Pedestrian Faultlines

Bring God’s tenderness and mercy to all those who are discarded by society.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) December 29, 2018

Jerzy Skolimowski’s The Shout opens with an English cricket game in process at a modern day sanitarium, rather upscale for the decade in which the film was produced. Such ostensible recuperative getaways are still to be found in the 21^st century. Phil McGraw doles them out as a reward for guests who agree to be sensationalized on his daily program. Tim Curry, as the writer receptacle through whom these impressions pour, strolls the grounds, as only the British can saunter, while engaged in a query with the doctor, much like a pretrial discovery, about Crossley’s history, a character sturdily embodied by a then thickening but still commanding Alan Bates, and then meets Crossley himself in the score keeper’s shelter, which looks much like a charming doghouse. They begin to have a conversation about what constitutes insanity, the implication being that Crossley, a superior intellect, is above it all, speaking three languages. We also see John Hurt and Susannah York stroll on what constitutes a Devon coastline, whether before or after the intrusion remains unclear, for at its heart this is a movie about urbanity being supplanted by a more primitive usurpation, much like Philippe Setbon’s Mr. Frost. Setbon’s later Goldblum vehicle is reminiscent of the industry’s somber unease during the Me decade. Western civilization seems triumphant, and yet a medieval hysteria lurks beneath the surface. Everyone wants to do The Exorcist, leading to Setbon’s send up an odd score later. It is only upon reflection that a hamstrung blogger under siege sees a striking similarity in Skolimowski’s and Setbon’s dramatic approach. Mr. Frost has more of a satirical bent, but both projects are about significantly nefarious subversions to pedestrian sensibilities. Robert Grave’s concerns, overlapping with Jerzy’s effects, aren’t so grandiose as to posit Satan in the temporal world. Graves is in pursuit of aggression and warfare through an examination of nomadic culture. In the very opening roll of the credits, which I often miss during this movie’s often cycled airtime, there is a negative image of an actor playing an Aboriginal shaman, or warrior, engaged in intimidating displays. Skolimowski then opens with the close of the film. Susannah York is fully restrained in universally recognized nursing white, with a short black cloak fastened under her chin while she pulls sheets from the bodies of Crossley’s grimaced characters. The bracketing of this scene is probably a concession to Grave’s preferences for formal structure, which is something of a contrast with Doris Lessing’s transitional fluidity. Both writers were pursuing similar themes in the same time frame. Graves would simply be dead sooner, and was more integral to Churchill’s generation than a colonialist like Lessing. What makes Skolimowski’s direction intriguing in The Shout is his willingness not to gift wrap Grave’s intent. Scholastic comprehension may be a breeze under Goldblum’s performance arcs, but Jerzy only provides hints as to why the Fielding’s are coerced into such insatiable gluttony under Bates’s wiles, broken only when John Hurt destroys the stone. Composing has something to do with it, the brutish sound effects Hurt experiments with: amplification of a housefly buzz, or the distortion of cigarette ash, instances of unpleasantness which break barriers. The Shout, like Dog Day Afternoon, and a select handful of other films, is the 1970’s in which I grew up. Something about a cinematography grounded in the nitty gritty, the underlying anxiety that humanity hasn’t truly prevailed, our values counteracted in an instant, make them far move innovative than today’s computer generated animation.