Lord of the Flies (UK, 1963)
Directed by Peter Brook
Starring James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, Hugh Edwards, Roger Elwin

The ideas and imagery of Lord of the Flies have become so deeply engrained in our culture that it would be very easy to accuse any film version of skimming the surface. The concept of a dark beast lurking in the heart of well-meaning Man may be far more ancient than William Golding's novel. But there is a danger that any adaptation could embody the theme without doing justice to the story, relying on layman knowledge or consensus to carry the action.While this criticism can be fairly levelled against the 1990s version, there is no such cause for concern with the vision of Peter Brook. In adapting Golding's chilling and pessimistic novel, he has done justice to the source material while putting his own blend of artistic naturalism onto the story. The result is a subtle and sinister film whose sense of dread creeps up on you and eventually overpowers without warning. While aspects of it haven't aged that well, it still stands as the definitive adaptation.Brook's skill as a director, both on film and in the theatre, has always been allowing the material to speak for itself. The brand that is Peter Brook bestows upon a production certain expectations of quality, but this derives from a captivating whole rather than individual gimmicks. Brook clearly understands the pattern and composition of Golding's prose, and very rarely feels the need to impose his own attitude onto the visual rendering of it. This is a sign of confidence in both the source material and in one's capabilities as a director.The one notable exception to this comes in the opening credits. As the various names flash past, we see images of English civilisation at its supposed peak - all choir boys and straw boaters - intercut with ICBMs and B52s. In one particularly haunting image, we see the image of a bomber drawn on a boy's textbook in a photo full of smiling faces in uniform. This is a novel way of introducing the theme, and probably stems as much from the novel as from the experience of filming it. While much of Golding's work is about the threat of nuclear war, Brook shot large portions of the film in the Bay of Pigs, not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis.The central idea of Lord of the Flies is that Man is inherently savage: that within every seemingly civilised, rational and morally upright individual, there is a dark-hearted beast which will reveal itself even in the most innocent of circumstances. The film is the visual equivalent of a thought experiment, a philosophical game in which theories are tested hypothetically and judged according to the behavioural responses they produce. Golding concludes, as does Brook, that Man's murky, Hobbesian desire for self-preservation overrides everything else, to the point where tribalism is commonplace, murder is justified, and objective truth (should such a thing exist) holds no sway whatsoever.There has been some discussion over the years about the relationship between Golding's thesis and the Christian position on Mankind, i.e. the role of Sin, the long-term effects of the Fall, and the possible role of grace and redemption. Brook brings these discussions to the forefront and seems to suggest that the teachings of Christ provide no resistance to or adequate means of containing the beast, at least without proper application. The choirboys, who enter singing 'Kyrie Eleison' ('Lord, have mercy') along the beach, turn out to be the most ruthless, merciless and hierarchical group on the island.Lord of the Flies is not specifically anti-Christian because of this development. The characters are assessed and leaders emerge on the basis of physical strength and the ability to command respect. This is a quarrel between reason and instinct, between head and heart (or stomach), rather than an outright rejection of Christianity in favour of atheism or any other seemingly opposite doctrine. If anything Christian imagery abounds in Lord of the Flies, with the island serving as the world outside the Garden of Eden, the plane crash doubling quite literally for the Fall, and the arrival of the sea captain at the end as either the coming of Jesus or the arrival of the New Heaven and Earth.In its emphasis on instinct and tribalism, Lord of the Flies could come across as a purely nihilistic work - a film which explores the idea of life being totally pointless, and the only natural part of human behaviour being the desire for power which manifests itself in utterly amoral violence. But one of the successes of Brook's adaptation is to demonstrate how even the most morally skewed civilisation has some form of supernatural basis, either in its recognition of a God-like force, or its need to create such a force to justify itself.The warrior tribe formed by the choristers begin to talk about a beast which lives on the island, which must be contained by sacrifices or killed if the group is to survive. The sacrifices which they offer to the beast, in the form of a boar's head on a pike, immediately take on a supernatural quality, consolidated by the scenes of them hollering on the beach and dancing around the fire like Native Americans. The beast is like the distant, jealous God from the Old Testament: no-one has the courage to meet or confront the force which seemingly controls them.Both Golding and Brook are very even-handed in their treatment of both the political and supernatural aspects of the events on the island. The subtle orchestration of the meeting scenes, where the conche is passed around and people voice their opinions on what should be done, ably demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of both democratic government and militaristic barbarism. One of the most striking images in the film is that of the boar's head; as one of the boys stares at it, the camera zooms in onto the flies slowly eating it away. It's as disturbing and discomforting an image as the cockroaches at the start of Blue Velvet, both in its weight and in its ability to make one feel queasy.All of these visual and narrative touches are in keeping with the source material while putting a particular artistic and cinematic stamp on the events that unfold. This balance between loyalty and artistic licence allows Brook's adaptation to be entrist without being reductionist. In other words, you can read as much into the film as you like, without either having the themes shoved down your throat or feeling like you are watching something that has been severely abridged or bowdlerised. Considering how familiar the material is in English literature, this is quite an achievement.The performances in Lord of the Flies are all of a pretty decent calibre. Brook did not work from a specific script: in a foreshadowing of Mike Leigh's rigorous method of improvisation, he would give the young boys a rough idea of what would happen in a scene, and then allow them to ad lib with minimal prompting. It takes a while to adjust to their delivery, but they are generally convincing, particularly a young James Aubrey as Ralph.The problems with Lord of the Flies surround aspects of either the source or the adaptation which have dated. The ending of Lord of the Flies remains a classic deus ex machina (in more ways than one); with all that has gone before, it would have been scarier and more radical for the film to have ended with Ralph being killed, cementing the beast's triumph and subverting the Christian imagery. Aspects of the dialogue, such as the social attitudes of the boys, have not aged very well, and the sound design is occasionally a little stilted. Because of time constraints Brook was forced to record the sound for each scene after they had shot it, resulting in a couple of synching issues or odd deliveries.Lord of the Flies is a fiery and faithful adaptation which has more or less retained its potency after nearly 50 years. Notwithstanding the dated aspects and the on-going problem of the ending, it captures the pessimistic, despondent tone of Golding's work beautifully, and has many scenes capable of generating either outright scares or hideous chills. It remains the definitive adaptation of the book and one of the highlights of Brook's career in film.

