Mark Romanek
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Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
For a while, Hollywood milked “the friend who becomes the crazed enemy” line: Fatal Attraction , The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Single White Female, and so on, ad nauseum.
After all, we already know some of the ending, and the film also follows the general path of other crazed domestic figures getting into families' lives such as Glenn Close's Alex in "Fatal Attraction" and Rebecca De Mornay's Peyton in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle."
Were his options a multiple choice, he makes the wrong decision and the film never fully recovers as it veers to light “Fatal Attraction” territory.
This is extremely clever, subtle filmmaking that resonates on several levels and provides a fresh, 21st century twist on the Fatal Attraction theme.
This revelation is not the film, nor is it the launching pad for escape plots and car chases, as if Romanek were making some oak-paneled accents-and-adrenaline mix of the Merchant-Ivory canon and Michael Bay 's " The Island ."
"Never Let Me Go" isn't all that original in plot, sharing a great deal with George Clayton Johnson's "Logan's Run" and 2005's " The Island ," but its treatment as a frighteningly skewed existential tale set in the real world makes it rather novel.
“Never Let Me Go” is one of the best treatments of the cloning issue that we’ve seen in films like “Part: The Clonus Horror” and its criminally imitative unofficial rehash “The Island.”
Think “ The Island ,” with more character development and less shit blowing up.
With films such as “The Island,” the sugar rush was provided in the ultimate fight for life.
Like Bay’s bombastic action epic The Island, Never Let Me Go is about a second class of citizens who are cloned and raised solely to provide donor organs for regular people in poor health.
It’s the age of pull (from the pocket) and shoot, whenever, wherever – a new act for the term “snapshot” which Robin Williams’ Sy, in Mark Romanek’s bleak, photo-visual satire One Hour Photo (2002) reminds us, was originally a hunting term.
Not since Robin Williams’ performance in One Hour Photo have I seen a protagonist so totally repulsive yet so compellingly fascinating.
The ultimate cinematic expression of the last example would be Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, in which, accidentally given a soul, a donkey dies for our sins.
"Never Let Me Go" isn't all that original in plot, sharing a great deal with George Clayton Johnson's "Logan's Run" and 2005's " The Island ," but its treatment as a frighteningly skewed existential tale set in the real world makes it rather novel.
Playing the lonely-but-upbeat security guard Paul Blart, James seems to be going for the same sad-sack vibe that John Candy achieved two decades ago in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," but he ends up closer to Robin Williams' character in "One Hour Photo."
Andrew Garfield (2007's " Lions for Lambs ") is an adequate Tommy, but no match for his two co-stars; too often, Garfield looks to be trying too hard to play his shy, sensitive role, and has a big breakdown scene near the climax that loses its impact by way of his overacting.
Directed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) from a screenplay by Alex Garland (28 Days Later and The Beach, both movie and novel), Never Let Me Go is based on Kazuo Ishiguro's haunting 2005 novel about three dewy youths coming of age in an alternate Britain.
Ishiguro is of course best known for The Remains of the Day, and thanks to a concise script by novelist and sometimes screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, Sunshine ) the movie is remarkably faithful to the source book, something which counts both for and against it.
., The Beach), and Mark Romanek, the director (One Hour Photo), have created an alternate universe that exudes some of the creepy calm of Wolf Rilla's great English science-fiction flick Village of the Damned, but also the gloomy romanticism of Keats and Shelley.
While the complex triangle among these three forms the heart of Ishiguro’s narrowly focused novel, the precise screenplay by Alex Garland (The Beach) is filtered through Kathy’s perspective, specifically, her attempt to make a worthwhile life in this alternate England.
The film has been adapted by Alex Garland (The Beach, Sunshine) and directed by Mark Romanek, a well-respected music-video guru who made a small splash in the indie world with 2002's One Hour Photo.
Screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach) abides by Ishiguro’s decision to set this dystopic fantasy in the past, not the future.
This is not a “Who’s that guy?” dramatic shift that funnymen often make in more serious films, such as Robin Williams as a bald creep in “One Hour Photo” or Jim Carrey as a cop in “Dark Crimes.”
