Tony Birch's Blood Review

I have never been too fond of Australian stories, and that may be because I live and was born in Australia, so the excitement of anything Australian has surely died down since my eyes first opened – however, Tony Birch’s Blood was beyond my expectations.

If anything, it is a story, a journey, one that you feel like you are taking along with the main characters, Jesse and Rachel. Their journey was a tough one, reaching several climaxes and in each, I screamed internally, “no, no! Please don’t die!” And luckily enough, my wishes were answered. Throughout the book, which took me two days to read, I thoroughly connected with these young characters, and connected with every other Australian thing in the story – the ‘Scotch Finger’ and ‘Monte Carlo’ biscuits, the pies, the ‘servo’, the ‘jacks’, the Aboriginal paintings, and the famous ‘Commodore’. I felt at home the entire time.

And that is what was interesting about me reading this book. At first, I did not think that I would even want to connect with it at all, I had the motive of just finishing reading it for the sake of being slightly ahead of my Fiction class at university, and partly because I am excited to get on to the other three compulsory books. I like to be prepared, and in this case, I am glad that I am that way because it was the most interesting Australian read.

For its entirety I had not grown into boredom once. I was entertained, though in a negative way from all the violence, and the story played out in my mind just like a movie. I could picture the look on little Rachel’s face every time that she felt Jesse was emotionally slipping away, I could picture Jesses little pre-pubescent face as he tried to ‘step up’ to the bullies that they came across, and I could imagine the pain-stricken Gwen, the mother of these two children, who despite her best efforts in pleasing all of the men she had come across, failed her children to the point where her destructive lifestyle soon became theirs.

I automatically found myself wanting these children to evade the welfare, stick together and become reunited with their grandpa once again. I felt as though I was watching a documentary, only reading the subtitles. It all felt so real, and now that it is all finished, it still does not feel abstract. I still can see the children, dirtied with mud and blood and running through the back streets of the outskirts of Melbourne, my own hometown, trying not to bump into the criminals they are running from.

Tony Birch writes so brilliantly, in a down-to-earth manner, so as to make the reader feel as though they are not reading, which is in a way why this book was such an easy and fast read, just like my lecturer had made it out to be. It is addicting until the very last sentence, and captures every scenario in the most realistic way possible.

I do not regret spending double the money that I should have in the university bookshop to purchase this book, rather than waiting a couple of weeks after purchasing it online for around half the price I paid. I will gladly place it on my bookshelf, in its slightly withered state, and watch with pride as someone picks it up and asks me what it is about. “Home,” I will reply, “home.”

Blue is the Warmest Colour

Before viewing this film, I had expected a minor lesbian love story, viewed in a heterosexual perspective and I wondered what else they could add to the shallow at the time storyline. Then I viewed it, and my mental state was toppled.

Blue is the Warmest Colour follows two girls, one teenager and one young adult, as they fall in and out of steaming, hot love. It depicts several uncut sex scenes, in which heterosexual’s question “how do lesbians even have sex?” is answered, once, twice, thrice. I was wearing headphones whilst watching the movie, yet the moaning protruding from each actresses mouth had made me mute it for each entire sex scene. In all honesty, this movie felt like a pornography half the time. I was comforted to find out later that the actresses had some silicon shields placed over their genitals, seeing as they felt quite uncomfortable acting throughout these sometimes ten-day long sex scenes.

Its depiction of lesbian love was rather real, though. How explosive it is to be attracted to the same gender, how confusing it is, how repulsive the other gender becomes, and how one side of the relationship is accepting of the change whereas the other side is not.

I think that there is no need for the director, Abdellatif Kechiche to be deemed an ‘Arab persuading young French girls to take off their clothes’ – rather, he is a director who made the French girls work their ways up the ladder of exhaustion to bring the audience of the Cannes Film Festival a movie that is a deeper insight into the lesbian lifestyle than living through it themselves. Its intense scenes, whether it is fighting over cheating, fighting over accusations of lesbian love interests, the sex scenes or even the heartbreaking scene at the end in the art gallery, pulls the viewer by the earlobes and pulls them into a lifestyle that is followed by many.

