For UK readers, Peter Mullan's film Orphans, and an accompanying documentary reuniting the cast, will be available on BBC iplayer, or whatever it's cried these days, for the next four weeks; search for BBC Scotland.
Seeing it on the big screen at the time of its release was, for me, a cathartic moment, and this is what I wrote about it afterwards:
This a great achievement: a film about coming to terms with bereavement but so much more - bursting with invention, not afraid to break boundaries, so that - well, I was going to say the tone veers but actually it seems all of a piece. Mullan told an acquaintance of mine that the film was actually about the death of socialism, and I can see that: it's there all the way through in the implicit condemnation of people who choose to be separate from groups - eg the woman who refuses to let the disabled daughter use the ramp outside her house as it was built for the exclusive use of her late husband - or (in a great performance by Alex Norton) a barman who treats his customers like animals
I don't want to say how (or even if) they get their comeuppance; all I want to say is that any criticism of the film seems mean-spirited: it feels like a highly personal and a universal statement, which is just about all you can expect from art, intit? So many great, touching, funny moments - for once the cliche along the lines of "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll [fill in appropriate obscenity]" is nothing more than the simple truth.
I'm so glad Peter Mullan didn't censor himself too much in the writing - by which I mean not worrying whether this was Loach-naturalistic, Forsyth-whimsical, pastoral-tragical or whatever. It's an experience, and just as the late Dilys Powell, seeing Woody Allen's Gershwin-laden Manhattan, came out wondering why she had ever listened to the music of the Who, so having watched this you may end up thinking: "No. No more Merchant Ivory. No more Remains of the Day or Last Orders, thank you VERY much." Or such was my feeling. Not that I want to influence the reader in any way.
But see it, eh? Because how many films take you into the heart of an experience, place you wholly in that world? And it's a healing kinda thing, as I can testify. I've trawled through some of the reviews at rottentomatoes.com; they're split between saying the film lurches from tone to tone, rendering it ridiculous, and saying how well Mullan handles those shifts. I'm with the latter camp. The film is organic, not restricted by an imposed notion of style; it's alive - and life-affirming.
Some time ago I met Peter Mullan and was able to tell him directly how much Orphans had meant to me when I first saw it. He talked about the difficulties he'd faced from Channel 4 when trying to make the film he wanted to make: even though he'd written the screenplay he was not permitted to deviate from the version they'd approved, and a situation emerged whereby he had to think of strategies to delay shooting. This was not directly covered in the documentary though he does talk about difficulties in getting the right edit.
As far as I remember he told me the ending as written involved panning across a table and seeing an empty place where Gary Lewis should have been - not dead but still holding himself aloof from the rest of the family - but when shooting the film it became clear that something different was needed. Given the nightmarish aspects of the story the gentler ending in the finished film feels right. As Douglas Henshall says in the documentary, "It wasn't another Trainspotting," so maybe that's what Channel 4 were looking for. But I'm slightly confused because the implication in what Peter Mullan says in the documentary is that David Aukin at Channel 4 had been their champion and that no one was interested in the film when he left. Does that mean he wasn't still around during its making, or was he the one who didn't want changes to the script as initially approved?
The film, we're told, attracted no interest at Cannes but was a big hit at the Venice Film Festival, whereupon the post-Aukin (presumably) Channel 4, who seemed to have disowned it, suddenly declared it might have "legs" - a statement which, as you can imagine, is not well received by its director.
Anyway, these are details, to be thought about once you've actually seen the film. Orphans is on BBC iplayer here; the related documentary, Orphans Reunited, is here. Both are available for the next four weeks - see the date at the top of this post. If you are coming new to the film I'd recommend seeing it before the documentary so that each dizzying new development as the night unfolds comes as a surprise.
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