The 50 Greatest Dramas: #28 - The Lives of Others (2006)

The daily realities of tyranny and morality behind the Berlin Wall are intertwined in this brilliant German debut

George Orwell would recognize much in The Lives Of Others, a gripping and distressing vision of life under the jackboot of state repression.

Set in the former East Germany in 1984, its drama takes place under the shadow of the Berlin Wall in a country ruled by the secret police, the Stasi. Debut writer-director Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck crafts an intricate tale about other people's lives as State Security Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is ordered to monitor one of the country's top playwrights, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck). As the watcher and the watched intertwine, The Lives Of Others shows us the way in which the daily realities of tyranny threaten to dehumanize everyone involved.

Having struck a painful nerve in its reunified native land - where it swept the board at the 2006 German Film Awards - The Lives Of Others has been described by many as an antidote to the light-hearted comedy of films like Goodbye Lenin. No cheerful recollection of life as it used to be under the Communists, it's a truly devastating political thriller that invites Germany to grapple with its chequered Cold War past. Adult, intelligent and unwilling to deliver glib answers to the thorny issues of personal morality that it raises, it's a film that slowburns into your consciousness like a cigarette end being stubbed out on your brain. In part, it's a result of several terrific performances that are headlined by Mühe as Wiesler, the cold, dispassionate Stasi officer. A grey man in a grey land of Skodas and grim tower blocks he believes fervently in what he does, an idealist who thinks the secret police are "the Party's sword and shield".



Entering Dreyman's apartment and fitting it with bugging devices, Wiesler begins 24/7 surveillance, yet what he overhears leads him to question his calling. As well as being captivated by the lives of Dreyman and his beautiful actress girlfriend, Wiesler begins to realize that he's just a tool in a personal vendetta. It's a gradual epiphany that makes him question the morality of his actions, an inner drama that's brought to life through Von Donnersmarck use of the piano piece 'Sonata For A Good Man'. What, the film asks, is a good man? A patriot who follows orders? Or someone who risks everything to show compassion to others?

Mühe's placid performance hides great depths. His character is an insipid man who discovers a great passion and acts to preserve it. Fascinatingly, the actor himself had first-hand experience of Stasi surveillance. After the Wall came down and the secret police files were opened to the public, he discovered that Stasi records indicated his ex-wife had been informing on him (an accusation she denies).

It's an anecdote that's instructive of just how portentous this film is in the history of German cinema; The Lives Of Others is one of the first fictional movies since the fall of the Wall to truly capture the cruelty and sadism of life as it was back in the GDR. It's a powerful piece of cinema that demands to be grappled with, if only so that we can also see how the lives of others affect us too.

Verdict
A stunning debut about the daily reality of tyranny that will strike a chord far beyond its native Germany.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #29 - Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

In Guillermo Del Toro's Oscar-winning fairytale for adults, fascism struggles to trample an innocent's imagination

In the imagination of filmmakers, there is something about the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and its immediate aftermath that lends itself to the innocent, often fanciful perspective of a child. So Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) presented an idyllic Spanish postwar countryside through the eyes of a girl obsessed with James Whale's Frankenstein, and Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001) seamlessly merged the inexorable advance of fascism with a ghost story unfolding in a rural school for boys.

Pan's Labyrinth is a sister film to The Devil's Backbone, and similarly blends historical realism with more genre-bound fantasy elements to create an expansive, visionary and moving examination of Spain's darkest chapter of the last century.

It is 1944, at the end of the Civil War, a time when idealism and innocence are taking their final, doomed stand. With her father dead, bookish young Ofélia (Ivana Baquero) is brought to the country outpost of her pregnant mother's new man, the fascist Captain Vidal (Sergi López), who is ruthlessly engaged in rooting out the last remnants of a ragtag guerrilla group hidden in the neighbouring woods.



Vidal's head housekeeper (Maribel Verdú) and doctor (Álex Angulo) are both secretly helping the resistance as best they can, and Ofélia too defies Vidal's monolithic worldview by retreating into her own fairytale imagination. After following a locust-like fairy into an ancient labyrinth bordering the estate, Ofélia meets the forest spirit Pan (Doug Jones), who sets her three tasks involving a giant greedy toad, the terrifying Pale Man (who devours children and holds his eyes in the palms of his hands), and the shedding of innocent blood. Meanwhile outside, an altogether more real monster awaits, torturing and murdering anyone who stands in his way.

