FILM FEATURE: SIGHTSEERS AT THE ARENA CINEMA

Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) in Sightseers.

The new look

By Ed Rampell

The recent hacking to death of an off-duty English soldier by Islamist zealots in broad daylight in London chips away at that British reserve and the thin veneer of the Brits’ renowned stiff upper lip. Now comes the U.K. indie film, Sightseers, which is a sort of demented On the Road meets Thelma and Louise meets Bonnie and Clyde, with a dash of Manson tribe sprinkled on top for good measure.

Kill List's Alice Lowe and Steve Oram co-star as the thirty-something losers from Losersville, Tina and Chris, in this road trip-cum-black comedy gone horribly wrong, which the actors also co-wrote with Amy Jump.

It's England’s Midlands: Tina lives at home with her ailing, overbearing, over possessive mother and has earned degrees in canine psychology that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. (Aidst the gallows humor dogs play a fairly important role.) Tina embarks on an ill-advised week-long jaunt through the Midlands with Chris -- whom Tina seems to barely know -- in his “caravan” (that’s trailer, to we Yanks). We find out along the way that the bearded Chris, who has a bald spot, has been “made redundant."

At first they are hot to trot for one another as the couple drives about the Midlands, which includes some spectacularly dramatic scenery that mirrors the mood of this movie and its gloomy characters who are a sort of Heathcliff and Cathy gone off the rails. A series of seemingly trivial incidents set Chris, and then Tina off, as they embark on an odyssey that becomes a killing spree in this Ben Wheatley-directed movie. The authorities (who, as usual, are clueless -- no Sherlocks they) can’t make heads or tails out of the unfolding mayhem, which may be because it seems to have no rhyme or reason. As their crimes escalate the couple’s sexual ardor for one another inversely perversely cools -- very Freudian (Sigmund ended up in England, by the way).

Making a personal appearance at Arena Cinema, where Sightseers has an exclusive run through May 30, a rather fetching Lowe spoke about the film. In discussing Sightseers, which alternates between the bone chilling and the hilarious, Lowe cast some light on the filmmakers’ intent. Class envy is one of the elements that fuels the rampage of the couple, neither of whom have a full-time job in Tory Prime Minister David Cameron’s austerity-wracked not-so-Great Britain. In lieu of the fulfillment that worthwhile work and a full family and social life could provide them, running amok gives Tina and Chris kicks and thrills. They can’t get no satisfaction, so they turn to senseless crime.

Holding a meat-cleaver dripping with blood, one of the extremist fanatics who sliced and diced that British soldier was ready for his close-up. He melodramatically declared right into a camera lens: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone." (Bin Laden also said similar things like “if you leave us alone we’ll leave you alone.”) One wonders if the Western imperial powers, which are endlessly sticking their noses where they don’t belong into other people’s business, are listening? Probably not, so the tit-for-tat goes on in a vicious cycle of ceaseless violence.

Tina and Christian are not fundamentalists but, similarly, are the West’s powers-that-be listening to the restiveness of their own rootless  generation spawned by austerity? From the indignados of Spain to the Greek rioters to the 2011 English looters to America’s occupiers and so on, to quote Arthur Miller’s plaintive plea regarding in Death of a Salesman “attention must be paid.”

Like the fading Willy Loman attention must be paid to the Lowe woman and Oram man in Sightseers. This low-budget indie was actually released in the U.K. last November. In a sense, it is a motion picture prophecy of the brutal, senseless street carving of that British drummer, as it taps into the zeitgeist of a troubled nation roiling beneath the surface, as cutbacks, unemployment and more wreaks havoc.


Sightseers runs through May 30 at the Arena Cinema, 1625 N. Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood, CA. For more info see: http://www.arenascreen.com/.

 

 

 

SF INDIEFEST 2013: SIGHTSEERS

Tina (Alice Lowe) in Sightseers.

Edgy comedy

By Don Simpson

Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) have only been dating for a few months when Chris suggests that they drive across the rolling countryside of Britain for a week-long vacation. Chris wants to show Tina his “world,” which basically means taking her to various sites of historical significance that he holds dear to his heart. The trip will also whisk Tina away from her emotionally manipulative mother (Eileen Davies), who has kept Tina from doing much of anything with her life.

It is not long after they hitch up Chris’ Abbey Oxford Caravan and hit the road that their getaway takes on other connotations. It quickly becomes apparent that Chris has anger management issues, and Tina’s mental state is no less fragile. The claustrophobic space inside the caravan serves as a boiling pot for their emotions; either one of them can snap at any time.

Ben Wheatley’s Sightseershumorously observes masculine and feminine aggression, sticking with (and possibly satirizing) the gender stereotypes of men being overly-methodical and women being overly-emotional. Violence for each of the characters is triggered and unleashed much differently, and they both rationalize their violent acts in different ways as well. Whether it is purposeful or not, Wheatley’s film becomes an intriguing -- and comical -- social commentary on aggression; yet, simultaneously, the violence is totally rationalized by the characters’ irrationality. So by making the characters “crazy,” this differentiates them from “normal” society and fully explains their abnormal behavior. That, of course, also makes the violence much easier for us — the audience — to laugh at without any pesky moral dilemmas to burden us with guilt.