Five minutes into "Nil by Mouth", written and directed by Gary
Oldman, the dream of magic is gone and the only hope that remains is
that something will soon emerge that will make one of these
characters sympathetic. I keep listening for the original music of
Eric Clapton, but over half of the sentences in the dialogue so far
are "f-kin' this" and "f-kin' that." It fact, there are so many
f-kin's that it is difficult to hear the words that proceed or
follow.
Billy,(Charlie Creed-Miles) Ray (Ray Winstone) and their pals snort
up, tell of orgies past, go to a strip bar, and beat each other and
others to a pulp. The advance press summary billed this as "an
ordinary family in South London."
Fifteen minutes into the film I started to hear the filmmaker's
dreaded "clacks" - the noise the seats in the theater makes as it
flips up when a member of the audience rises to leave. Three women
walk out, five women walk out, there goes another half dozen.
All women. Still I stayed. This was Gary Oldman's first time
directing - he had written it - there was no denying his talent as an
actor and he seemed so intelligent and creative. If I wait, I tell
myself, I will be rewarded.
As the men continue to call their women "cunts" and fight each other
with such scintillating dialogue as "You fucking asshole, you dog"
and "You're a fucking dog, you asshole" my mind starts to wander to
Isabella Rossellini. She spent at least a year living with Oldman
didn't she...There must be some redeeming qualities here I am
missing.Then my mind wanders back over the years to Blue Velvet and
her years with David Lynch. The deep and overwhelming misogyny of
these two men sweeps over me. I think of Giles Jacob watching this
film and choosing it over hundreds of others. Still I am hopeful, I
will stay. I look at my watch. It is 9:30 in the morning.
When Ray wakes up his pregnant wife to accuse her of sleeping with a
man he saw her playing pool with, I start to lose any remaining hope
that these are people I want to spend time with - the ultimate
criteria for keeping me in the theater. As he hits and kicks her out
of camera range, yelling "You cunt, you cunt, you f-kin' cunt" my
seat clacks as join the most recent batch of women walking out. It
has gone beyond caring - I can not subject myself to this for one
more minute.
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