Mar. 9th, 2009

davywavy: (Default)
I was interested in the film Franklyn when I first saw the publicity shots, but reading the very mixed reviews which it got I'd pretty much decided not to bother. However, when I rolled in to the cinema the other night and found I'd missed Gran Torino and Franklyn was the only thing on offer, I thought I may as well see it - and I'm glad I did, because I really rather enjoyed it.
Franklyn has been compared by reviewers to Donnie Darko, and I can kinda see why; Donnie Darko being the only major film in recent years which feels similar in tone. However, I feel that such comparisons do Franklyn a disservice, as I didn't like Donnie Darko all that much and Franklyn is much improved by not having any of Donnie Darko's self-indulgent angsty teenage whining to mar my pleasure. Instead, as a narrative, Franklyn has more in common with, say, Iain Banks' Walking on glass or even the Dolls House chapter in Neil Gaiman's Sandman with its separate strands of apparently unrelated fractured lives, places and times moving inexorably to a collision.
The film gives us four apparently unrelated stories; an emotionally disturbed art student (Eva Green) filming her suicide attempts as her final year project, a jilted groom seeking out his now-grown childhood sweetheart (also played by Eva Green, and with good reason) in an attempt to make sense of his life, a distraught father (Bernard Hill, giving an utterly fantastic performance) searching for his lost son amongst London's homeless, and in the fantastical and high-gothic steampunk world of Meanwhile City a bodyguard-turned-vigilante sets out to kill the man he blames for the death of a girl he was supposed to be protecting. Trying to figure out how these seemingly disparate stories relate and will ultimately converge is half the fun and I expect that most people will have a pretty good idea of what is going on after about an hour in. Indeed, a lot of the film is like watching someone set up a chain of dominoes and the chain is completed about twenty minutes from the end - from then on the pleasure is in watching the dominoes topple into the pattern you know is there. I found myself thinking about Gaiman a lot whilst I was watching it, for the reason that Gaiman is a generous storyteller who tends to spin yarns with a bit of a wink to the audience as if to say Yes, I know I'm playing games with you here, but bear with me because it's going to be worth it, and you, as the audience, bear with him because he makes the experience enjoyable - and I think Franklyn pulls off the same trick.

It's by no means a perfect film; especially in early scenes it can get confusing trying to work out which story thread is which as the script often fails to make it clear and you have to work it out for yourself - something which an extra few seconds of expository dialogue here and there could easily have avoided - and it's probably not a film I'd see twice. But as a see once film I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I think most of you lot would as well. Worth your time.

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