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
influenced One Hour Photo (2002)
Plot
After all, we already know some of the ending, and the film also follows the general path of other crazed domestic figures getting into families' lives such as Glenn Close's Alex in "Fatal Attraction" and Rebecca De Mornay's Peyton in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle."
Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III), brought in to replace Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) as director less than a month before the start of principal photography, is nothing if not craftsman-like.
Why The Wolfman switched directors from Mark Romanek, the dark visionary behind One Hour Photo , to Joe Johnston, best known for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, remains a mystery deeper than any revealed in the film.
The project bounced from Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) to Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) and several others before landing on the desk of Joe Johnston, a reliable popcorn-maker whom you probably know from fun flicks like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer and Jurassic Park 3. As post-production on The Wolfman wore on, there were reports of reshoots, re-edits, and re-scoring at the last minute.
The astute horror fan might think they can anticipate what comes next; likely something in the vein of Fatal Attraction or One Hour Photo, where a deranged sociopath infiltrates a happy family and slowly tears it apart through manipulation and violence.
While it sounds like a future shock gimmick out of Logan’s Run or Soylent Green, it’s actually a simple art symposium run by the mysterious Madame (Nathalie Richard).
Meanwhile, several supporting performances are exquisitely realized, from Sally Hawkins (2008's " Happy-Go-Lucky "), unforgettably compassionate as the against-the-grain Miss Lucy, to newcomers Isobel Meikle-Small and Ella Purnell as the younger Kathy and Ruth, confident and beyond natural?not to mention dead ringers for their adult counterparts.
During the first act of the film, director Mark Romanek (“One Hour Photo”) take full advantage of the charming yet vaguely sinister effect conveyed by orderly, healthy rows of neatly dressed schoolchildren singing in British accents before a faculty of “guardians” that includes chilly Charlotte Rampling and friendly Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”).
Romanek, a noted music-video whizz whose second feature this is, does an important job laying the story’s emotional foundations with his younger actors, and the cinematography by Adam Kimmel (Capote) has a chilly elegance.
He isn't out to visually dazzle viewers?even if the film is very well shot by cinematographer Adam Kimmel (2005's " Capote "), making haunting use of the English countryside and shore?but to explore the struggle of the human condition to do something with one's life before it's over.
Director Kenneth Branagh has a steady handle on both the wonder and the humanity of the story, which was originally set to be adapted by Never Let Me Go's Mark Romanek.
It’s all a far cry from the project first announced back in 2010, when the financial success of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland prompted Disney to greenlight Aline Brosh McKenna’s Cinderella script to which Never Let Me Go director Mark Romanek was attached.
Although Romanek's film is built around a sci-fi core, it's not set in some dystopian, "Blade Runner"-style future.
Blade Runner ’s replicants they most certainly are not.
It’s reminiscent of Never Let Me Go in the way the youngest version feels present in the actions and mannerisms of the older two.
Another Ishiguro novel translated well to the screen, in James Ivory's "The Remains of the Day" in 1993, with an amazing acting clinic from Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
Alex Garland's ("Sunshine") adaptation of Kazuo "The Remains of the Day" Ishiguro's novel makes it very clear - these children were raised separately from society and barely know how to function in the outside world.
When you add in such elements as Rachel Portman's aggressively fraught musical score, you have a film adaptation that ever-so-artfully piles it on, in a way that novelist Ishiguro (whose earlier works include "The Remains of the Day") never did.
Essentially, like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day , this is about longing and unfulfilled (although not necessarily unrequited) love.
Ishiguro is of course best known for The Remains of the Day, and thanks to a concise script by novelist and sometimes screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, Sunshine ) the movie is remarkably faithful to the source book, something which counts both for and against it.
Even if you haven't read Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, it's clear that Mark Romanek's adaptation of Never Let Me Go springs from the same authorial well as The Remains of the Day.
Any hopes that this could be Halloween via Falling Down and One Hour Photo disappear before we're halfway there.