Customer Reviews

The Living and the Dead

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This disturbing psychodrama is a far cry from most horror films. Centered on the death of the mother of the family, the plot revolves around Donald Brocklebank, a father who is seeing his manor fall into poverty, his psychotic son and his terminally ill wife. James, the son, is raging with visions that he can take care of his ailing mother, which takes up the movie's disturbing first third. When Daddy heads to London to find more funds to take care of his wife (or answer to some hinted upon controversy published in the local newspaper - you're never quite sure), James locks out the family nurse so he can be the caretaking "man of the house." Thus is his mother sent into a claustrophobic filmed hell. The scenes where James cares for/brutalizes her are maddeningly disturbing.

Then the Police and rescue arrive. Or do they? James loads himself with drugs and falls into deeper, murderous madness. Or does he? Daddy Donald is protective of his son - or is he repulsed? Yes, the movie really is that disjointed, presented in the schizophrenia that James (Leo Bill) must have running through his own mind. But then again, as the film's final act posits, maybe James isn't the one descended into madness.

It's easy to see how "The Living and The Dead" would be a hit with film fest types, as it has just the barest hint of narrative from which all sorts of angst and art dangle. Director/Writer Simon Lumley has commented that his movie is a direct reaction to losing his own mother to Cancer, and the infuriating helplessness he felt as the disease progressed. It is a blunt emotional force, confusing and frightening, that he brings to "The Living and The Dead," and not an altogether watchable one. This is not a movie that you'll feel good about after you watch it, and at times it made me feel like I was seeing a close cousin to Roman Polanski's hallucinatory nightmare, Repulsion. How a movie like that affects you will directly influence what you get from this one.

I thought this was a very very difficult movie to watch. Disturbing insights into a disturbed mind crossed with family drama. Production is minimal (nice!). When it was over, I felt like I had been through a physical workout - I think it was more of a mental workout really - and I wanted to watch again. This one really get's you thinking and tried to get you into the head of a schizophrenic man (I believe that would be the main character's diagnosis), and does so convincingly. If you are interested in the potential impact of serious mental illness on families, five the Living and the Dead a watch.

Besides the excellent performance by Richard Lloyd Pack as the father, and the fine performances by Kate Fahey as the mother and Sarah Ball as the nurse, there is not much to recommend in this film. The performance by Leo Bill as the son was goofey. Whether this performance was created by the actor or a result of the director's vision, the character was played as a spastic with none of the menace or desperation you would expect from a disillusioned, tortured soul so frustrated by his physical and mental limitations that he resorts to murder.

The story is a fairly simple tale of the disintegration of a family due to financial problems, physical illness, and a son with severe mental problems. Unfortunately it wasn't told very well. I went to the director's website and read his synopsis of the film. Many of the minor details of the story that might have made the film more interesting, such as the institutionalizing of the son or the sale of the house, weren't in the film. Instead what is told is the story in it's barest most straightforward form. Without these additional elements, this is a 10 minute story stretched to 80 minutes.

It is always nice to see a filmmaker who doesn't rely on the extreme closeups that make up the bulk of Hollywood films, but the images presented here weren't that interesting to watch. Over half the film consists of one character or another slowly walking across a room, down a hallway or up a stairway. Many of these same shots were used more than once. About 1/2 way through the film a shot looking down from the top of a stairway as someone walked through a doorway was nicely composed. Other than that nothing else was very impressive. The shot, used 3 times, of the view from the back of a cabinet as the son reached in to get his medication is nothing new. As the film progressed the people walking through the rooms, down the hallways and along the stairs were speeded-up with certain time lapse techniques, not really adding any heightened tension to the movie. As the film reached its end there were several exterior time lapse shots of night turning to day and visitors arriving and leaving. The beginning of the movie was plodding with nothing happening. The end of the movie was rushed, thankfully ending none too soon.

All films have the problem to one degree or another of what to do during editing when the shot you want just isn't there. Large budget pictures have more resources to deal with this problem. I think the shot just wasn't there most of the time for this low budget film.

This film follows a mentally handicapped young man who is living with his father and invalid mother. The film sets up early on that James has a severe mental illness that renders him unable to care for himself. His mother Nancy is confined to her bed, while father Donald has his hands full caring for both. But when Donald is called away on business, James gets angry that he isn't left in charge. He wants to prove to his parents that he is the man of the house - so he locks the hired nurse out of the house and begins to try and take care of his mother. Things quickly spiral out of control as James stops taking his medicine and "forces" his care onto his distraught mother.

