The Armstrong Lie

The Armstrong Lie, 2013, Sony Pictures Classics. Directed by Alex Gibney, starring Lance Armstrong, Reed Albergotti, Frankie Andreu.

Watch it on 4OD

In 2013, Lance Armstrong admitted to sport’s worst kept secret, coming clean about his use of performance enhancing drugs throughout his career. His sponsors fled, his titles were stripped from him and he’s currently being sued for $100 million for fraud. To be sure, being Lance Armstrong now doesn’t seem like fun, but in Alex Gibney’s hastily re-edited documentary, he didn’t seem to mind too much.

Alex Gibney was originally drafted in to film Armstrong’s triumphant comeback to the Tour De France in 2009, after winning it seven times from 1999 to 2005. His story of cancer, heartache and honest hard work was a fairytale – many believed that to be exactly the case. Knowing what we do now, it’s hard to look at the masses of fans cheering Armstrong on as a hero and realise that he lied, cheated and bullied his way to the top. The documentary doesn’t shirk the difficult task of showing Armstrong as a maligned angel to his public and a candid drug user in private; one of his US Postal Service teammates recalled a time when Armstrong openly gave himself a shot of EPO right in their hotel room.

And then there’s Armstrong’s utter refusal to say sorry. The film feels like it’s building to a climax of regret and retribution, but neither is fore coming. Clearly, Armstrong wished he never came back in 2009 (which opened a renewed interest in a second look at his sketchy past) because he got caught out. But he never really said sorry to the people he’d sued and destroyed to protect his reputation. One teammate said of Armstrong’s achievements, ‘Did he win by the rules of the road? Yes. But did he win by the rules? No.’ Armstrong still maintains that he didn’t cheat and that history will say he won the Tour seven times.

This kind of belligerence makes for a difficult subject of what was originally meant to be a soft and inspiring film about Armstrong’s need to cycle ridiculous distances in France. The actual Tour itself looks fun and exciting, and there is a small thrill in hearing the other teams worry themselves over the Sir Bradley Wiggins threat (whose own documentary, A Year in Yellow, was presumably everything this one wanted to be but couldn’t) but it’s still overshadowed by its most well known participant’s blatant drug use. Gibney himself sounds constantly dejected, speaking of when he was caught up in the Armstrong Myth in the 2009 Tour and then immediately reminding his audience that this man still cheated everyone. It goes against every narrative urge for a sports documentary - no one ever beats the odds by cheating, that would be heartbreakingly realistic! The incredible story turned out to be just that, and at times this film feels more like a Werner Herzog piece than anything else.

This film has no villain; Armstrong refuses to see himself as such and Gibney doesn’t push that angle. It’s also strangely structured, leaping back and forth between events and swallowing stories to spit them back out later. Armstrong is cool and collected – his interview after the Oprah interview should have been the point in the narrative where he let his mask slip and shown what he was truly feeling, but there was no sense of a human being with a beating heart in any of his interviews for this film. Ultimately, Armstrong seems like an unpleasant person who won’t say sorry.  The Armstrong Lie is a nihilistic film but it is refreshing in the way that there’s no way a sport can sink any lower than cycling in 2013. And with Team Sky taking on the world, the Tour de France may just have some heroes worth celebrating.

A Million Ways to Die in the West

A Million Ways to Die in the West, 2014, Fuzzy Door Productions. Directed by Seth MacFarlane. Starring Seth MacFarlane, Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Patrick Harris.

I’m going to be honest, I hated A Million Ways to Die in the West. I hated that I spent just shy of a tenner to watch Seth MacFarlane have everyone tell his character how wonderful and special he was. I hated that he was supposed to be totally flawless, just in need of a confidence boost. I hated how he let us know that the West wasn’t great by just shouting for two minutes, rather than using the medium of film to show it. I hated how his go to punch line was saying ‘Oh shit!’ in case the audience couldn’t follow that the violent slapstick was violent. I hated that Django Unchained used ultra violence to demonstrate the Bad Old Days in better and funnier ways and I could have spent my money on that DVD instead (God, how I hated that).

I hated how Charlize Theron was diminished to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in a hat in the first two acts and a damsel in distress in the last. I hated how she took an instant dislike to Amanda Seyfried without having a single scene alone with her. I hated that those two characters revolved entirely around Seth MacFarlane. I hated how Sarah Silverman wasn’t in it nearly enough.

I hated how glimpses of a funnier movie were suffocated by a two hour run time. I hated how scenes ran on and on with no end or purpose in sight and I hated that they didn’t have a single joke in them. I hated that the potentially funny jokes were mishandled and had all promise wrangled out of them. I hated how interesting subversive ideas were immediately shied away from and breezed over. I hated that there was a How I met Your Mother joke and it was terrible. I hated how people were dragged in to make cameos that only added to the runtime and nothing else. I hated how the toilet humour was just kind of gross. I hated that the Western genre is a rich field of comedy language, but that was ignored and characters spoke in 2009 slang. I hated that I love American Dad! but instead of that brand of sharp observational satire, I got Family Guy Goes West.

