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2012 - III: The Hide (Marek Losey, 2008)
Jan. 13th, 2012 11:47 pmEssentially a two-hander which demonstrates its theatrical origins - Tim Whitnall's 2005 play The Sociable Plover - but also uses them to good advantage. The film is set in a hide on the Suffolk coast (actually the Isle of Sheppey and Pinewood), with some rather grisly flashbacks which brings a sense of the macabre which comes rather too close to foreshadowing.
In a sense we're in Pinter territory, as two strangers meet, each afraid of the other, and the dialogue shifts between black humour, obsession and menace, implied or otherwise. Losey's grandfather knew his Pinter, of course. On the one hand we have Roy Tunt, smartly dressed, looking older than his years, a birder in search of his final tick on his British bird list, the sociable plover, and ever so slightly anally retentive. On the other hand there's Dave John, possibly not a real name, who shows up at the hide, starving, with a bird tattoo, and seeming to have flashbacks. Tunt doesn't immediately warm to Tunt, and less so when he discovers (in a The Real Inspector Hound moment) than a wanted man is on the run in the area. We were right to fear John.
Curiously, though, his is the lesser role, and one originally played by Whitnall in the stage version. He is a character with secrets, which are slow to be given up, and I was left with the sense that he was less than he actually seems. Phil Campbell doesn't seem to have done anything else of significance. But I think this is largely because the screen is stolen by Alex McQueen as Roy - from The Thick of It and (apparently) Holby City, a regular as a one-off character representing humourless officialdom. Tunt is pedantic, nerdy, conservative, particular and clearly - having been cuckolded - on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
I confess that three-quarters of the way through I did begin to wonder if we'd been meant to jump to the conclusion that John was the man on the run, and that Tunt was the subject of the man hunt. Indeed, the balance of power does shift between the two, with not quite the ending you'd suspect. He is too good a character to be just a victim; it would be tedious for a hood to off the naif he'd stumbled across. And it's this sense of uncertainty with the obvious that keeps two men in a hut compelling for eighty minutes.
In a sense we're in Pinter territory, as two strangers meet, each afraid of the other, and the dialogue shifts between black humour, obsession and menace, implied or otherwise. Losey's grandfather knew his Pinter, of course. On the one hand we have Roy Tunt, smartly dressed, looking older than his years, a birder in search of his final tick on his British bird list, the sociable plover, and ever so slightly anally retentive. On the other hand there's Dave John, possibly not a real name, who shows up at the hide, starving, with a bird tattoo, and seeming to have flashbacks. Tunt doesn't immediately warm to Tunt, and less so when he discovers (in a The Real Inspector Hound moment) than a wanted man is on the run in the area. We were right to fear John.
Curiously, though, his is the lesser role, and one originally played by Whitnall in the stage version. He is a character with secrets, which are slow to be given up, and I was left with the sense that he was less than he actually seems. Phil Campbell doesn't seem to have done anything else of significance. But I think this is largely because the screen is stolen by Alex McQueen as Roy - from The Thick of It and (apparently) Holby City, a regular as a one-off character representing humourless officialdom. Tunt is pedantic, nerdy, conservative, particular and clearly - having been cuckolded - on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
I confess that three-quarters of the way through I did begin to wonder if we'd been meant to jump to the conclusion that John was the man on the run, and that Tunt was the subject of the man hunt. Indeed, the balance of power does shift between the two, with not quite the ending you'd suspect. He is too good a character to be just a victim; it would be tedious for a hood to off the naif he'd stumbled across. And it's this sense of uncertainty with the obvious that keeps two men in a hut compelling for eighty minutes.
