You have to love the photography in this film: the lava lamp reflection in a window looking out onto inky night synchronised with an orgasm. The very deliberate monochromatic lighting in the rooms, we go from yellow to blue almost as if we're watching a silent movie that has been tinted (clearly Arnold has been influenced by all phases of von Trier).
These however are triumphs in despite of the script. For what we have here is another example of the cultural malaise that is the British 'Grim Up North' picture or what used to be known as a Kitchen-Sinker. This is the role of young British directors these days, to make austere, nasty films. Supposedly the only 'authentic' culture we have in Great Britain is that of the working class. Although to call the jobless reprobates that we often see in these movies 'working' class is a misnomer to put it only mildly. What UK cineastes mean by this term 'authentic' is very nebulous (after all who can objectively term an alcopop-fuelled culture of fornication, drug abuse, wage slavery, gambling and swearing authentic?), generally only being a reflection of their own middle-class self-hatred, their narcissistic despising of the bourgeois milieu that they belong to and prop up (perhaps a more appropriate response to this background would be along the lines of the Vienna Actionists?). Andrea Arnold herself is guilty of this. An interview on the UK DVD release is very telling in this respect, it's clear that she's really quite jealous of the people and culture that she has run into. She's also quite clear that she deliberately avoided shooting any of the affluent parts of Glasgow, or the 'nice fancy retail streets' as she calls them as if somehow consumerism were only part of the middle class experience. She also mentions that she is only interested in 'people who are up against it'. Which I suppose is what an American would correctly call a classic example of liberal guilt.
There are excuses for this type of filming (the excesses of which border on paternalism), for example as a political polemic (The Last of England), or a horror movie (Dead Men's Shoes). But mainly the brand is about navel gazing, wallowing in class-bound angst and guilt, projecting our own sickness onto what Dickens described as 'the gaiety of the slums'.
One excuse for this film might be that it has a political message about CCTV surveillance. In fact CCTV in this film is more about a metaphor of voyeurism, more of a middle class disease and seemingly not something that Jackie would be doing. The level of CCTV surveillance in the UK country is not really frightening anyway (another classic example of liberal middle-class paranoia) ,it is comforting . I speak as someone who has actually worked in a shop and has used CCTV to help get convictions against people behaving antisocially both inside and out. CCTV also helped to catch a criminal who robbed the shop and umpteen thrill-shoplifters.
We are a long way away from the days of Edison when the paradigm of a film was that it was above all to be entertaining. One mustn't be too hard on Red Road though, the acting and photography are flawless after all. 6/10
These however are triumphs in despite of the script. For what we have here is another example of the cultural malaise that is the British 'Grim Up North' picture or what used to be known as a Kitchen-Sinker. This is the role of young British directors these days, to make austere, nasty films. Supposedly the only 'authentic' culture we have in Great Britain is that of the working class. Although to call the jobless reprobates that we often see in these movies 'working' class is a misnomer to put it only mildly. What UK cineastes mean by this term 'authentic' is very nebulous (after all who can objectively term an alcopop-fuelled culture of fornication, drug abuse, wage slavery, gambling and swearing authentic?), generally only being a reflection of their own middle-class self-hatred, their narcissistic despising of the bourgeois milieu that they belong to and prop up (perhaps a more appropriate response to this background would be along the lines of the Vienna Actionists?). Andrea Arnold herself is guilty of this. An interview on the UK DVD release is very telling in this respect, it's clear that she's really quite jealous of the people and culture that she has run into. She's also quite clear that she deliberately avoided shooting any of the affluent parts of Glasgow, or the 'nice fancy retail streets' as she calls them as if somehow consumerism were only part of the middle class experience. She also mentions that she is only interested in 'people who are up against it'. Which I suppose is what an American would correctly call a classic example of liberal guilt.
There are excuses for this type of filming (the excesses of which border on paternalism), for example as a political polemic (The Last of England), or a horror movie (Dead Men's Shoes). But mainly the brand is about navel gazing, wallowing in class-bound angst and guilt, projecting our own sickness onto what Dickens described as 'the gaiety of the slums'.
One excuse for this film might be that it has a political message about CCTV surveillance. In fact CCTV in this film is more about a metaphor of voyeurism, more of a middle class disease and seemingly not something that Jackie would be doing. The level of CCTV surveillance in the UK country is not really frightening anyway (another classic example of liberal middle-class paranoia) ,it is comforting . I speak as someone who has actually worked in a shop and has used CCTV to help get convictions against people behaving antisocially both inside and out. CCTV also helped to catch a criminal who robbed the shop and umpteen thrill-shoplifters.
We are a long way away from the days of Edison when the paradigm of a film was that it was above all to be entertaining. One mustn't be too hard on Red Road though, the acting and photography are flawless after all. 6/10