"You'll see that life is not like your fairy tales." So Ofélia is told by her mother Carmen (played by the appropriately named Ariadna Gil), in one of several attempts to wean the young innocent off the high ideals and straightforward morality of her beloved fiction, where bravery and purity are rewarded with living happily ever after. Carmen has, after all, allowed herself to become inextricably compromised, marrying her own and her children's fates to the rise of fascism. Yet in Pan's Labyrinth, the world of Ofélia's imagination and the realities of Falangist Spain run in curious parallel as two different, ideologically opposed ways of telling the same story - a story of tyranny, resistance and the timeless struggle between good and evil.



Ofélia's trials may be fanciful, but the woodland strife, mythical beasts, heroic acts, purloined keys, forbidden feasts and troubled births that constitute their essential furniture all reflect, through a glass darkly, the actual conflicts taking place around her, while the deadly reality of the dangers faced by the girl and others is never in any doubt. The result is a Franco-era Brazil, where events outside and inside the mind gradually become indistinguishable as each allegorises and informs the other, so that the ending can be regarded as both horrifically tragic and redemptively triumphant at the same time - all depending on the limits of the viewer's own imagination.

From Cronos to Mimic to Blade II to Hellboy, Del Toro has always been associated with horror, but even if Pan's Labyrinth has its fair share of grotesquerie, brutality and visceral shocks, it is a film unbounded by genre, all at once children's fantasy, adult parable, historical drama and more, located at a magical crossroads where Labyrinth meets The Shining and Land of Freedom meets Ichi the Killer.

Del Toro and his effects crew have crafted an exquisite fairytale world whose phantasmagorical spectacle is never anything less than integral to the film. The performances are flawless (especially López as the clean-shaven face of horror), the transitions from reality to fantasy and back again are beguiling, and the viewer always has the sense of watching something not just gripping, but also of vital importance.

Verdict
In Pan's Labyrinth, fairytale fantasy and fascist reality vie for the soul of a girl and a nation, in an unmissable celebration of cinema's capacity to enthrall.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #30 - On the Waterfront (1954)

Elia Kazan's seminal American classic. Marlon Brando is the dockworker with dreams of being a being a prizefighter who fights the murderous corruption of the New York docks

Kazan at the height of his powers, as yet untraumatized by any involvement with Senator Joe, and free to elucidate the grim imprisonments of life around the Brooklyn docks.

Brando is Terry, the boy who coulda beena contenda, stuck between casual slavery unloading packing cases in the harbour and the dream of being a prizefighter; Eva Marie Saint is Terry's girlfriend, trying to negotiate a way out of their lives; Rod Steiger his sly brother, Karl Malden the priest forced to watch his flock demoralized and dehumanized by the murderous practice of the shipping companies and the union.

The finest scene is not the one in which Brando and Steiger have their taxi-cab altercation about one-way tickets to Palookaville, but a confrontation between the lovers, a breathless, savage, desperate argument that's almost drowned out by the blare of whistles and klaxons from the harbour. Two faces - and what faces! - locked in emotional battle.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #31 - Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

An orphaned Mumbai slum kid tries to change his life by winning TV's 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' in Danny Boyle's multi-Oscar-winning fable

Jamal Malik ('Skins' star Dev Patel) is being beaten by Mumbai police for allegedly cheating on hit TV show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' One question away from the ultimate 20 million rupee prize, no one, including slick show host Prem (Anil Kapoor), believes a chai wallah (teaboy) like Jamal could know all the answers. As the tough inspector (Irfan Khan) replays Jamal's appearance on the show, it's revealed that each question corresponds to a specific life lesson from Jamal's tragic past.

Raised in abject poverty in Mumbai's grimmest slum along with older brother Salim, then orphaned by a Hindu mob attack, Jamal and Salim are forced to fend for themselves on the streets through opportunistic petty crime. They pick up a young girl, fellow orphan Latika (Freida Pinto), escape the clutches of a vicious Fagin-like crime boss, lose Latika, and continue their picaresque adventures, one step ahead of the law. As adolescents, however, Salim becomes entranced by a life of crime and Latika's unexpected return sets brother against brother. Will Jamal salvage his girl, his fortune and his life on 'Millionaire'?



Adapted by Full Monty writer Simon Beaufoy from Vikas Swarup's hit novel 'Q&A', Slumdog is an underdog tale. Beaufoy's Oscar-winning screenplay scampers after Swarup's self-consciously Dickensian storytelling tradition, and is even built around the 'Millionaire' show, as iconic a symbol of Western capitalist entertainment as exists.

