Customer Reviews

Orphans [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Orphans" is one of the best Scottish films in the last few years. More accessible than the likes of "My Name Is Joe", this film has a very dark streak of humour running through it. Dark, bitter but very very funny.

Essentially the tale of three brothers dealing with the death of their mother & the organising of her funeral, it's really about how the brothers relate to each other & relate to the death of the one bond they shared.

Highly reccomended.

Peter Mullan's debut film as writer/director...looks, at first sight, highly unpromising.

It's about four Scottish siblings between late teens and late thirties dealing with the death of their mother. Okay, if you happen to be a fan of, say, Kieslowski, you may perk up at this point, but this is not that sort of film. Like "Three Colours: Blue", it never shies away from the pain of grieving. Unlike that film, it also has a completely berserk sense of the ridiculous.

The siblings themselves are the pious elder brother Thomas, his sceptical younger brother Michael, sister Sheila who has cerebral palsy (I don't know if Rosemarie Stephenson, who plays Sheila, actually _has_ cerebral palsy - but whether she does or not, she's truly extraordinary) and hothead college-boy John. The story takes place during the night before the funeral, and the morning of the funeral itself, and it gets going in brutal style with a nasty fight in a pub. It goes on to include a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary being shattered on a church floor, a disastrous attempt to scare someone who happens to be jerking off at the time, the most malevolent bar-owner in cinema history, and a church roof being torn off in a thunderstorm.

"Orphans" is one of the very few films to approach the insanity and awful comedy of grief, the way that messy life insists on intruding upon your own private despair. Mullan's script is ruthlessly truthful, his direction is unfailingly inventive and daring, and the film manages to be the product of a truly unholy schtup between Robert Bresson and the Weitz brothers. The cast is uniformly excellent, with special frond-type things going to the four leads, Douglas Henshall, Gary Lewis, Stephen McCole and Rosemarie Stephenson. It also has a sort-of cameo by Billy Connolly, of all people, as an unseen, absent God.

Filmmaking doesn't get much darker, funnier or wiser than this. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

This is a wonderful movie, and to think it is a debut film. Man. I had seen "The Magdalene Sisters" twice,
and loved it so much that I looked up the director, found this movie, and ordered it on Netflix. It starts
off sort of slow, but gathers speed and intensity, and winds up a home run. This writer/director should
be working. His NOT working robs me of pleasure. Mr. Mullan, if ever you check these things (and I know
famous people sometimes do), for the love of God get off your rump and get to work. If you drink stop. If
you drug it, stop. If you're just plain lazy, get some gumption. If you've been this good on your first two
films, you could be a world-beater.

Get back to work. Please. (And the actors are great, down to the tiniest part. Just dynamite stuff all around).

As the plot line flows dark and humourous, the Glasgow experience really shines through a variety of charachters and locations visited in this film. A multi-faceted city, this movie expresses both the ridiculous and the beautiful of Glasgow. I also recommend Rat Catcher as a counterpoint to Orphans.

Dad's long dead and mum just died. The three sons and their wheelchair bound sister need to get her into the ground. Sounds straightforward enough, but events that transpire at the pub after the wake send everything whirling into a tailspin and, things get so out of control, one wonders if they'll ever get back on track.

Many have noted this as a dark comedy. True enough, but it's so dark, I'm thinking one needs to create a new category of film. Yes. Some of the things that happen here are darkly funny, but others are just plain dark. This is way off beat but not at all out of the realm of believability. Most of it lies in how the characters treat one another, and how, what they might do to each other in one scene has nothing to do with how they might treat each other in the next. In one scene a family is taking in the wheelchair bound sister. They luckily have a ramp in their complex which was built for their elderly neighbor. Said neighbor scolds them and says they cannot use "her ramp." They tell her to bugger off and use it anyway. Later that night a storm hits, knocks out the power and said neighbor needs to go to them for refuge. They accept her with no questions asked. I somehow don't see that happening with most people.

There are so many odd things happening here you simply have to see it to believe it. Each of the sons (and their sister) embark on these Odysseys that put them through emotional wringers and bring each of them to the brink. The story has an arc as do each of the characters. One of the joys for the viewer is to see where each of them ends up.

This is an excellent film. The writing is good. The characters are good. Thankfully, the producers saw fit to subtitle it. As it is a Scottish film, the brogue is so thick I would have been lost without them. The only drawback is that I wish it had been shot a bit better. It's a minor complaint given the overall quality of the proceedings. So, if you like offbeat, dark comedies, you'd be hard pressed to do better than this.

This movie makes great audio. I can't wait for Scottish Independence so we can see kilts in the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony parade. But until then, England should include a Scottish audio option on all their movies and television program(me)s. This movie comes with English subtitles. The first part is reminiscent of After Hours and the ending is a peaceful one.

I loved this movie. I love the way the characters are followed, each alone, throughout the movie. Some of the scenes I had to rewind over and over again, because I laughed my @ss off. The writing style reminded me of Quentin Tarantino, (in a Scots way) sick, weird, and funny. Why there aren't more movies made in Scotland is beyond me.

I did not think I was going to like this film, because the language is coarse and you have to read the subtitles to understand the Scottish accents.

But this film shows you what happens when emotions, not intellect, control your behavior. We are taken on an unbelievable roller-coaster ride, where anything that CAN go wrong DOES go wrong...or does it really?

At one point in this movie, I had to hit the pause button, because I couldn't stop laughing. And at the end, I couldn't stop crying. "I want my mommy" has never touched me like it did here.

This film is a masterpiece.

Being a fan of Peter Mullan, I wanted to see this -- I think his first directing effort. It's hard to take, more than a little over the top -- but in the end, it is incredibly moving and a remarkable work.

Peter Mullan makes a mighty impressive debut as writer/director of a feature length, here with "Orphans." Wisely eschewing the Hollywood formula Mullan presses onward with the tale of four siblings dealing with the death of their beloved mother, confining almost every minute of screentime into the eve and day of the funeral. The tale veers from the blackest comedy to heart tugging truths about the connectedness of family, of rage and sorrow, fear and rivalry, misplaced feelings, illness and acceptance. It goes to a lot of other places as well.

Any film that has a church's roof ripped and hurling off into a gale force wind, a Madonna crashing from a hit by a motorized wheelchair, a bartender who, literally, takes hostages for petty offenses (like reading his newspaper), a man who sees the positive aspect of nearly being stabbed to death (hey, if he can convince work authorities it was a work related injury he will be "compensated") has grabbed my interest. In addition to the quartet of family at the story's core the film is populated with just enough believable wack-job locals to make the tale seem pretty universal, despite its very Scottish setting.

The cast is uniformly excellent, each one believable and crucial to the storytelling. What a gem of a movie this is!