I hated that I expected more from Seth MacFarlane, who is a very talented man but just didn’t seem to know what to do with the genre. I hated that he gathered some excellent people and squandered them. I hated that Neil Patrick Harris defecated in two hats, but didn’t sing the musical number. I hated that I assumed Seth MacFarlane is skilled enough to have created the new Blazing Saddles, but didn’t seem to care that he was making something less funny than athlete’s foot.

The fight in the bar was good though, really funny.

Fossil

Fossil, 2014, Brickwell Films. Directed by Alex Walker. Starring John Sackville, Edith Bukovics, Grant Masters and Carla Juri.

Fossil is the third film and first feature length piece by Alex Walker, who directed the enticing We Dreamed America, an exploration of the Country Music scene in Britain. As that film shows the consequences of two cultures intertwining, so Fossil shows the clash of ideals between the repressed and the carefree, the rich and the... less rich.  

Alex Walker wrote, directed, produced and edited the film and unfortunately it really shows. Any meaning to be gleaned from the artsy title and fartsy symbols is lost under half an hour of story dragged out over ninety minutes. Husband and wife Paul and Camilla are on their jollies in France when two drifters Richard and Julie break in and use their pool. Camilla invites them to stay, Paul objects, Richard flirts, Paul worries and it’s obvious from the first five minutes that someone will end up dead in Chekov’s pool by the end of act two. Massive plot threads are introduced and then promptly dropped, any action taken has no consequence and the film doesn’t really end, it just... stops.

The lack of a coherent story is not helped by the barely-there characters; Paul is writing a book on holiday which he won’t let anyone read (of course), his despicable wife seems to do things just to exasperate him and Richard and Julie are a Manic Pixie Dream Couple, and yes, they are as irritating as that sounds. The script is underwritten and badly needed someone else’s input. Instead, it’s a cliché wrapped in a trope and glaring mistakes shine through for the world to see. For example, the discussion I had after watching the film was not about marriage in a modern world or the strains of sharing a dark secret when you can’t trust your partner, but why in God’s name were they using aerial flip phones in a 2012 set film? And when a baffling prop choice is the most memorable part of your film, something has been lost along the way.

There was potential in Fossil. Shot like a French art house film from the 70s, the sundrenched Southern French landscape is drained of distinctive colours, the lingering shots of the gorgeous countryside given a distant, cold air as our four characters act out their melodrama under the relentless sunshine. Some shots are telling of Walker’s skill behind the camera and he seems to have a knack for finding beautiful, off-kilter angles which makes you wish you had a beard to stroke in deep thought as you wonder what it all means. But, a lousy script is a lousy script and not even the loveliest of scenery can save that. In the nicest possible way, Walker would do well to stick to directing and leave the script writing to someone else. I’d give this one a miss.

Murder on the Westeros Express: Character Death in Game of Thrones

OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING ATTACHED TO ANYTHING DISCUSSING GAME OF THRONES:

As the title suggests, this is a post about character death in Game of Thrones. If you're not caught up on the series, read on but on your own head be it. Also a confession; I’ve not read the books so if you, dear reader, could refrain from telling me what happens later on, I’d be very much obliged, ta. On with the blog!

Game of Thrones is back and I couldn’t be happier. It’s brilliant example of how, as Hollywood movies trend towards all of their films being as inclusive as possible, Hollywood TV can and will throw money at huge, expensive shows with enormous casts and complex stories and make it just for adults. 

Woooo!!! Political machinations!!! Allegorical parables!!! Dragons!!!

It’s a show full of breathtaking moments (the Battle of Blackwater Bay is probably my favourite scene in any TV show) but cast your minds back to series one, episode 9 where it really stood out from the pretenders. Yeah, you know which bit I’m talking about, this scene right here: 

This might surprise some of you, but watching Ned Stark die in the first series came as a shock to my sister. She’d not really bothered with Game of Thrones and was only watching because it was on the telly, but when the moment happened, she was definitely surprised, saying, “They can’t kill off Sean Bean! He’s the main character!”

And then described how she thought it would have panned out, with Ayra Stark leaping up, killing the executioner and running away to have awesome adventures with her beloved daddy. This to me, after three series and a half series of main characters dying, sounded ridiculous of course. But it wasn’t ridiculous to my sister, who saw all main characters everywhere as untouchable, so why should Game of Thrones be any different? 

