‘I knew it was coming, I didn’t expect it to happen so
quickly’.
This phrase is
uttered in a quiet style by Tim (Robert O Mahoney) whilst drinking vodka early
on in Conor Horgan’s quietly superb One
Hundred Mornings. When the end of the civilised world arrives one imagines
it would happen the way it is shown here. It seems to have ceased to exist not
with a loud crack but a sickening whimper. What is left are pockets of people
clinging together hoping that something, indeed anything will happen to bring
back familiarity. Instead we have empty towns and an Ireland where the Gardai
are carrying shotguns.
Two couples,
Jonathan (Ciaran Mc Menamin) and Hannah (Alex Reid) and Mark (Rory Keenan) and
Katie (Kelly Campbell) are holed up in a cabin in Wicklow. There has been an
unspecified event that seems to have brought general western standard of living
to a standstill. Food is being rationed and the electricity has been out for
quite a while. There is an older neighbour (Tim) who is friendly but distant with
the group. The two couples are living on top of each other and nerves are
frayed. Supplies are dwindling and they lack any real weapons to defend
themselves. Clearly something unprecedented has taken place and as outsiders begin
to learn that this group still has supplies, the threats start to multiply.
It is not
difficult to read this as a mirroring of our times. The theme is not
particularly subtle but its execution is done very subtly and without fanfare.
To Horgan’s credit he gets the information out, not with chunks of exposition,
but with visual clues throughout. There is no real talk of what happened but
instead we get visuals: the accumulated detritus under an abandoned car’s
windscreen wipers. Even Jonathan’s smoking one cigarette a day to make them last
gives a sense of the time that has passed and the time left ahead of them. There
is a subplot here involving infidelity within the group but unusually it does
not become a dominant issue. There is a cold logic to this. If you are facing
starvation that would probably take precedence over everything else.
Perhaps the most
striking aspect of the film is in the tiny incidental pleasures in glimpsing
things that were always taken for granted. There is a scene of great joy when normalization returns briefly. To say more would be to spoil it but it shows how much we take for granted and how much we miss things when they are gone.
The tiniest pleasures for the most fleeting of moments work well here and are
believable and organic within the story. The cinematography by Suzie Lavelle is
quite beautiful making full use of the wonderful Wicklow locations. The score
by Chris White is sparse and is used brilliantly to accentuate the loneliness
and hopelessness of the situation. The acting is pretty good from the four
leads - if a little uneven. Mc Menamin stands out in the ensemble as one to
watch. O’Mahoney as the neighbour who does great work in the amount of screen
time he has.
There is a
brilliant shot of Hannah scrubbing clothes in a stream that calls to mind those
famine drawings of women doing the same thing. And it is to those times that
the film reaches back to. A time where people left and took their chance
someplace else or stayed and died. It is this nihilistic viewpoint which is the
film’s key strength. It works within the film and also as an analysis of the
times we now find ourselves in. One
Hundred Mornings is probably the first film to address the mess Ireland
currently finds itself in and like the politicians we depend on, it offers us
no way out of it. As a film dealing with end times this is not one of the
zombie persuasions which give you easily definable heroes and villains. It says
straight out that the enemies are ourselves and that we better make some
difficult choices before it is too late. All this may does not give you the
feel good DVD release of the summer, but it deserves to be seen by a large
audience who can appreciate a low budget and superbly realised film.
Out on DVD
Monday 23rd July.
Good movie..
ReplyDelete