subject matter and the crowd you might expect the show to attract, *everyone* was taking photographs, liveblogging, podcasting, or filming the artworks, so there’s lots for people who didn’t get to see it, this video by Rainycatz takes in a lot of the really eerie lovely stuff that was going on.

There’s also a ton of Kinetica pictures on Flickr which are well worth a browse. Here’s a short video I took on my phone of some serenely spinning solar-powered glassy blue discs, which made me think of an otherwordly orrery: Kinetica – Orrery

I will add the title of that piece and the artist when I can get their website to work – it is clearly not futuristic enough to handle my OS + browser combo (oh snap!) Ok, have tracked it down, it’s called ‘Multiple Organism’ by Daniel Chadwick.

Other favourites include ‘Tease’ by Kathy Taylor, which has really grown on me. It has more layers than might be apparent at first glance, and it’s gentle play with a political/social theme appealed to me. As well as the ‘oooh flying teabag!’ reaction, of course.  You can see the movement in the video above.

The Most Unsettling Work award goes to ‘Memory’ by Mital and Papadakis, which was eerie in the extreme. Plus I’m a sucker for neurological imagery in art from Keats onwards. From ‘Ode to Psyche’:

In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind

Wow, I am the culturedest!

Western genre motifs are transformed to the landscape of East London. Questioning and re-imagining the Western’s portrayal of the ‘Vanishing Frontier’, this film recreates the epic panoramas of the Western in Hackney Marshes, the Thames Gateway and Essex. Using landfills, wastelands and gravel pits linked to the construction of the 2012 Olympic Park, it questions volatile financial speculations, private interests and the spectre of the Olympic gold rush. Working with a large cast of actors and non-actors (many of whom are themselves residents of East London), the film explores the compromises of a population facing this new order.

Trail of the Spider Poster