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 ince Scotland's film industry can be politely
described as 'non-existent', the wide release of any local
product should be cause for celebration, especially when it is as
initially intriguing as long time critic turned director Richard
Jobson's "Sixteen Years of Alcohol". The film promises a fresh take
on the depressingly dull and stupefyingly earnest British school of
gritty social realism, infusing the usual obsession with the
minutiae of daily life with the poetic stylings of Wong Kar-Wai, who
supposedly mentored and inspired Jobson and encouraged him to adapt
his own poem for the screen.
Unfortunately, the match is not a good one, and
the end result is a singularly uninteresting mess, a film which
drowns, not in booze, but in ponderous self indulgence,
pseudo-intellectual musings and an inability to honestly deal with
or portray its subject matter. Whereas Kar-Wai manages to deflect
concerns of narrative and emotional connection by seducing the
viewer with lush, dreamlike imagery, Jobson flounders, desperately
striving for relevance and realism, employing the worst excesses of
art-house cinema and tacking them uncomfortably onto a tired,
predictable story of an arrogant whiner's quest for meaning and
salvation.
The whiner in question is Frankie (Kevin
McKidd, also in the excellent "Dog
Soldiers", as well as the director's awful "The
Purifiers"), with whom the film opens as he lies in the gutter,
apparently dying after a vicious beating at the hands of an unseen
assailant. Frankie's narration takes us on a three stage flashback
tour of his unfortunate life, from his early years as a child
looking up to a hard drinking, womanising father, through his
violent teenage years as the leader of a skinhead gang, and finally
to his desperate attempts to break the cycle of self destruction and
make something of his life.
This is obviously standard, unoriginal stuff,
and is suspiciously similar to the kind of story so beloved by the
likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh. To Jobson's credit, he does at
least attempt to shake up the usual formula, mainly by adhering less
strictly to the demands of realism, and through injecting what he
seems to believe to be lyricism into the proceedings. Unfortunately,
this approach simply does not suit the film's other aims and themes,
and both detracts and distracts from any of Jobson's efforts to
convince the viewer of the harshness of Frankie's life. The film
breezes over most of the uncomfortable details, making only the
vaguest of connections between alcohol and self destruction.
Worst of all, "Sixteen Years of Alcohol"
features very little at all in the way of drinking, making nonsense
of its title and leaving an inexplicable void where the seed of
tragedy should be growing. Although there is no need for films to be
graphic or blatant in depicting such issues, to deliberately and
self consciously shy away from depicting or even referring to them
smacks only of the worst kind of pretension, a fact confirmed by
Jobson's constant use of cryptic, wholly unrealistic dialogue which
he clearly underlines and forces down the throat, frantically trying
to convince the viewer of its meaningfulness.
As a character, Frankie is poorly defined and
sketchily written, an unforgivable fault for a film of this sort.
Although there is something to be said of allowing viewers to work
out the nuances of a character for themselves, Frankie simply lacks
any kind of depth or complexity, seeming to act solely as a
mouthpiece for the director's long tracts of cringe worthy poetry
and ranting self-pity. Jobson seems only too aware of this failing,
and makes the further mistake of trying to flesh out the character
via an incessant voice over which basically consists of yet more
pretentious drivel.
Since the rest of the cast mainly consist of
stereotypes for the obnoxious Frankie to rage against, the viewer
feels no emotional connection, or indeed sympathy for anyone, and
therefore has little interest in the film as a whole. As a result of
all these things, "Sixteen Years of Alcohol" very quickly becomes
dull, and the only real entertainment comes through the
unintentional hilarity caused by some of the long would-be
soliloquies and the narrative's over reliance on clichés and plot
contrivances.
Jobson's direction does
not help matters by drawing quite obviously from his no-doubt vast
cinematic knowledge and referencing other, immeasurably superior
films, in particular Kubrick's classic "A Clockwork Orange".
However, whilst Jobson happily lifts motifs like an alcoholic given
free reign behind a bar, he does so inappropriately, and in a manner
which serves only to further undermine his own ambitions. In
addition to this, Jobson's constant aping of Kar-Wai drags the pace
of the film down to a crawl, with long close ups and odd vanity
shots interrupted only by sudden chronological leaps which leave the
viewer struggling to accept the seemingly unmotivated development of
the protagonist.
Ultimately, there is nothing positive which can
be said about "Sixteen Years of Alcohol", save to mention the
excellent performance of McKidd, who puts a brave face on a bad
role. Unfortunately, even he cannot bring life or empathy to such a
dull, meandering and laughably pompous film which offers no interest
or entertainment other than as an unintentionally amusing parody of
everything that is bad about art house cinema. The film serves not
so much as the tragic cry for help of a tortured soul, but as the
despairing howl of a nation desperately searching for a decent
director to give it a cinematic voice.
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