I could see the exhaustion on the actress’ faces in most of the scenes. It was painful to see, and for the entirety of the three hours I was leaning on the edge of my computer seat, almost head-butting the screen, just to see whether things will or will not resolve between the main characters. Kechiche has captured something no heterosexual could ever capture as beautifully, and shaken the worlds of his audience.

Overall, Blue is the Warmest Colour is a must-see. It is an emotional rollercoaster, filled with love and hate and everything in between. It is the most accurate depiction of a love between two women and how fiery each experience may be, whether it is a good or bad one. Both Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos perform wonderfully in the film, and though they hated every second of the sex scenes, they made it look exceptionally real, to a point where it feels as though you are watching a lesbian couple making love in real life, while they are unaware of your existence.

The Wolf of Wall Street: Reminding the Status Quo that they are Sheep

"There we go, that's the attitude. You can sell anything? Sell me this f*cking pen right here. You can sell anything? Sell that. Sell me the pen!"

"Can I finish eating first?"

"Brad, show 'em how it's done. Sell me that pen. Watch, go on."

"I'll sell this f*cking pen?"

"That's my boy right there. He'll f*cking sell anything."

"Could you do me a favour? Write your name down on that napkin for me."

"I don't have a pen."

"Exactly. Supply and demand."

Life is an act. To live is to be, but to live successfully is to act. If there is anything that The Wolf of Wall Street teaches its audience, it is that one cannot live life to their full potential unless one can fool others, full the status quo who think that 'honesty is the best policy'. Newsflash - honesty was a thing of the past, today, if you are not trying to incriminate yourself, you are not winning.

For the entirety of the three hours that is the film's duration, The Wolf of Wall Street convinces its viewers that any career path they have taken is the wrong one, and that becoming a stock broker will be the best decision they will ever make in their life, despite the display of consequences at the end. If its viewers' decisions are not focused on obtaining millions from the rich and not assisting the poor, then its viewers will, after the viewing, feel as though every step they have ever taken has led them to incompetency. It portrays a destructive line of cause and effect, and displays the effects as glamorous, despite how blemished some effects turn out to be.

Jordan Belfort created a legacy for himself. At twenty-two years old, his life turned around when he realised that in order to become wealthy, he must lose all ethics that he once held. His faithfulness towards his wife, his preference to be abstinent with drugs, with sex, with alcohol, it all faded away when he began to earn more money than he thought possible. Soon his sense of acquiring money turned to a sense of acquiring more money, and a personality that would otherwise not have fit in his old self had he not sold himself to thousands of willing people who ended up funding him with his life earnings. To become quite successful, he firstly stole from the poor, and worked his way up Wall Street to dig into the deep, full pockets of the wealthy, and soon had his pockets dug from.

Staggering down from the top, Belfort begins to watch his life spiral before his eyes. Unfortunately, most people, be it if they even lack the success Belfort once had, also experience glimpses of their lives spiralling downwards at some stages of their existences. All of these spirals are sad, and in unison, can create a sense of community. And that is what Belfort had created. He had recruited all those who were experiencing those negative spirals, and he had assisted them in getting themselves out of it, by placing others in there who have less of a chance of drowning. Belfort before this could not swim, but he sure found a good swimming instructor.

The most daunting scene in the movie is the very end, when Belfort became a motivational speaker. He once again tried to level himself with the status quo, and saw that the status quo had no ability to sell him his pen, the act in itself summarising the entire point being made in the movie - if you cannot sell yourself, you cannot be bought. If there is an item on a shelf for a long time, it will collect dust and be thrown out. The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of liberating one from the supermarket shelf to rise above all other contending brands and be bought by a foolish customer who deemed them more worthy than the others. 

Prisoners

First of all, I must introduce a: 

********* SPOILER ALERT **********

If you have not yet seen the movie, leave this post and go see it, then come back and discuss with me your opinions. Otherwise, your viewing experience of the film will be quite unappealing if you read on. So, your choice. Impatience can ruin experience. Just keep that in mind.

