Five Minutes Of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2009)

[colinr0380]

Just shown this evening on the BBC I thought I'd add some comments while it is fresh in my mind. Spoilers will follow.

The Irish set film follows a meeting set up by a TV programme to 'reconcile' the Protestant killer of a Catholic man with the man's brother who witnessed the shooting and has been haunted ever since by the events, though it becomes apparent that both men are haunted. After a voice over from the killer, Alistair, explaining the feverish atmosphere of the time that plays over a stock footage montage, the film opens in 1975 as we see the events of that fateful night from the perspective of the boy (playing football against the wall outside his house while his brother is left alone inside as the rest of the family leave) and of the teenager about to make his first kill for the cause. I actually found the early section darkly amusing with rather broad symbolism, as the teen has hidden the gun he has received amongst his old toys tucked away under the bed (moving away toy guns to get to the real one!) suggesting the naive youthfulness of the young man. As he loads the gun (putting the cartridges in the chambers to 'build' the weapon, comparing to the use for the Lego bricks he has hidden the cartridges with) and tries to find the best way to hide it in his belt, and then later when he is showing the gun to his friends, there is a real sense of danger in the way they are waving the weapon around that also suggests their childishness, along with the way they react to running into a convoy of army vehicles on the way to the shooting. Particularly amusing was the cut to the outside of the car as we hear the conversation continuing inside as one of the lads asks if he can touch the gun and another comments on how powerful it is! They are more in awe of the power and reputation they'll have among their friends and community than any particular political or religious motivation.

The scene of the shooting seems to take pains to make sure that Alistair is the only person who kills - the others facilitate by stealing a car and driving but he is the one responsible for taking Joe's brother's life. Alistair is last seen in the period section at the nightclub that the gang has gone to in order to provide their alibi for the evening, eyeing up the girls and smirking to himself seemingly in enjoyment of his newfound status. Joe on the other hand is attacked by his mother upset that he did not do anything to prevent his brother's murder, although he really was too young to have done anything and the mother is characterised here as insane with grief and violently lashing out at the wrong person.

The film jumps to the present with Alistair and Joe being driven in separate cars to their televised reconciliation meeting. Joe is still haunted, less by the murder than by his mother's condemnatory attitude towards him after his brother's death (this does seem rather overplayed, but the mother's attitude towards Joe might better be seen as representing Joe's having built up small moments of rejection up over the years into a feeling of being held totally responsible for his brother's death rather than the gunman), and by his annoyance at the way Alistair has apparently parlayed his murder (and subsequent imprisonment) into a career of providing public speeches and advising important political figures about the forces that drive a individual killer or terrorist groups to commit their crimes. Alistair for his part seems aware that the upcoming meeting is purely about Joe being able to confront him.

The heart of the film is the section set at the country house where the television programme is to be filmed. As Joe is held upstairs, the crew bring Alistair in and film an introductory segment with him. This section is very much about the way that bringing in a crew and cameras into a supposedly natural situation removes any sense of reality from it. Not only has the meeting between the two men been entirely set up for the purposes of the programme but the supposed natural moments as Alistair begins to relate his side of the story (the opening section is what we heard over the opening montage) or as Joe is going down the stairs to meet Alistair for the first time are interrupted by accidents that cause the director to force them to repeat their actions again - as if a naturally arising speech or a walk can be repeated at will. There are also many shots of the enormous crew all standing expectantly around either Alistair or Joe (though it is telling that there is an obvious bias towards the victim of their story in the way they ignore Alistair's nervous request for a glass of water as they intently focus on Joe's second staged walk down the stairs to the room) which feel particularly pointed as all of these people have a vested interest in discussing a deeply painful and personal matter in order to either get material for their show or simply to get paid for the day as a crew member.

