Longford [2006] [Tom Hooper]

Early in the film the protagonist, the infamous Lord Longford, nervously dodders around a prison meeting room, searching for the prisoner who requested they meet – Myra Hindley. He approaches a woman from behind who shares Myra’s iconic dirty-blonde, big hairdo – But it isn’t Myra, she approaches Lord Longford quietly, and we see she has a generic, long, brown, unkempt hairstyle. This little twist of fakery is representative of everything the film is trying to accomplish with regards to Myra Hindley – To challenge the accepted images and engrained social conclusions, not to separate and elevate her to a demonic creature, but to look at her for what she is, even after all the brutal slayings: A human being. As the film progresses Lord Longford foolishly thinks that he has a significant connection with, a connection founded on a perceived shared deep interest in the catholic faith, resulting in Longford believing that Myra is somehow redeemed, and even more ridiculously believing that his own actions are in service to God. As he puts it, “If you were forgiven by God, who are we to condemn you.” The issues covered and the questions raised while relating specifically to Myra Hindley and the uniqueness of her case, are still extremely relevant in regards to the reaction to the aftermath of terror and in particular if forgiveness and redemption is possible – or should be allowed to be possible – in those who have shown themselves to be empty of the normal behavioural faculties that make us all human. Many questions are posed, is it evil to ignore those who seek help? Is it to be truly good necessary to ignore past evils? Is a good act good regardless of motive? – However you look at it the line between what determines the universal constants of “good” and “evil” is blurred, crossed and erased altogether throughout the film, resulting with Longford and Myra carrying the true-to-life shades of grey, and the ambiguity and futility inherent in attempting to achieve spiritual wholeness and acceptance in oneself, which they uniquely try to seek through each other to debatable degrees of failure.

Myra has a sort of predatorily chameleonic personality, even when she’s acting like the wide-eyed good Christian girl it’s clear that she’s working her thrall on the Lord – Something chillingly ironically the judge in the real case said Myra was under with Ian Brady. She’s rarely cruel, most times seeming quite pleasant on the surface. Her dialogue and the delivery is vaguely sensual, in particular her retelling of her confessional is tinged with a kind of purity and virginity Lord Longford can’t help but buy into. Samantha Morton, who was so ethereal and vulnerable in Minority Report, is so gaunt and hopeless, like a solid brick wall. She shows a great talent for playing the emotion close to her chest, but her character is still fascinating and captivating – Her interpretation of the woman has levels of realistic humanity few would give to such an apparently simplistic insane woman. Each of the three main cast go through a radical transformation for their parts. Jim Broadbent’s physicality is changed entirely, by use of prosthetics, altering his voice and his adoption of Longford’s mannerisms. There’s always a looming shadow of tragedy cast over Lord Longford, behind the bumbling and upper-class joviality lays a troubled individual, and Broadbent knows exactly how to do the character justice by both recreating the famous persona and revealing the man’s desperate, desolate side. Andy Serkis, famous for his other psychopath, Gollum, is absolutely terrifying. Controversially he went to visit the real Ian Brady to better emulate the man – And it shows. Here is a man who is fully aware of his own insanity, even proud of it. He exerts a confidence over all and is simply overpowering to watch. As Gollum, Serkis mastered a character many would call ‘inhuman’, here he does the same but in a very different way, proving, as if there were any doubt, that he is capable of great range in performance.


While the script is necessarily ambiguous, the compositions and drained colours are telling of the characters’ senses and impulses. Myra is shot like a withered, dead flower decaying in her chair, never given colour or real light to bloom, always engulfed by the walls and barriers. When she does briefly go outside it’s an extra-sensory experience for both her and us, I found myself gasping as children walked by serenely unaware of who was in their midst. Myra’s eyes dart around in extremely extreme close up. She’s just as intensely anxious as we are, the full effect of society’s outcast of her is felt: strangling, displacing, it’s bizarre to see so honestly the effects of imprisonment, like an after-effect, a cruel scar she can never be rid of. There’s a very British aesthetic to the film, with the sense of emotion lingering underneath everything, bottled up pain dying to surface, claustrophobia in every room. This mood can be seen in all of the Myra and Longford scenes, further suggesting the two of them never really know each other, each of them withholding thoughts and emotions from the other to suit their own requirements. For a film mostly taking place in prison it’s shocking how visually varied and engaging it is, the blank surroundings and luminous unnatural light sources are put to excellent use, having strange presence in the background around the characters, they’re sterile and unwelcoming and feel like they will swallow the characters and we the viewer whole.

Thinking over the motives of both Myra and Lord Longford in their relationship is something the film encourages from the start, intelligently straying away from easy answers (that in such widely documented criminally cases are rare to find but the public jumps upon) Society misunderstood both of them, more so with Longford, and as the film progresses it becomes clear that they never fully understood each other either, which seems to be at least a partial conscious decision. Their relationship is compelling, and realistically lacks sentimental development – There’s no moment of realisation (at least not one vocalised outright), an even-level togetherness or anything resembling a shared sense of happiness. Even with those deficits it is clear that the relationship was important to each of them on some level. While Myra is someone I would call ‘forever unknowable’, even in cinematic form (the greatest praise I can give to the films treatment of Myra is that we don’t know her at the end of it all), there is some kind of urge of hers that Longford shares to stay loyal, and hold some of Longford’s trust – Whether she wants it for her own gain, and at times she clearly does, she wants it none the less – And something so strong cannot be simply tied down to basic manipulation.