Director Danny Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, both of whom also won Oscars, evidently immersed themselves in India's sensory overload. The film revels in the sub-continent's chaotic beauty and raging colours, from Mumbai shantytowns to Agra's regal Taj Mahal. The thrillingly off-the-cuff digital imagery reflects a nation in a state of explosive flux, looming skyscrapers erupting from wasteland, slum kids turning into overnight millionaires through the kiss of television. The film's uniquely vibrant, headlong 21st century rush is that of the infinite possibilities of modern India itself.

Slumdog's such a crowd-pleaser that some critics might brand it Boyle's best since Trainspotting. It even echoes a couple of that film's classic set pieces, notably a slum chase reminiscent of Renton and Co's opening Edinburgh dash and a lavatorial incident so stomach-churning (yet hilarious), it makes Trainspotting's infamous toilet scene seem like Ewan McGregor took an Evian bath.



In fact, the likable Boyle has been on great form for some time - 28 Days Later - revamped the zombie movie, Millions is perhaps the best kids film of recent years. No other current British director makes such thrillingly current (all his films are set in either the present or future), kinetic, inherently visual films and proper recognition is long overdue - though, true to form, he's insistent here on crediting co-director Loveleen Tandan, whose major contribution seems to have been unearthing the wonderfully naturalistic kids to play Jamal, Salim and Latika.

Verdict
A spirited underdog fable marinated in modern India's melting pot. Danny Boyle's still the master of spices.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #32 - The Wrestler (2008)

An ageing wrestler struggles to leave the spotlight in Darren Aronofsky's award-winning drama. Mickey Rourke revels in the role of a lifetime

First things first, let's deal with the misleading publicity about The Wrestler being Mickey Rourke's first film for 15 years. Anyone with even a passing interest in film will know that the man with the interesting face has been pretty busy in recent times, fronting Sin City in 2005 and providing excellent support in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) and Animal Factory (2000).

What is fair to say is that even roles as strong as these are beneath a man who burst on the scene like a modern-day Brando. With his fine looks, shy manner and soft voice, it's perhaps more accurate to say Rourke initially resembled the young Al Pacino. And for a while, it seemed inevitable that the charismatic star Diner and Rumble Fish would play roles of the calibre of Michael Corleone.

No sooner had the - frankly shocking - 9 1/2 Weeks (1986) made him a bona fide A-lister than the wheels came off for Philip Andre Rourke Jr. At the height of his fame, he returned to his "first love" boxing. In 1989 he made a soft porn flick, Wild Orchid, and married the leading lady Carre Otis. He made a big deal about donating money to the IRA. And then he cut off his little finger to impress his estranged wife. He also developed a thing for Chihuahuas which inadvertently led to his walking off the film Luck Of The Draw, a bizarre move that did little to repair his already tarnished reputation.

Unhirable and undesirable, Mickey Rourke during his lost years has a lot in common with his character Randy 'The Ram' Robinson. The biggest name in pro wrestling 20-odd years ago, the man born Robin Razminsky now finds himself working in front of dozens rather than thousands of fans. And when he's not playing the wrestling equivalent of pub gigs, he's eking out just enough of a living shifting boxes at a supermarket that he can afford the upkeep on the sort of rundown trailer usually encountered on episodes of 'Cops'.

Divorced from his wife, estranged from his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), and with the closest thing to a companion being Marisa Tomei's single-mum stripper, Randy seems out for the count. But then two things happen. First a promoter suggests restaging the greatest bout of Robinson's career against arch rival The Ayatollah (real-life wrestler and former karate champion Ernest Miller). Then 'The Ram' suffers a heart attack. If anything ought to spell the end of his career, it's a myocardial infarction. But will the lure of one last day in the spotlight prove too great for the former champ?



Watching The Wrestler, it's clear that i) Darren Aronofsky has done his research, and ii) part of this research involved watching Beyond the Mat until it had burned onto his retinas. Indeed, it's tempting to see Randy Robinson as a composite of the three remarkable "workers" profiled in Barry Blaustein's excellent documentary: Terry Funk, the veteran unable to leave the spotlight even though his body is telling him to do so; Mick Foley, the intelligent family man who'll do anything to 'pop' a crowd even if it does upset his loved ones, and Jake 'The Snake' Roberts, the former WWE star ruined by drug abuse and estranged from his daughter.