All of this activity puts an implicit pressure on the two men to produce some scintilating television when they finally do meet, which raises the tension levels even further. Especially when it becomes apparent that Joe is thinking of murdering Alistair. Joe is filmed trying to conceal his knife in the same manner as the teenage Alistair was nervously trying to find a place for his gun earlier. It is an interesting way of equating the two that suggests that rather than one being an irredeemable killer and the other being a wronged saint that Joe is in a similar position of preparing himself for an act of violence, not particularly comfortable with the task but wanting to carry it out.

It is the potential for retribution that this, best, section of the film deals with. Alistair on eventually reaching the hall outside the room on his second walk downstairs is given the choice between entering the closed door, confronting (and likely murdering) Alistair or escaping out of the open door opposite, which he does once the tension reaches breaking point. Alistair runs to the window to see Joe for the first time arguing with the TV people as he gets into the car, and as he leaves he takes a photo of Joe and his family from one of the dossiers on the desk. This leads to a section tackling Alistair's feelings in the situation - he may have had a successful career from his murderous action but he is just as much haunted by them, and even acknowledges the guilt he feels in somehow profiting from his bad deeds, unable to enjoy them with a clear conscience (unlike a UVF commander he thinks of who truly did manage to become a renowned and feared figure in the community and revelled in the notoriety to the present). While Joe has a family he neglects because he is trapped in the past, Alistair has no one.

There is a sense that Alistair has a death wish in that he wants to either help Joe or be killed by him but now that they have come so close to an aborted meeting that has dredged up so many issues, they cannot return to the fragile and damaging state they were in previously. Alistair arranges another meeting with Joe (they are both in casual clothes this time rather than formally and uncomfortably dressed) and they end up fighting each other. I did feel this section was a little bit of a let down in the way the well controlled tension between the two is released through a hokey fight scene in a significant past location - the boarded up house where the shooting occured all those years before. All I could think about here was the Halloween remake and the way that all had to circle back to a confrontation at the Myers family's derelict old house in a far too neat tying up of the plot. Indeed, the confrontation between Alistair and Joe is even filmed like a slasher film, as Alistair enters the house and goes upstairs calling Joe's name while Joe himself appears briefly at the top of the stairs and then disappears until suddenly revealed behind the door as Alistair enters a room! They even both end up plunging out of a window in a Hand That Rocks The Cradle moment! It caused me a lot of amusement at a time when I should actually be caring about these two characters confronting each other. Rather than turning into an over the top fight scene I had hoped for a rather low key but emotionally intense talk between the characters at the cafe Alistair is initially shown at, maybe something along the lines of the meeting in Michael Mann's Heat.

So the film ends on a big misstep but pulls it back a little for a touching ending, suggesting the possibility of moving on from such devastating events, although even this feels a little bit too easy for both the characters.

Reading the interview accompanying the film in the Radio Times it was interesting to note that the film is apparently based on a real story (representative I'm sure of many more) but the people that the characters in the film were based on still have not met but were instead interviewed separately and the events of the film extrapolated from the interviews. Also it was interesting to read that Liam Neeson, a Catholic, plays the Protestant Alistair and James Nesbitt, a Protestant, plays the Catholic Joe - something that might add a little more resonance to the show.

So I thought it was a mostly successful film though with a number of flaws. The acting in the main parts (Neeson and Nesbitt plus Anamaria Marinca as a runner for the television crew that Joe confides in - he tells her killing Alistair would be his "Five Minutes Of Heaven", which links in with the joyous rush Alistair was feeling in the nightclub after the shooting) was all excellent, it was more the writing that felt rushed at times. I was struck while watching that the film could perhaps have worked better as a mini-series - the first episode could have dealt with the 1975 shooting; the second episode Joe and Alistair being driven to the interview with more time given to the interaction between them and their respective drivers (it would also have given more resonance to the driver wishing Joe the best of luck as he enters the house for the interview if that was the end of an episode rather than just a scene); the third on the preparations for the interview, continually being foiled until Joe's eventual surprising exit (or leave his vacillating at the door as the cliffhanger moment); and the fourth for Alistair getting in contact with Joe again later and their confrontation. With the events condensed into an hour and a half it felt the more resonant moments were missed in the rush to get on to the next plot development, while a more drawn out approach may have worked better in this case.

