The more you know about a film, the harder it becomes to review it. The main reason this site started with theatre reviews and has had few since is that most of the plays the critic sees are created by or feature people he knows. As soon as a hint of friendship creeps into the equation, it gets a whole lot harder to criticise without encumbrance. Not just because you don't want to offend; but also because the work of art is likely to be clouded by the penumbra of personality, the lens through which you perceive it.
With regard to Garage... A couple of years ago I found myself drinking Guiness in a pub in Old Compton Street with the screenwriter of Garage. Great company he was and all. Told me about this next film he was writing, set in a village somewhere, a guy in a garage, and I forget the rest. Sometime around then I caught the DVD of Adam and Paul, first thing of a hungover Brixton morning. I enjoyed its candour, it rough edges, its laconic tone, all of which are attributes that could be discerned in the screenwriter himself.
Garage shares all these things. It does something smart, which is to place the least heroic of figures as its protagonist. Pat Shortt's Josie is the kind of anti-face and anti-figure cinema was also made for. Loping along with his lop-sided grin and dodgy hip, trapped in an endless childishness, more at home with the kids than the adults. Without his performance the film seems unimaginable.
The film doesn't rush things. It's based around the eponymous garage where cars are still rare beasts. The script gives a nod to the new Ireland, suggesting that the garage itself will soon be knocked down for real estate, but otherwise it belongs to a sleepy world which has yet to be colonised by winners of the Irish boom, French novelists, or English escapees. The narrative hinges on one moment, and even this and its consequences are underplayed.
Whether the film is too slow, or whether it sacrifices its dramatic power to an aesthetic insinuation (much as Josie is brought down), I couldn't say. There is a pathos to Josie's final scene, but it felt like a cold-hearted pathos. We never get quite under the skin of this bovine man, friend to the clodhopping horse. We always look at him with the eyes of the fifteen year old.
Perhaps if I hadn't drunk Guiness with the man in a Soho pub I'd be saying Garage was a minor masterpiece of understated drama. Or perhaps I'd be saying it pulls its punches and doesn't have the potency it might have had. Which ever it might be, Garage is definitely an antidote to much brittle British film-making, and allows itself to boast a central performance that possesses something out of the ordinary. Never has a man looked more different not wearing his Australia cap to wearing it.
With regard to Garage... A couple of years ago I found myself drinking Guiness in a pub in Old Compton Street with the screenwriter of Garage. Great company he was and all. Told me about this next film he was writing, set in a village somewhere, a guy in a garage, and I forget the rest. Sometime around then I caught the DVD of Adam and Paul, first thing of a hungover Brixton morning. I enjoyed its candour, it rough edges, its laconic tone, all of which are attributes that could be discerned in the screenwriter himself.
Garage shares all these things. It does something smart, which is to place the least heroic of figures as its protagonist. Pat Shortt's Josie is the kind of anti-face and anti-figure cinema was also made for. Loping along with his lop-sided grin and dodgy hip, trapped in an endless childishness, more at home with the kids than the adults. Without his performance the film seems unimaginable.
The film doesn't rush things. It's based around the eponymous garage where cars are still rare beasts. The script gives a nod to the new Ireland, suggesting that the garage itself will soon be knocked down for real estate, but otherwise it belongs to a sleepy world which has yet to be colonised by winners of the Irish boom, French novelists, or English escapees. The narrative hinges on one moment, and even this and its consequences are underplayed.
Whether the film is too slow, or whether it sacrifices its dramatic power to an aesthetic insinuation (much as Josie is brought down), I couldn't say. There is a pathos to Josie's final scene, but it felt like a cold-hearted pathos. We never get quite under the skin of this bovine man, friend to the clodhopping horse. We always look at him with the eyes of the fifteen year old.
Perhaps if I hadn't drunk Guiness with the man in a Soho pub I'd be saying Garage was a minor masterpiece of understated drama. Or perhaps I'd be saying it pulls its punches and doesn't have the potency it might have had. Which ever it might be, Garage is definitely an antidote to much brittle British film-making, and allows itself to boast a central performance that possesses something out of the ordinary. Never has a man looked more different not wearing his Australia cap to wearing it.
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