Paul Andrew Williams, who grew up under the sea breeze in Portsmouth, England, has a special liking for the salty and humid air permeating the harbour and the gloomy atmosphere that will never dissipate. The southeastern coast of England, known as the other western United States, has always been a lonely and lawless edge. Year-round sea breeze, retired old sailors doing nothing, wandering by the abandoned warehouse. Here, it is always the off-season for tourism. Ever since Paul Pawlikowski's "Breaking the Boat" made a new wave on the coast, writing Margate into a homeless sanctuary, Thomas Clay's "The Ecstasy of Young Robert Carmichael" has been shot again That tone has been with Williams throughout his formative years since the coast of New Haven. Reflected in his works, it is the naturalistic depiction of the cold environment, the realistic exposure of the dark reality, the marginalized people under his lens, struggling in the moral dilemma, and finally ushering in a just ending like doomsday, which makes people feel Heart lingering fear, but can not help but applaud.
The film begins with the audience in a seamless tension, the cramped public restroom, the woman with blood on her face, the terrified teenage girl, mixed with meaningless background noise and shouting, creating an atmosphere of despair It also attracts the audience to find out. Williams advances slowly with restrained footage, then unfolds the story layer by layer in a tense escape and chase. The pimp Derek and the prostitute Kelly are like Sikes and Nancy who kidnapped Twist in [Oliver Twist], and led Joanna, who was living on the Waterloo embankment, to the clutches. Kelly, played by Lauren Stanley, gradually showed a softer side on the way to escape, repeatedly picking up customers to raise money for the two of them. When Joanna, who was still young, spent seven dollars to win a plush toy, she simply complained. On the cold seaside bench, the two discarded the empty paper cup and let it fly in the wind, showing her involuntarily. A day in Brighton, without any procrastination, Williams uses a relaxed rhythm and a sense of tension to stop the symbolism before the showy, and make the film charismatic.
Apparently, Williams believes that heaven is nowhere. He uses prostitutes, thugs, drug addicts and perverts to build a real black world. Brighton, as a corrupt place on the south coast, has attracted many British novelists to use it as a crime scene, such as Patrick Hamilton and Graham Greene. Keith Waterhouse even concluded: "Brighton is like a paradise town that helps the police solve mysteries". In Williams's lens, it condenses into the darkness of a night, the joyful noise of the daytime playground, and the cold winds of the seashore, all of which add a sense of desolation and convey social and moral judgments. It has the visual style and camera sense of the Belgian director Dane brothers. The structure of reality and flashbacks also shows Williams' astonishing self-confidence, and the splendid gangster's apartment depicts a messy street scene flashing through the window of a speeding car, with a pure London accent, merged into a pair of A no-nonsense London gangster portrait.
Williams skillfully combines elements of traditional British realism with dramatic noir violence into a gripping moral tale. But the answer to the mystery was revealed, but he arranged an unexpected and reasonable ending. The psychologically shadowed gang boss used the pimp as a scapegoat to complete the entire revenge. Eventually Joanna meets her grandmother, and the film ends with Kelly returning to black London, a perfect blend of realism, naturalism and symbolic allegory.
Originally published in Watch Movie Weekly, please declare when reprinting, thank you!
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