Some voices

A Dragon Pictures production for British Screen/FilmFour
At selected cinemas nationwide
Rating: 4/4

The most important point to make about Some Voices is that it works as a film, and a technically accomplished one at that. Patients and health profession. als will have little to complain about - its central character, Ray (Daniel Craig), has schizophrenia, but this is a sensitive film, and its appeal goes beyond any armchair diagnostics.

The film begins with Ray's release from the grim asylum. He is collected by his caf-owning brother Pete (David Morrissey), who fixates on Ray's tablets rather than discussing his illness. As in every "psychiatry film," once we read the chlorpromazine label on the bottle, we know that non-compliance and relapse are bound to follow. This clich aside, the film is refreshing in its avoidance of the standard formulas. Gone are the psycho-killer, pathetic, or "crazy funny guy" stereotypes, and there is only one reference, from Pete, to the "pull yourself together" school of psychotherapy. There is no blaming, no mental illness as metaphor, no psychiatry bashing, and - although a romance lies at its core - there is none of the usual message that "love is better than tablets."

One of the film's strengths is its depiction of Ray's descent into perplexity and paranoia, with poorly formed auditory hallucinations, which he describes as his ghosts. The use of sound is particularly effective, and the film makers have made full use of the Dolby digital soundtrack. The film is full of colour and recurring symbolism. Its background is a busy, soulless London, where innocent street life feeds into Pete's frustrations and Ray's paranoia.

Both Craig and Morrissey give fine central performances. Craig plays Ray as complex and troubled, but believable at all times, while for most of the film Morrissey's angst as Ray's carer makes him the more symptomatic of the two brothers. Food is used as a motif to signal aspects of Ray's illness or his relationship to others. At one point, in Pete's cafe, Ray grinds his tablets on to customers' pizzas, explaining that the pizzas are "just what the doctor ordered." In another scene, Pete uses frantic chopping and garnishing as a technique to woo waitress Mandy (Julie Graham), while a cookery lesson defines the brothers' maturing relationship. Kelly MacDonald is impressive as Laura, the object of Ray's affection. Their relationship builds slowly, and her trust in Ray, who has not told her he has been ill, never seems misplaced. As such, the film serves as an antidote to the 1998 saccharine movie Shine, in which the central character's history was rewritten to portray him as rescued by love.

Some Voices is a welcome, thoughtful, and engaging film - at last, a film that rises above the usual dross of mental illness movies.

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рука набита 

очень жду! тема о шизиках моя любимая (привет Фрейду  ).

спокойной ночи  :bye:

Элен
гггг, я так понимаю, мне на почте надо будет узнавать еще узнавать стоимость посылки к тебе

У меня такой облом, фильм оказался на испанском.... Вот, пришла почитать, о чем речь, чтобы хоть как-то понимать. Я испанский немного знаю, но не до такой степени, конечно, чтобы целый поток речи разобрать. Только отдельные слова...

West London. Ray (Daniel Craig) is released from mental hospital into the care of his brother Pete (David Morrissey), who runs a greasy-spoon café he inherited from their father. Working for Pete, Ray meets Glaswegian Laura (Kelly Macdonald), pregnant by an abusive boyfriend. They fall in love, but when Ray stops taking his medication things begin to spin out of control.

Some Voices, adapted from his own stage play by Joe Penhall, is at heart a love story between two troubled souls. In its treatment of mental illness, it falls between the two "similar releases" I've listed above. It avoids the soft-centredness of the Hollywood production Benny and Joon without being anywhere near as harrowing as the US indie Clean, Shaven. (Anyone who's seen the latter film will be relieved to know that there's no equivalent of the fingernail scene in Some Voices.) The director, Simon Cellan Jones, and cinematographer, David Odd, go for a gritty, verité look, using handheld cameras and natural light as much as possible. The film has a good eye for location, most of it set around the Westway and Shepherd's Bush, with a brief excursion to Hastings when Ray and Laura go on holiday together. In his commentary, Cellan Jones says that they deliberately avoided filming in nearby Notting Hill due to the area's over-familiarity. The film conveys Ray's skewed perspective on the world by occasionally jarring editing and some imaginative sound mixing, of which more later. The acting of the leads is very strong. Some Voices is intriguing, and has quite a bit going for it, so it's a shame that it peters out in its third act.

Some Voices has been given an anamorphic transfer in what would seem to be the correct ratio of 1.85:1. It's fair to say that I couldn't see anything wrong with the picture: I spotted no artefacts at all. The film has a rather pale, slightly grainy look to it, but that's inherent in the way it was filmed. I didn't see Some Voices in the cinema, but there's nothing to suggest that this isn't how it's meant to look.

This DVD has a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. Apart from an eclectic music track (on which French chanteuse Françoise Hardy coexists with Squeeze's "Goodbye Girl"), Cellan Jones and his sound crew make imaginative use of the possibilities of multi-channel digital sound. They mix the dialogue down a little, so that some sound effects seem unusually loud – this is intentional, and helps us to see (and hear) the world the way Ray does. There are some striking uses of the surrounds – check out the Catherine Wheel Ray lights when he and Laura are in Hastings. When many films either restrict the soundtrack to music, or (typically for Hollywood blockbusters) simply seek to batter the audience into submission, it's nice to see some thought put into the use of sound.

The extras are much as usual for a Film Four release: certainly there and in some quantity, but rather basic all the same. Cellan Jones provides a commentary which is interesting in parts but has quite a few lengthy gaps in it. Sometimes he resorts simply to describing what's on screen, or interpreting Ray's actions for us. There's a trailer (running 1:40) and a featurette (6:02), both capable as far as they go but not especially inspiring. There are interviews with the four leads, the director and the writer, many of their comments simply soundbites (and some of them also appearing in the featurette). "On location" is 4:44 of behind-the-scenes footage edited together with nothing in the way of context or commentary provided.

Some Voices is intriguing enough to be worth a look, especially for some fine performances, but like rather too many British films it needed more in the way of script development. This DVD has a very good picture and an imaginatively-used soundtrack, but the extras aren't much to write home about. It's currently available at a RRP of £19.99 but if you're considering buying it please note that it's getting a reissue on 11 February (in as far as I know the same DVD package) at the budget price point of £9.99, so it might be worth waiting until then unless you can get it cheaper now.

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