The setup for the film is quite nice. Rumley creates a soft-spot for the audience in James and his father. Early scenes show James freaking out and his father lovingly taking care of him. Later, as James begins to put his mother's life in danger, we do not feel so much angry with James, but rather we feel sorry for him. This film is less about the danger faced by Nancy, and more about the sadness of James' strong desire yet incapicity to care for his mom.

Unfortunately, the main story "ends" about midway through the film, and the final act begins to fall apart. James' psychosis begins to go into overdrive, and he has one of the strangest hallucinations I've seen in film. Later, his father goes similarly nuts, and it begins to become difficult to follow the storyline. By the end, it was difficult to tell who had done what to whom, and how much of what we saw really took place, and when. This muddled final act undoes all the good the first half had set up.

Performances are good across the board, with Leo Bill having the most difficult job of the three bringing James' psychosis to life. The character he creates is nearly laughable in the early portions of the film (think an amalgamation of the characters Rick and Vyvyan from the UK TV series, THE YOUNG ONES). As the film progresses, the odd mannerisms become equally frightening and heartbreaking.

If Rumley had stretched out the middle portion of the film a bit longer, and had a more comprehensible ending, I might have recommended the film - as it is, it is largely a disappointment. I give it three stars for good acting and an interesting opening portion.

Take Note: while there is only a sparse amount of gore and no sex or language, the film has some disturbing thematic moments between the mother and son as he tries to care for her.

Director Simon Rumley must have had a really bad day. In fact, he must have had a bad week. Or year.

"The Living and the Dead" is one of the most melancholy, depressing, morose, life negating, soul destroying films that I have ever seen. I give it four stars because I'm more than certain that this is precisely what Rumley was aiming for, and art of this sort has a place as well: how much CAN you watch without reaching for the handgun locked away in case the Neocons finally get absolute power?

A morbid and remorseless descent into impoverished and destroyed lives, "Living" takes us into the mind and limited reality of schizophrenic man-child James Brocklebank (played exquisitely by Leo Bill). Constantly contorting in handicapped agony and yearning for the constant company of his stressed out father and invalid mother, swallows his gigantic medications as a child might swallow candy and fears more than all else being left alone. A sort of demented youthful British glow makes him lovable although all one wants to do while watching him drool, scream, and shoot himself up with mysterious syringes is to look away. Making a very serious judgment in error, his father leaves his physically ill mother alone with James to go seek treatment for her mysterious disease.

James decides that he is going to make his parents proud of him by taking care of his mother all by himself in his father's absence--that is, by administering her medications himself, taking her to the bathroom himself (the scene of incontinence and James' incomprehension is simply unparalleled in any foulness I've seen recently, in fantasy or reality). He also decides that the Nurse his father has appointed for her is not to be let in the house, and becomes enraged when his mother desperately asks for her. As she slowly rots from his unintentional but decidedly violent mistreatment, he descends into hallucinations involving both mother and father of a hallucinatory, transgender quality.

Well, after stabbing a whole bunch of people he mistakes for his mother, James then stabs himself at his mother's funeral while hallucinating that she is there.

Then his father, who has gone completely insane from these traumatic events, is carted away from the desolate mansion in which all has been lost, with the memory of his son's childish plea: "You always say you're going to be there, but you always leave the room!"

This will test your mind, heart, and above all: the stomach.

I gave it two stars for attempting a different kind of movie and on that score it succeeded. Unfortunately, the end result is a sad mash of weird and boring. As already noted, this film is about a man needing to tend to business while leaving behind an invalid wife and mentally ill son in a decrepit mansion. He arranges for a nurse to look after them both. Before he leaves, the father catches the son not taking his nightly injections (of what I'd like to know) and a very intriguing conversation follows.

"Sometimes I like to pretend I'm normal"
"But you're not normal"
"But I could be if you let me"

So sets the stage for the son keeping the nurse away and attempting to take care of his mother and himself to make his father proud. Of course he chooses not to take his medication and things go horribly awry. For example, he figures if he gives his mother more medication she'll get better faster. Weirdness ensues and it all ends rather badly.

I really liked the physicality of the son. He moves in a unique way as befitting his mental state. The super fast motion of the son off his medication with everything as a blur and characters in a normal state moving slowly and monotonously through life was interesting but not enough. I liked how the mansion was a main character as well and reflected its inhabitants. The movie starts with an old bedraggled man in a precarious mental state roaming through a deteriorating mansion and then we go backwards to see how the character reached that state. Okay. But why would a health system great enough to perform an operation on sight at the mansion allow such conditions to exist? Wouldn't the nurse have come much quicker to their aid knowing the exact state of affairs rather then allow it to continue for days until calling the police for help? The plot moved unnaturally, just to make things fit. The son takes handfuls of pills each morning and injections at night. For what?!? It is never explained but we know he's been this way for a while. What exactly is wrong with the wife/mother? She has recently become an invalid since the photo of the happy smiling family looks recent. She can stand but not walk? What has happened to drastically change the happy family in the photo to what they have become now. Bankruptcy? Nothing is explained and what unfolds is a mess of weirdness, hallucinations and boring shots of everyday life that drag on.

