{"id":11223,"date":"2020-03-14T13:05:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-14T12:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11223"},"modified":"2020-03-14T13:06:20","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T12:06:20","slug":"manchester-international-film-festival-days-3-4-5-reviewed-by-peter-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11223","title":{"rendered":"<strong>Manchester International Film Festival<\/strong> \u2013 Days 3, 4, &#038; 5 | reviewed by Peter Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 3, 4 &#038; 5<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/new-logoSME-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/new-logoSME-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/new-logoSME.jpg 742w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the second of a short series of reviews from this year\u2019s Manchester International Film Festival, we hopscotch our way through Christopher Nolan\u2019s <em>Memento<\/em>, Roy\u2019s <em>World<\/em>, a documentary about the author Barry Gifford, a pair of directorial debuts separated by a couple of decades: Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s <em>Amores Perros<\/em> from 2000, and Inbetweener Simon Bird\u2019s <em>Days of the Bagnold Summer<\/em> from\u2026 now.  <\/p>\n<p>We have been to the beating heart of this year\u2019s Manchester International Film Festival and it is <em>Days of the Bagnold Summer<\/em>. Yes, we\u2019ve seen some great movies \u2013 yes, we\u2019ve even rewatched some great movies on the big screen \u2013 but if there is an award for best new film that we\u2019ve seen: <em>Days of the Bagnold Summer<\/em> bags the gong hands down. It\u2019s sad and lovely, charming and sweet, it\u2019s the directorial debut of Inbetweener Simon Bird, it stars Nick Cave\u2019s son Earl Cave, it has a soundtrack by Belle &#038; Sebastian and it\u2019s based on the graphic novel by Joff Winterhart which was already a pretty damn great graphic novel. <\/p>\n<p>The greatness of <em>Days of the Bagnold Summer<\/em> in no way disparages the other great films on offer. We saw Roy\u2019s <em>World<\/em>, a documentary about Barry Gifford, author of the Sailor and Lula stories that David Lynch turned into <em>Wild at Heart<\/em> (among a great many other books), which centres on a clutch of autobiographical stories that Gifford wrote about his boyhood in Chicago. Via stock footage, family photographs and animation, we hear Gifford himself talking about his father and his mother, and their rocky marriage, as well as the likes of Willem Dafoe, Lili Taylor and Matt Dillon read from the stories themselves (against a backdrop of animation that recalls nothing so much as the excellent Kurt Cobain doc, <em>Montage of Heck<\/em>).  <\/p>\n<p>And yes, we\u2019ve rewatched some excellent films, some films that we loved on their first release, films that we watched in the late lamented Cornerhouse, films that are always good to rewatch on a big screen: we\u2019re talking Christopher Nolan\u2019s second film, <em>Memento<\/em> (lots of people prefer his debut, <em>Following<\/em>, but I think <em>Memento<\/em> stands as his best film to date \u2013 yes, better than <em>Inception<\/em>, better than the overblown <em>Dark Knight<\/em>s, better even than <em>Dunkirk<\/em>), which sees Guy Pierce as the man who adorns his body in notes a la Ray Bradbury\u2019s <em>Illustrated Man<\/em> and can only remember fifteen minutes at a time \u2013 fifteen minute segments that we, the audience, watch in reverse order \u2013 which sounds mightily complicated but surprisingly isn\u2019t; and Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s <em>Amores Perros<\/em>, which remains as scalding and vital as it did back in 2000, with its looped, nonlinear <em>Pulp Fiction<\/em>-esque tales of dog fighting, luxury models and trampy hitmen. It\u2019s especially interesting to rewatch <em>Amores Perros<\/em> with an eye on what I\u00f1\u00e1rritu did next: <em>21 Grams, Babel, Birdman<\/em> and <em>The Revenant<\/em> \u2013 the formal invention, the beautiful savagery, the interleaving characters and narratives, the audaciousness of the film making\u2026 It was all there from the start. <\/p>\n<p>Ah, but <em>Days of the Bagnold Summer<\/em>, though. What makes it the beating heart of the festival? Is it Monica Dolan, whose nervous, fretful performance as Sue, single mother of Daniel (Earl Cave) holds our eyes whenever she is on screen? Is it the small tragedies (Sue on the phone calling oily lothario Duncan, played by Rob Brydon) or the even smaller triumphs (Daniel fronting a band composed of children)? Undoubtedly the Belle &#038; Sebastian score \u2013 which combines their own ever so delicate warblings counterpointed with the rawest of raging guitar noise \u2013 contributes an edge to the pacing. But I think, more than anything else, it\u2019s the writing and the direction: Bird and his screenwriter Lisa Owens have taken the source material and added and pruned and twisted and tweaked and fashioned a film that stands apart from the book without doing it a disservice (and I suspect anyone who heads in the direction of Joff Winterhart\u2019s version will be equally delighted). All told, <em>Days of the Bagnold Summer<\/em> feels like a film that people will love, clutch to their bosoms, rewatch and urge on other people. If you get a chance to see it, make a beeline. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Coming soon: <em>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Loop, Noise<\/em>, animated shorts and a documentary about Billie Holliday.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>by Peter Wild<\/strong>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 3, 4 &#038; 5 In the second of a short series of reviews from this year\u2019s Manchester International Film Festival, we hopscotch our way through Christopher Nolan\u2019s Memento, Roy\u2019s World, a documentary about the author Barry Gifford, a pair of directorial debuts separated by a couple of decades: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[14,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Manchester International Film Festival \u2013 Days 3, 4, &amp; 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