The air of realism that percolates through the picture is further enhanced by the presence of top ring warriors such as Ernest Miller, Ron Killings (currently working for the WWE as R-Truth) and Brian Rollins, aka The Blue Meanie. The pick of the real workers, though, is Dylan Summers, a soft-spoken, shaggy-haired man otherwise known as Necro Butcher. For years Summers has toured America, slamming opponents through burning tables and broken glass and allowing himself to be set about with everything including the kitchen sink. In The Wrestler, Summers works a hardcore match with 'The Ram' that's so vicious, it might even shock die-hard fans. As for those for whom wrestling means two fat blokes gut-barging one another around a leisure centre in Kettering, you might want to avert your eyes during these more excessive moments.

It's during The Wrestler's bloodiest set-piece that you can easily forget that this isn't just a film about guys in tights fake-beating one another up, but the story of a man trying to find honour and acceptance in a world bent on grinding him down. As such, the film has a lot in common with dramas like Half Nelson and Aronofsky's own Requiem for a Dream. Every bit as good as his breakthrough film at documenting the struggle for survival and nobility, it's hard to understand why the director has long seemed so keen to swap the kitchen sink for elaborate sci-fi fantasy. Mundanity, grime, thwarted ambition - this is where Aronofsky is most at home.



If Aronofsky seems as bent on self-destruction as Randy Robinson, his cast come on like people desperately trying to seize a long-awaited opportunity. Ever since winning an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny, Marisa Tomei has been more at sea than Captain Ahab. Now given a role worthy of her talent, the star of garbage like The Guru delivers a performance almost as eye-catching as Rourke's tour de force - in other years she might have won as many awards as Rourke. It's long been said that strippers and wrestlers have a lot in common, and to see Tomei's Cassidy losing out on lapdances to her younger colleagues is to remember that she too is a fantasist fighting a losing battle with time.

Whatever Aronofsky, Tomei and Rachel Evan Wood might bring to the picture, The Wrestler belongs to Mickey Rourke. With his puffy face, shattered hands and dead eyes, there's something sad about saying the actor is ideally cast as Randy Robinson. In the end, it's not the physical degeneration that accounts for the quality of his performance. Just check out the scene where 'The Ram' is asked to work on the supermarket deli counter. As he makes his way through the back of the building towards the shop floor, we hear the roar of an expectant crowd. Randy Robinson is heading into the arena again, only this time his audience is an old lady who wants some potato salad and a guy who's really particular about how his ham is sliced. Ignominy, defiance, shame, showmanship - Rourke displays all these qualities during the sequence, sometimes even when he has his back to the camera. The way Rourke plays it, this is a scene about a great actor reminding us that he's returned from the back of beyond.

Verdict
Aronofsky has pulled off that rare feat - he's made a great film about a niche subject that will delight wrestling fans and cineastes alike. And Rourke's Oscar-nominated performance is a knockout.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #33 - Persona (1966)

Ingmar Bergman's haunting masterpiece explores the gulf of communication that exists between a nurse and her silent patient

A claustrophobic drama with only four characters and only two sets, Persona is a stunning example of cinematic innovation. Charting the neurotic relationship between a nurse and her mute patient, Ingmar Bergman's multi-faceted film is at once a psychological drama, a philosophical meditation on the gap between art and reality, and a curious love story.

After forgetting her lines in the middle of a performance, theatre actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullman) retreats from the world, refusing to speak to anyone and becoming a patient at a Swedish sanatorium. With the help of a young nurse (Bibi Andersson), she takes a holiday cottage on the coast in order to recuperate, but their intense, brooding interaction leads only towards madness and despair. A film of flayed nerves and unspoken anxieties, Persona offers a distressing portrait of emotional and spiritual desolation from which Bergman's claustrophobic camera offers no hope of escape. Eschewing establishing shots in favour of a series of striking compositions in which the two lead actresses are forced to share a limited amount of screen space, Bergman tries to make the ever-increasing insanity of his protagonists affect the audience as well. Disorienting us with jump cuts and self-reflexive moments (a shot of a projector, a camera crew and - in a startling sequence - a sequence where the film literally collapses, burning a hole in the negative) this is an unsettling piece of cinema.



The characters' angst-ridden experience of what one calls "the hopeless dream of being" coupled with Bergman's transgression of the conventions of film production create a haunting nightmare of madness and despair. As much a response to the political insanity of the mid-1960s (a television set shows Vietnamese monks immolating themselves) as a film about nervous breakdowns, Persona is a rich, allegorical work that rewards repeated viewings.

