bag of totally legal, mood-altering movies to bring you up or down a notch, on demand. We also have a cure for the needle-phobic. Just tell us what the problem seems to be, and the Movie Doctors can fix it.
UPPERS AND DOWNERS
Movies to Lighten or Darken Your Soul
Working in the media, we see many wrecked and ruined lives. Talented men and women who started so full of hope and promise but who then got sucked into the downward spiral of Big Brother, Keeping Up with the Kardashians and The Week in Westminster.
Occasionally, however, we encounter those happy folk who are too enthusiastic, too keen to progress, too optimistic about their inevitable career path. They smile and bellow from all corners of the building about how their latest idea has been commissioned without even a budget, a presenter or a title. We all come to the reassuring conclusion that there is something very wrong here, some darkness they are dying to conceal.
Whether we are meeting the cheerful or the sad, the Movie Doctors always carry an emergency pack of mood-altering films to bring the desperate and needy back to normality. Here we share them with you so that you too can be prepared to meet life’s ups and downs with equanimity. Let’s start with gloom . . .
DOWNERS
If you suspect that you are being a little too positive at work, if your pay rise was slightly on the generous side and your colleagues admire you just a bit too much, here are some movies to take you down a peg or two. These are depressing films not because they are cheap, badly made or poorly acted, but because they are bleak. Because just reading about them fills your heart with darkness and makes you stare, along with Mr Herzog, into the abyss. Use sparingly and always in a light, airy, well-ventilated room.
ANGELA’S ASHES (1999)
A miserable, poor, wet, sick, violent, cruel Catholic childhood in Limerick becomes slightly less miserable in New York.
Measure of gloom
RING OF BRIGHT WATER (1969)
It’s a pet movie. A pet movie set on the west coast of Scotland starring the Born Free pairing of Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. We know how this will play out. Bachelor Bill buys an otter called Mij, finds it’s too much of a handful for his small London flat and they move to an idyllic, remote cottage. Virginal Virginia who lives next door falls for them both, and the course of true love is set: man, woman and otter in perfect harmony.
This all works beautifully until Mij is chopped in two by a ditch digger with a spade. It is sudden, brutal and shocking. There has been no build-up, no hint of illness, the otter never coughs or looks depressed. One minute he’s running happily through the peaty bog, the next he’s been dispatched to that otter holt in the sky.
For a U-certificate film, this wretched vision will hit viewers hard. And with Val Doonican singing the title track, this more than deserves its place as a top downer.
Measure of gloom
THE MIST (2007)
No one does misery quite like Stephen King (indeed no one did Misery quite like Stephen King), but the real scaremonger here is screenwriter/director Frank Darabont. If it’s terror, slaughter and hopelessness you need, then The Mist is your film. Some are misled by the fact that the King/Darabont combo produced The Shawshank Redemption, concluding that while there may well be some tough scenes to endure here, ultimately there’ll be an ending to cheer. Maybe even a boat-polishing beach scene to send us home happy. Well, think again. After a storm-induced shopping trip to the local mall, the titular mist rolls in. (Meteorological NB: as the visibility is less than one kilometre, this is not a mist but a fog. But as that would make it The Fog and John Carpenter has already done that, everyone has to call it ‘a mist’. As none of our protagonists mentions a fear of ghostly lepers, we conclude none of them can have seen this 1980 horror film.) Surfing in on the wave of condensed water droplets are spiders, bugs, a many-tentacled thing – and more than a suggestion that our friends in the military are to blame.
King’s novella has an inconclusive ending, but Darabont’s movie is something else. Just when you think the final reel has got as grim as it could possibly get, he delivers a final scene so devoid of hope that you’ll pop back to The Road for some light relief (see p.305).
Measure of gloom
WINTER LIGHT (1963)
If you have worked out the meaning of life and your place in the celestial order, make an appointment to see Pastor Tomas Ericsson. He might have the church and all the right clothes, but that turns out to be misleading. Here’s a priest who, if asked to present ‘Pause For Thought’, would just tell us to end it all now. He can’t stop an anguished fisherman from committing suicide, he can’t take the affection on offer from young Marta and he can’t believe in God any more. The stunning photography and brilliant performances offer some brief consolation before we reflect on the utter meaninglessness of life.
Measure of gloom
WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1986)
Just because it’s a cartoon doesn’t mean it won’t fill you with despair. Raymond Briggs produced this story when we were still (just about) worried about the pesky Soviets and the cowboy in the White House. Jim and Hilda Bloggs are preparing for the coming nuclear attack with the guidance of leaflets from the government. The voices of John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft reassure us briefly before they both die of radiation poisoning. The only consolation for the modern viewer is that this was all a long time ago, when Russia was thought of as a dangerous country with a crazed leader who had designs on its neighbours. So that’s all right, then . . .
Measure of gloom
UPPERS
Yes, please. The combined effect of all those downers has made the Movie Doctors look more pasty-faced than ever. It is time to prescribe some films that will brighten your life. Films that we are sure will make you feel better about yourself, your neighbour and the world in general (see also ‘Patient Transport’, p.308). Unlike the downers, you may watch as many as you like, as often as you like.
OIL CITY CONFIDENTIAL (2009)
It’s time for some feel-good movies. And for our first choice, an actual, real-life feel-good movie. This Julian Temple documentary about Dr Feelgood has been unfairly pigeonholed as being only for yearning, nostalgic men in their fifties who wish they could still fit the shiny suits they wore in the seventies. Not so. This movie we prescribe for everyone. There is something irresistibly joyous about OCC which demands its inclusion.
It is the story of four guys from Canvey