Oliver Hirschbiegel is probably best known for having directed Das Experiment, Downfall and The Invasion. I suppose the television crew sections of this film could link with Das Experiment - the way that the presence of observers changes the nature of that which is being observed and the idea that technological equipment often seems to be getting in the way of the truth rather than exposing it. (I guess if we are being uncharitable we could also suggest that the muddled, semi-action film ending that doesn't quite sink the more thoughtful earlier sections but comes close to it is also a trait of Hirschbiegel's films, or at least Das Experiment and The Invasion!)

[Cheerupemokid]

So I thought it was a mostly successful film though with a number of flaws. The acting in the main parts (Neeson and Nesbitt plus Anamaria Marinca as a runner for the television crew that Joe confides in - he tells her killing Alistair would be his "Five Minutes Of Heaven", which links in with the joyous rush Alistair was feeling in the nightclub after the shooting) was all excellent, it was more the writing that felt rushed at times. I was struck while watching that the film could perhaps have worked better as a mini-series - the first episode could have dealt with the 1975 shooting; the second episode Joe and Alistair being driven to the interview with more time given to the interaction between them and their respective drivers (it would also have given more resonance to the driver wishing Joe the best of luck as he enters the house for the interview if that was the end of an episode rather than just a scene); the third on the preparations for the interview, continually being foiled until Joe's eventual surprising exit (or leave his vacillating at the door as the cliffhanger moment); and the fourth for Alistair getting in contact with Joe again later and their confrontation. With the events condensed into an hour and a half it felt the more resonant moments were missed in the rush to get on to the next plot development, while a more drawn out approach may have worked better in this case.

Went to see this last night (it was playing its last night at the Angelika here in NY) and I definitely agree with a lot of this write-up. The acting was fantastic and a lot of the story works really well. The first scene and the mid-section of the film with the TV show set-up is really well done. So much tension is built upon the two characters eventual meeting, it is fantastic.

After that scene things go completely down hill. Much of the rest of the film feels forced. It seems like the writer is forcing things to go the way of his story as oppose to the way these characters would make things go. I didn’t buy almost any of the last third of the film, and by the time we hit the ending, I was completely lost. There were also a lot of little character aspects that didn’t get developed enough through the story, which felt off. The biggest for me being Alistair’s feelings towards Joe, the “that little boy haunts my dreams” aspect of it all. I didn’t really get the maddening fear Alistair apparently felt towards this memory. Here we have two men who are each other’s monsters (as my girlfriend put it) and they resolve things far more simply then should be allowed.

Overall I liked the film a lot, but it went from potentially brilliant to basically good in quite the quick succession.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this recently on a plane ride and I thought it was a near perfect film.

***Warning: some spoilers below***

What colin found as a particularly unbelieveable moment - the crashing through the window - for me made perfect sense. For much of the film Joe moves between overwhelming anger and crushing guilt. It would make perfect sense that given an opportunity finally confront Alistair he would be unable to put thirty years of emotions into coherent, lucid thoughts and would instead lash out physically. The "fight" isn't really one. It's Joe beating on Alistair until Alistair only fighting back enough to ask him to stop. Their fall out the window was the only option other than one of them dying for the fight to end. And the ending, for me, worked simply because it isn't tidy. Joe is still struggling, stuck and trying to let go and only now acknowledges he has work to do but is a long off from getting to a place where he can be free of guilt and anger.

But I do agree the acting is all top notch. In a just world Nesbitt would be getting awards, but he won't. His is simply electric in the role. Neeson is perfectly spare here, playing second fiddle but still doing a lot with his character given that he has very little screen time by himself. And yeah, Anamaria Marinca is memorable in a role that is really there as an excuse to give a Joe an opportunity to tell the audience how he's feeling.

But overall, a revenge film that is a lot more complex and satisfying than it might seem. I definitely urge people to check it out.