The movie itself, after two viewings, was astounding and still very exciting and unpredictable, while filled with themes and symbolism, which is what I seek in thrilling movies. Movies which have a rare amount of plot twists are not at all thrilling, yet surprisingly there are many movies, deemed thrillers, with this problem, which leaves viewers feeling quite critical, in negative aspects. Prisoners, though, begs to differ. Containing many themes, Prisoners takes the viewer along with the characters on a crazed rollercoaster ride of emotions through the physical, mental, law and non-law abiding processes to do with kidnappings and potential suspects.

Parenthood, masculinity and survival are three major themes in this film, intertwined into the main character, Keller Dover. His need to abide by the social rules of parenthood in that one must take care of their child, becomes seemingly difficult when his daughter and the daughter of his family friends go missing. This is emphasised after the middle of the film, when Dover catches Loki stalking him, he enters Loki's car and says, "every day, she's wondering why I'm not there to f**king rescue her! Do you understand that? Me, not you! Not you, but me!" His masculinity is questioned by his wife, in that his role of a father and a protective individual cannot be fulfilled unless he finds his daughter, and these two themes clash with the main theme at the beginning of the film: Dover being a survivalist. He has thoroughly prepared himself and his son for the worst, "pray for the best, but prepare for the worst," yet nothing can prepare him in locating the whereabouts of his daughter. 

Another common theme was stereotyping - stereotypically, the priest at the beginning of the film is a pedophile. How common it is to mistake any priest for a child molester because of their reputation in the news nowadays. This misleads the viewer into thinking that the priest is at fault with the law, when in actuality the priest has killed off Holly Jones' husband because of his ill confession to the priest five years ago - how is it though, that the priest feels ill about the confession that Mr Jones has killed sixteen children and will continue, when the priest himself is a registered sex offender? Couldn't the priest have reported the man to the police, thus aiding them in unravelling the big case before Anna and Joy were kidnapped, let alone any other children? Not abiding the stereotype, though, is that the priest would break one of the ten commandments and allowed a man to die right underneath him - literally, which brings me to the next main theme in the film: religion.

At the beginning of the film, Keller is seen hunting a deer with his son, and chants the entirety of the 'Our Father' prayer before shooting it - but when punishing Alex by scalding him with hot water, he says the 'Our Father' and does not continue when the prayer says "forgive those who trespass against us" - the symbolism in this becomes interesting when it ties in with the meaning of the spirit totem of a deer, which could be part of the character of Keller. The spirit totem of the deer is associated with gentleness, the ability to move through life and its obstacles with grace, innocence and being in touch with their inner child, and sensitivity. The killing of the deer at the beginning by Keller's son could symbolize him letting go of these qualities, and leading his son on the same path. This could explain why he does not finish the 'Our Father' when punishing Alex, as well as not being able to forgive him, assuming of course that he is the kidnapper of his daughter. Tied in with the theme, Keller is shown letting go of his religious routes and morals in order to bring Alex to justice. 

Apart from themes, I found some slight faults in the storyline: firstly, after Alex is caught at the beginning and had his RV searched, Loki claims that they have found no evidence in the RV or on his aunt's property - had they undergone a thorough search, they would have easily found the gaping hole underneath a simple board of wood beneath an out-of-place Trans Am in her yard - why, too, did they not seize the Trans Am from the Jones' yard after both Joy and Anna were found and Alex returned to his original family? It is slack to begin excavating the yard when there is a muscle car still standing in their way. And where did Keller's car go after Holly Jones drove it off when he came to find Anna towards the end of the movie? Surely she would not have driven it off too far away because she had to have driven it a walking distance back to her house so that she could place Keller in the 'maze' before the liquid substance that he drank would have begun to wear off. Why didn't Keller call Loki on his way to the Jones' house to show him his sense of direction towards his innocence and Holly's guilt? Or why didn't Loki follow him in a car chase that would result in the finding of Anna and the safety of Keller? And finally, when Loki arrives at Holly's house to notify her that they have found Alex, he calls out quite loudly, "Mrs Jones, Mrs Jones?" How could she not have heard him, especially during the chaos that is having Anna out of the maze and attempting to drug her?

Apart from those faults, I found the movie quit exhilarating, in that it literally had kept me at the edge of my seat. It is sad that there are so many missing children cases in the real world - if only we had Detective Loki to assist us.