Game of Thrones has a serious reputation for being very brutal with its leading roles. Think back to poor Renly; he was built up to be Robb Stark’s partner in battle, only to be slain in the 6^th episode of series two. After him, surely it was Robb who would be gloriously victorious, but one Red Wedding later and he’s off the pitch for good. Joffrey, who as the show’s main villain was vital to the proceedings, couldn’t survive his own wedding. Being a main character in Westeros takes its toll, but what makes this different to other shows which seem to equally enjoy a bit of character death every so often?

Really, what does killing a main character mean? If you take the Steven Moffat route, then it means getting a cheap shock before pushing a big Reset button which takes away any jeopardy, because what’s a story with stakes compare to a mess of clever clever twists? In Bones, it means Booth can be shot and buried by a stalker, but then hastily revived unconvincingly one episode later. Even Life on Mars couldn’t quite commit to it, and had John Simm happily running around with his 1970’s cop buddies after he’d jumped off a roof. This means that death is a revival, and a character faking their death or enjoying a robust afterlife shows that death is not the end, meaning that there can be no consequences.

But death in Game of Thrones always has consequences. The show’s motto, All Men Must Die, is a battle cry against the transiency of TV death, for there can be no last minute revival from a bad case of sword through the neck. There’s only one character, Beric Dondarrion, the leader of the Brotherhood Without Banners, who has cheated death, and he is a periphery, a dangerous symbol of the world outside the known concepts of life and death.

And he pays for every single time it happens, but more on that later.

There are no audience tricking loopholes, no fake funerals, no body switching – people die and stay dead, and each one has severe consequences. Take the orphan children Theon has brutally murdered and tries to pass off as the charred remains of Rickon and Bran Stark. Thinking her little brother has killed two of the remaining Starks, Yara decides her brother is half mad and takes his reinforcements away, leaving Theon at the mercy of his turncoat soldiers and subjecting him to a life of torture at the hands of the fully mad Ramsey Snow. Two orphan children cease the Greyjoy campaign for independence and the War of the Five Kings loses its first contestant. The horrible Janos Slynt, who orchestrated the murder of all Robert Baratheon’s bastard children, is sent packing to the Wall; the consequences of his part in the slaughter is still to be meted out in the show, but seeing as Wildings are surrounding Castle Black and the watchmen tend to panic without Jon Snow around, the night will most likely be dark and full of terrors for the least likable officer of the Night’s Watch.

There’s supernatural death, death by infection, death by zombification, death by dragon:

 And this is my second favourite moment of telly ever

In fact the only character who seems to die of natural causes is Robert Baratheon, who should have known better than harshing his buzz with boar hunting. But the show is never casual about the reality of surrounding its character’s with death, and this is shown through the arc taken by everyone’s favourite little murderer, Arya Stark.

Fun fact, 'Arya' is the fastest growing baby name in the USA!

Arya’s development as a character comes through her relationship with death. Her Dancing Master Syrio Forel taught her to pray to the God of Death, but it was still a cool game she was playing. Then, when her father is taken and guards are looking for her, she accidently kills a fat boy. She brags about this when Hot Pie starts to bully her, and it’s obvious that it’s still a sort of game to her. But then Polliver kills her friend with her own sword, and it’s no longer a game. She repeats the names of her potential kills, only praying to the God of Death, and the fun, sparky Arya of Winterfell, who could shoot better than her brothers and threw mud at her sister, is slowly replaced by a woman with death in her eyes. 

This change happens when she is talking to Thoros of Myr, when she sees hope for her father after all – if Thoros, a drunk priest, can bring Beric back to life, what’s stopping Ned from being reattached to his head? But she also sees how life after death can change a person too; before, Beric gave Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie a place to stay in safety. Afterwards, he sells Gendry for a bag of gold and the promises of a scary Red Woman. Arya sees no safety with the resurrected and, after watching her old life burn away at the Red Wedding, she makes her first kill out of red hot rage, knifing the man who desecrated her brother’s body. But now, Arya has made a dent in her list of names, coolly seeing off Polliver when he no longer posed a threat, kills out of revenge, not necessity or anger. How long until she kills for pleasure? Or until she gets her own comeuppance? I’m not sure, but I won’t stop watching until I find out.

Normally, killing the main character is a sign that a show has ran out of ideas, which why so many are written back in with little regard for logic. Resting the first series on Ned’s shoulders, when he was always going to be on the chopping block, was a bold move; even bolder was to splinter the stories and follow the chaos of war and politics, turning the show into a true ensemble piece, with everyone seeking different trophies. This is a show that isn’t afraid of challenging expectations of what a telly death means – not for Game of Thrones are the lame excuses of dreams, wizards or ‘timey wimey’ (God I hate that phrase) which are the fallback of other and dare I say, lesser, shows. It’s difficult to say who is the true star is now (although personally, my love for Bronn is as pure as his awesomeness) but on whoever the spotlight falls, I feel safe in the knowledge that their time on top will be spectacular. If, perhaps, short.