Four Lions (2010)

"Waj, why are you doing this?"

"Rubber dinghy rapids!"

I've resisted reviewing any outright comedy for this blog so far, film or TV, for the obvious reasons: trying to analyse humour is about the most po-faced thing I can possibly imagine. I don't really hold to the oft-repeated belief that you ruin a joke by looking at how it works, but it's still hard to do it without appearing to have no sense of humour and, as John Cleese once said, an Englishman would rather be accused of having a really small penis than that.

Still, I've reviewed quite a few films now, and I can't keep ignoring a whole genre. I have to find some way of talking about it. And it isn't that I haven't found humorous things to discuss before (Flash Gordon, for example. Actually, that's a comedy, innit?). So I've deliberately decided to have a go. Originally I was going to review Kind Hearts and Coronets, but I had to give up five minutes in as there are no subtitles on my DVD and the dialogue just isn't clear enough to compensate. I'm a bit pissed off about that, really; a DVD release without subtitles is not acceptable.

So, Four Lions. It's a brilliant film. But the first thing I have to say is: DO NOT BUY THE DVD. Just record it off the telly or something. The DVD forces you to watch about ten minutes' worth of trailers that can't be skipped. Any DVD that does this has to be boycotted, otherwise they'll just keep on doing it.

Crikey. Got out of the bed the wrong side this morning, didn't I? Anyway… I picked Kind Hearts and Coronets so that I'd be able to talk about the class subtext instead of trying to analyse jokes. This was my second choice, obviously, because there's a political subtext to talk about. Thing is, though, there's not an awful lot to say about it, cleverly done though it is. All sorts of taboos are cheerfully ploughed though, as you'd expect from Chris Morris, but it's funny for rather old fashioned reasons. The format is basically that old classic, thick bloke and thicker bloke. The three thicker blokes (the Stan Laurels / Buttheads / Garths / Syd Littles, depending on your cultural reference point) are Waj, Faisal and Hassan, and the two thick blokes (the Hardys / Beavises / Waynes / Eddie Larges) are Omar and Barry. There's a bit of an added level of this between these two, jostling for the spot of alpha male, but it's Omar who's ultimately the least thick, and the leader. Of course, though, the humour lies in the fact that they're all wazzocks. This is co-written by the creators of Peep Show, and feels like it.

It's Omar and Barry who are fleshed out more as characters. Omar has a loving wife and young son, and the family relationships are quite heartwarming. Yet his wife is enthusiastic for Omar's plans to blow himself up, and their son is being brought up to idolise jihad and martyrdom. His brother Ahmed, a far more observant and pious Muslim than Omar, who is forever referring to Western pop culture, is appalled at all this, yet we can't quite side with him as he's such a zealot that he locks his wife up in a "little room"! So many contradictions.

Barry, although charismatic, is a little semi-detached because of his white ethnicity, his convert status and his lack of Urdu. I suspect this, rather than anything else is the real reason why he refuses to attend the mosques (he wants to blow then up!) and prefers only to associate with other Muslims who accept him as one of them, not an outsider, which pushes him towards extremism. He doesn't quite belong anywhere, precisely because of his stubborn adherence to a particularly narrow version of "Islam". So many contradictions.

And it's the contradictions that make this film so funny. Barry accuses Omar at the end of killing his thick brother by dragging him into this, but he did the same himself with Hassan. Waj ends up about to blow himself up inside a kebab shop full of Muslims. Omar and Waj go to train with Al Qaeda and end up blowing up Bin Laden. And Omar blows up a branch of Boots, something which he's mocked earlier.

There's something almost Monty Python about the explosions, too. All of them, from Faisal's crow to Faisal himself to Barry's choking demise are very, very funny. It goes to show that the subject matter, being fundamentally absurd, is ripe for humour. I'm glad that a film like this exists, and that it's good.

Black Mirror: 15 Million Merits

“That throat cutting thing? Neat gimmick.”

Wow. So much to talk about, most of which will only occur to me once this post is finished. That was proper good telly, that was; Nigel Kneale for the age of YouTube, iPhones and bloody X-Factor. How ironic that the best and most cutting statement about Britain in 2011 should come from something so old-fashioned as a one-off teleplay.

This feels very Charlie Brooker, but I suspect much of it (it’s hard to tell- I have no other script by her with which to compare) is by his missus, Ex-Blue Peter presenter and person with X-Factor related baggage Konnie Huq. Unlike last week’s, though, it’s a very human story. Daniel Kaluuya is superb as Bing (his name is a reference to modern tech in itself), our everyman. He’s a very subtle character, hardly uttering a word for most of the story and expressing his disquiet with his surroundings by means of passivity and inaction. It says a lot about him that we don’t even learn his name until we’re some way in. This gives him a certain nobility of character. Unlike most of his neighbours in this depressing world, he maintains a sense of feeling and authenticity. And yet, as we see, his fine feelings are ultimately rendered meaningless as he eventually learns, if not to love Big Brother, then to be co-opted by it, and to take his soma.

This is such a depressing existence, in which everyone lives in small cells and spends their days pointlessly cycling nowhere so they can earn credits with which to buy crap. There is no joy, no social interaction, and no attachment to the physical- everyone wears dull; grey clothing and even bits of origami are confiscated as “detritus”. Worst of all, people are forced to watch adverts for the crudest of porn and the tackiest of light entertainment shows, and heed to actively pay to opt out. Life exists to a constant soundtrack of the most awful and cynical of chart pop. There’s no fast-forwarding through the adverts in this society, and no peace, time to think, or to be truly alone. Significantly, Bings’s moment of connection with Abi, as her avatar blows him a kiss, is interrupted by porn.

Ah yes, Abi. I don’t watch The X-Factor, but I really, really don’t like these sorts of talent shows, It isn’t just snobbery (Although I really, really hate the way that this sort of thing is once again reducing pop music to the culture of the exploitative Svengali figure, after we all thought the Beatles had slain that particular dragon back in the ‘60s by writing their own songs. I exaggerate, but still.)- it’s the cruelty, the element of public humiliation, that I have often found just too upsetting to watch. And that’s what’s skewered here; poor Abi’s dream is cruelly reduced to a life of pimped sexual exploitation, alleviated only by drugs. It’s not difficult to see the metaphor here, or the implied comment on the ultimate fate that awaits the winners of these talent shows. And Jessica Brown Findlay is devastatingly good at portraying the sheer horror of Abi’s life as a “star”.

This is tyranny, all right, but it’s the tyranny of conformity, as expressed by Bing’s horrible neighbour on the exercise bikes, and by the reaction of the crowds. Bing’s final speech is wonderfully eloquent, and all the more effective coming from someone so passive and quiet. But he, like everyone, is co-opted, and the shard of glass he places to his neck is eventually reduced to a mere prop.

This is extraordinary stuff. It’s bleak, it’s brilliant and it’s Brooker.