There were no commentaries on this dvd which might have changed my view. Also, there were no subtitles which would have helped me to understand some of the dialogue better.

Clearly this is not a horror movie about haunted mansions or axe-wielding maniacs, but it's as coolly disconcerting a thriller as you're likely to come across. Death of a parent, impotence in the face of an unbeatable disease, the awareness of one's own dementia, the fear of being left, alone, unwanted... These are the things that Simon Rumley wants to address, and he does so with a good intensity with The Living and the Dead. Well, as much as mildly I appreciate the film, it's not one I aim to re-visit any time real soon.

The dank and captivating setting (Tottenham House, Wiltshire, UK) helps set the tone a whole heck of a lot, as do all three of the lead performances. Roger Lloyd-Pack and Kate Fahy deliver some great work as the parents, but it's Leo Bill as the slowly disintegrating James that commands the most attention. Most actors play "mentally handicapped" with a stock set of established tics, tricks and gimmicks, but this actor does something that not even Sean Penn could pull off: The "retarded" character is actually a three-dimensional, conflicted and entirely sympathetic anti-hero (anti-villain?) -- even when he's committing some really unpleasant acts.

Most certainly not for all tastes, The Living and the Dead is a devious and admirably twisted little mind-bender of a genre flick. I hesitate to call it a true blue Horror Movie, but there's no denying that the movie packs a few meaty punches -- and if you stay with it till the end, I bet this flick will stick with you for at least a few hours. Whether or not that's a good thing is entirely up to you.

I've seldom enjoyed a movie less than "The Living and the Dead." An 80 minute endurance test, I found myself repulsed by the end. Zero stars, if I were allowed to rate it so low.

This is a psychological horror movie, of sorts. A mentally ill man lives with his senior citizen parents. His mother is gravely ill and bed ridden. The father has to leave for a while, and the mentally ill son tries to care for his sickly mom.

That's the whole story. The young man has many difficulties providing the kind of care his mom needs. At one point, she soils the bed and he dumps her into a bathtub full of rust-brown water - at first scalding, but then ice cold after he leaves her unattended for a long spell. She is shivering as he pushes her in a wheelchair back to her bedroom, still in the nightgown she soiled earlier. He strips her naked and puts another gown on her.

The sequence unfolds at a brutally slow pace (as does the entire grueling movie). I chose to describe that particular segement because I found it to be indicative of the general tone of the entire show. If that sounds like entertainment to you, by all means seek out this film and have a blast. There are also several scenes of the woman vomiting, once after being forcefed unnecessary medication by her son.

This kind of movie, in my opinion, functions more as punishment than anything remotely approaching entertainment. I'm sorry I spent the time.

Donald Brocklebank is a once wealthy man forced to leave is bedridden wife Nancy alone with their psychotic son while he travels to London to settle the problem of medical costs. While away, Nurse Mary is expected to arrive and care for Nancy, but the ever ambitious man-child son, James, is off his meds and eager to prove he can take care of things himself. For Nancy, her time alone with well-intentioned James is an exercise in terror, and she may not make it through her husband's absence alive. But inside James's mind, he is being terrorized as well, and father Donald may be suffering the most of all.

"The Living and the Dead" is a dark, depressing, and difficult film to watch. It starts out slow, at times is disgusting, and there's not a smile to be had from it. However, the pacing picks up well once it gets going, if you can get to that point without feeling nauseous. Though none of the characters are particularly likable and some attempt to make them more endearing would have been a good idea, sympathy for those around the annoyingly dangerous James is still accessible. The performances are all very good, and though it doesn't come off to me as truly fitting into the horror genre, it does successfully create an atmosphere of madness and empathetic fear. Directed and written by Simon Rumley, "The Living and the Dead" IS an ugly film, though it doesn't seem unintentionally so. I can recommend this film to the fan of bizarre and disturbing films and to the adventurous viewer, though not really to the average filmgoer. It's reasonably well-done, though I have to stress again that it is difficult to watch because of the strongly uncomfortable and depressing mood it sets.

This film doesn't follow the main stream U.S. style, but it will not disappoint! This film will keep you in suspense until the very end which, if understood, is the perfect ending to a well written, directed, and casted film.