Rating:
Verdict: A faithfully haunting adaptation

Love Like Poison (France, 2011)
Directed by Katell Quillévéré
Starring Clara Augarde, Lio, Michel Galabru, Stefano Cassetti

For all the doom and gloom around sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes, 2011 has also been a year of striking debut features. Adding to The Guard, Sarah's Key and Oranges and Sunshine, we now have Love Like Poison from French-Ivorian director Katell Quillévéré. What appears on the surface to be just another coming-of-age story slowly reveals itself as a subtle, haunting and emotionally charged look at religion, sexuality and adolescence.Love Like Poison is set in the Brittany countryside and follows a 14-year-old girl called Anna Falguères (Clara Augarde) as she prepares to take Catholic communion for the very first time. Her mother and father are recently estranged, and the former increasingly seeks comfort in the company of local priest Père François (Stefano Cassetti). Both women are left to care for Anna's bedridden grandfather, who spends his days listening to old records and smoking cigars. While all this is going on, Anna is being wooed by Pierre, a boy younger than her who loves his football and loves her even more.The first real asset of Love Like Poison is its strong colour palette. Tom Harari's cinematography is melancholic and beautiful, resting on a prominence of blues and in particular whites. The white is not intrusive like the shimmering walls of a hospital, but pale, wan and pure like the chalk cliffs of the French and English coasts. Sometimes it is so bright that it drowns out the characters, like the yardsticks of purity to which they must aspire, knowing full well that their desires will cause them to fall short. In one scene where Père François lies praying in his bed, his black clothes fade into the dark blue covers, like he is sinking or even drowning in the gathering darkness.In its evocative and symbolic use of colour, the film draws an immediate comparison with Three Colours - Blue. The visual similarities are clear, with both Krzysztof Kieslowski and Quillévéré using different shades of blue to emphasise the sadness, grief and alienation which surrounds the central characters. And there is a narrative similarity in that one of the central characters has lost her husband, and is finding it hard to connect with the world around her. But whereas Kieslowski took a very humanist perspective, focussing on the hidden reserve of Juliette Binoche's character, Quillévéré is more concerned with the conflict between three kinds of devotion - to God, to one's family, and to the passion of young love. It takes more of a religious angle, albeit one in which religion does not come up with all of the answers.The central character in Love Like Poison faces three different but related dilemmas as she moves to take her first step into adulthood. The first concerns her attitude towards religion and the church. Anna's faith at the beginning of the film seems well-rooted and taken for granted: she keeps a picture of Christ at her bedside, and attends church with her family, of her own will as much as out of ritual. But by the end of the film this has grown lukewarm, as she faints in front of the Bishop and remains silent when he asks questions to the congregation, asking them to affirm their faith. There has not been a decisive volte-face on Anna's part, but doubts have entered her life which makes an outright committal impossible.The second dilemma concerns Anna's attitude towards her family. There are a number of awkward conversations between Anna and her mother as her confirmation approaches. Anna asks her mother about what she looked like at her age, and gets an inconclusive answer. Later her mother comes into the bathroom as she is topless, saying that she wants to look at her; Anna unfolds her arms to reveal her bare breasts and snipes sarcastically: "Do I turn you on?" Anna has to care for her mother for much of the film, and is determined not to end up like her, looking upon her relationship with Père François with some suspicion.In her effort to avoid turning into her mother, Anna