The start of Longford’s involvement with Myra comes from her desire to see Ian Brady, something he discourages claiming it would affect her parole. Her shock at this suggestion is the turning point for both of them – In him, she sees someone with an impulse to help others, which superficially she can use to her advantage but perhaps also longs for – In her, he sees a damaged girl needing to be healed, and in turn from this he gets a kind of false spiritual pleasure, something he fails to see the perversity in. This calls into question whether his act of sporting a woman so unfairly maligned should be considered respectful and taken seriously due to the complex motivations behind it, when looked at his involvement as a whole was he seeking some kind of self-aggrandizing redemption through Myra, or genuinely caring for her well being? As we see later in the film Longford briefly moves onto attempting to ban pornography and even offering Ian Brady his hand in aiding his hunger strike, which in turn with the odd atmosphere around the Myra/Longford scenes, I see as effectively confirming the invalidity of his ‘social missions’, with them instead serving as self indulgent, faux-emotional flights of fancy to aid his own insecure spiritual well being – He claims a personal spiritual development in himself through his prison visits, even being thankful of Myra, but when faced directly with the massive true evil of Myra Hindley, in the film’s most breathtaking moment during their final meeting*, it looks like the enormity of his mistake has just hit him. It’s amazing that even during this brutal, soul-bruising moment he remains loyal to her and her to him. I feel that what makes this almost unbelievable, impossible relationship so touching is its honesty and the unspoken compassion that they clearly share for each other. At the end of it all they are both fully aware of the other’s manipulation, Longford of Myra’s trickery and Myra of Longford’s self gratification through her. Despite the alarming number of blockades between them, literal, social, and ones they erected themselves, there’s a solace to be found in someone who shares the same powerful longing for meaning. They both share a personal emptiness, but together it is filled.


*Quote: “But If you had been there, on the moors, in the moonlight, when we did the first one, you’d know, that evil can be a spiritual experience too.”

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters [1985] [Paul Schrader]

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is an emotional mosaic of a film, there is as the title suggests a clear structure of four chapters, but inside these are three separate - but cohesively linked through what they observe in the character of Mishima - modes of storytelling. They can be broken down as past (From childhood to the last day of his life), present (a real-time following of Mishima, ending with his famous act of public seppuku) and imagination (Three of his novels brought to life). It’s rare that a film is so interconnected through style, substance and structure, the organised wholeness reflecting the subconscious life-long mission of perfection that Mishima embarks upon, ending in (when observed as a whole) what seems like a predestined fusion of artistic expression, destruction and a longing to change the world. There is a rolling development to the character, glimpses of ideas and emotions in his past are exposed and consciously studied in his novels, and are fully realised in his final act of self-crafted spiritual beautification, an act which can be viewed as a culmination of the depths probed in the first three chapters of the film; art, beauty and action. The final chapter, The Harmony of the Pen and the Sword, is the most honest and brutally real, no novel to hide his extreme personality and ideals, baring his soul forcefully through protest and finally destroying himself at his highest point of honour and power.

The film is incredibly arresting, the style different for each mode, each with its own visual language and manner of exploring Mishima. His past, in harsh black and white, is shown in an un-probing way, in a near historical-recollection fashion, and we simply follow his life. At first the novel sequences are quite jarring, they are so vibrant, raw and colourful, full of telling compositions and beautifully crafted, hyper-stylised sets. They are all rooted in total blackness, like they’ve just sprung up in Mishima’s mind (occasionally the novel sequences are preceded by a scene of Mishima writing), the absorbing artificiality of it all is at odds with the shut-out realistic style of his past. It’s a bold move to blend such opposite visual storytelling techniques, but the events of his past amalgamate with the beauty and emotional forwardness of the novel sections to fully conjure up Mishima. Neither would work on its own, but together they work as one and fill in the gaps that they other left out, the lack of expression in his past is filled with the constant rampage of passion found in the novel sequences, and the lack of conjunction of each novel sequence is an irrelevance as they compose of crucial elements we are now able to see reflected in Mishima’s past life, and most importantly his final day. Starting with Mishima getting ready, there’s a roaming kineticism to the camera. The focus is stuck on Mishima, gliding over his immaculate army uniform and watching him button up in close up. It’s a very finalised way of shooting, like everything is being seen for the last time so is given a grand send-off. He is followed documentary style, hand-held camera and tracking shots structured in real-time. This almost displaces Mishima in the external world, in some ways casting him in a different light, making him seem like a determined mad man in a world full of coasters. Philip Glass’ score is outstanding, punctuating Mishima’s fixed path with absorbing rushes of sound. Like Mishima, the score has an evocative presence, a complicated array of short stabs of strings and bells, repeated over and over again but never faulting in aiding the visual climate.

The film is an interpretation of Mishima, but is surprisingly without conclusion. This is not a flaw, Schrader bravely chooses to avoid judgment or criticism, putting Mishima in an as-close-to objective light as possible. Through the sociological fundamentals of sexuality, political action, art, and the body, Mishima attempted to perfect himself. He achieved great literary success, he body-built himself into a towering statuesque figure, he formed a private army of dedicated fellow traditionalists. What conclusions can be drawn from these achievements? Many, but I believe that Mishima is a man who never lost his childlike yearning to change the world. He carved his own destiny out of his body and his work, set his mind on a clear path early on and obstinately followed it to the glorious end. Whether or not one agrees with his life’s work, I cannot help but admire his yearning for fullness. Someone who is so rigid and immovably confident in everything he does may seem unlikable, and he most certainly isn’t a likable character in the strictest sense. He is, simply put, a self-formed piece of art. A piece of art that I cannot help but be fascinated by. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters does the impossible and shows a life eternally connected to art, a life defined and destroyed through art, and fittingly it is a colossally profound and ambiguous work, a ravishing exploration of a man who melded integral desires of creation and impact together to shape something unique and special in himself, in death he was his own vision of perfection, even when the world was not.