turns towards the affections of her estranged father. When he first returns home to deal with the death of Anna's grandfather, he seems to genuinely want to bond with her, taking her to the beach and talking about coming to live with him in Quimper. But as the action moves on the distance between them re-emerges: he leaves without a moment's notice to return to his new life, leaving Anna angry and alone.This encounter leads onto the third of Anna's dilemmas, namely her relationship with and attitude towards men. Her grandfather is dismissed as harmless but becomes pervy as the film rolls on, fantasising over a magazine and getting turned on by Anna washing him. Both her father and the priest come across as well-meaning but ultimately incompetent, or at least too at odds with their own desires to be of any real use. Pierre, on the other hand, begins very aggressively, pinning her down on the rock to kiss her when they are out in the woods. But by the time they take their tops off they are on equal terms, and when Anna kisses Pierre in his room, she seems to have come into her own.What makes Love Like Poison interesting as a coming-of-age film is that the struggles of the central character don't feel isolated, like some weird disease which only affects young people. The adults in the film have the same concerns and qualms with regard to religion and relationships, and there are no convenient plot devices to tone these down. Where American coming-of-age films tend to portray the step into adulthood as something with a definite endpoint, with the lines between child and adult clearly drawn, the characters in Love Like Poison are still walking the treacherous emotional path that Anna has just begun to explore.Love Like Poison is a deeply atmospheric film. Beyond its visual claustrophobia, its use of sound and music in particular is haunting and thought-provoking. In one early scene, when Anna wanders through the ruins to meet the priest, a version of 'Greensleeves' can be heard. This folk tune, erroneously attributed to Henry VIII as a love song to Anne Boleyn, has strong sexual connotations: "green gown" was a euphemism for prostitute, since such garments would disguise any grass stains caused by outdoor lovemaking.Over the end credits, where Anna seems to have found some kind of uneasy peace with Pierre, there is a choral version of Radiohead's 'Creep', previously used on trailers for The Social Network. Although the effect is not as powerful as in Fincher's film, it cements the tone of unease and eeriness which lifts the film while keeping the air close and thick with rumour. Like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Love Like Poison is a film in which on the surface nothing is happening, but in fact there is so much going on.There are a couple of flaws with the film which stop it totally achieving a knock-out punch. Apart from some standard quibbles over paucity of plot and occasionally languorous pacing, the main concern is over the amount of nudity. For the most part the film handles the matter sensitively, if not poetically; while it doesn't shy away from nudity as a concept or rite of passage, it doesn't by and large see this as an excuse for ill-judged gratuity. But while the woodland scenes are well-judged by showing hardly anything, the sight of the old man's erection is disgusting, even when it's in his trousers, and when Anna lifts her dress to show him her womanhood, it feels totally unnecessary to both plot and mood.Love Like Poison is a very promising debut effort which both avoids the clichés of coming-of-age stories and does just about enough to cover up its own flaws. Katell Quillévéré directs with finesse and sensitivity, creating an atmosphere of great unease and a host of complex characters, anchored by Clara Augarde's great central performance. You will want to spend some time afterwards trying to work out where you stand with regard to the people on screen, especially over Anna's state of mind in the denouement. While not perfect, it contains much to be admired, along with a great deal that will linger.

Rating:
Verdict: A striking and haunting debut