Verdict
One of Bergman's most important films, Persona creates a terrifying world in which filmmaking becomes bound up with insanity, anxiety and a crushing sense of angst

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #34 - The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

The true story of the superhuman efforts of Allied POWs, who amid inhuman conditions must build a bridge to aid the Japanese war effort - but what comes first, the bridge or Allied interests?

Director David Lean made his name with smaller, more intimate movies like Brief Encounter and Oliver Twist, but by the time of The Bridge On The River Kwai his epic cinema output was in full swing. The story takes place in 1943, in a POW camp in Burma, where the Japanese are building a railway line between Malaysia and Rangoon. Or, rather, where British Army prisoners are building it, amid conditions of utter brutality and slavery.

For Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) the broad canvas of the war narrows to this particular task - and he and his men pour their energy into it as a means of maintaining their discipline, but also holding on to their marbles. The question is, how far will Nicholson go to protect his bridge, which stands as a symbol of British military efficiency and excellence, even as it makes a vital contribution to the Japanese war effort? In the meantime, the Japanese camp commandant Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) is privately humiliated by his captives' superior engineering skills: the British are building a better bridge than the Japanese Army could - ironically thanks to the extra efforts of the British officer in charge. But further irony - there's an Allied plan to blow it up, which poses a terrible dilemma for Nicholson: will he expose the sabotage and save the bridge, or see it destroyed? As a soldier, the choice is clear, but incredibly he seems ready to ignore his duty to Allied interests.



Whether this is really a film about the complex reality of war, or a melodramatic scenario tacked on to real events is a moot point, but Nicholson's dilemma certainly makes for compelling, spectacular cinema. And Guinness and Hayakawa are excellent as the Japanese and British colonels at odds with each other, but united in their goal of completing the bridge. It's the ironic complexities of the story, together with Lean's trademark epic visual style that places The Bridge On The River Kwai among the best British war films.

Verdict
Guinness, Lean and British war cinema have never been better.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #35 - United 93 (2006)

The shock and awe of the 9/11 attacks are revisited in this painstaking recreation of the last flight of one of the doomed aircraft. Writer-director Paul Greengrass works with a cast of unknowns to relive an intense and disturbing moment in history

"We have a real world situation here." This shout rings out across the control room of NEADS (Northeast Air Defence Sector), suspending the war game scheduled by the military for the morning of September 11, 2001. It also resounds across this recreation of the events surrounding one of the hijacked airliners used in the 9/11 terror attacks, the Boeing 757 known as United 93.

Writer-director Paul Greengrass has an excellent track record in recreating pivotal moments in recent history. His Bloody Sunday and Omagh rendered in painstaking detail two contentious flashpoints in the Troubles, while 'The Murder Of Stephen Lawrence' addressed the infamous murder of a young black Briton. Just as Bloody Sunday confined its action to the 24 hours in which a civil rights march turned into a bloodbath, so United 93 unfolds in real time across the morning of 9/11, using eyewitness accounts and the actual participants to show us what happened that morning in the control towers and military operations centres on the east coast.

What occured on the airplane itself is unknowable. There are fragments of evidence, such as the final phone calls from the passengers to their loved ones, and passenger Todd Beamer's overhead war-cry, "Let's roll". But most of what Greengrass shows happening minute-by-minute during the plane's 91 minutes in the air, is a "plausible truth", to use a phrase from the production, and one arrived at after intensive improvisation with a mostly unknown cast.

This fidelity to the "real world situation" makes for an intense experience, riding on the shoulders of ordinary people as they rally in the face of death. Stripped of the usual art of the Hollywood movie, no stars, no foreshadowing, no explicit moral, it's hard to know what to take from United 93, aside from an overwhelming sense of relief that you weren't on that plane. Ben Sliney (the man in charge of the FAA's command centre in Herndon on 9/11, who plays himself in Greengrass's film) says the film emphasises "how people in ordinary walks of life... could all rise to an occasion, which culminated in the ultimate self-sacrifice of the people on United 93." Greengrass himself sees the purpose of the film as being that "if you look clearly and unflinchingly at a single event, you can find in its shape something much larger than the event itself - the DNA of our times." Certainly, the recreation is ambivalent as to whether the passenger's struggle with the hijackers was the "ultimate self-sacrifice" or a desperate battle for survival. Once the adrenalin of the flight's closing moments dissipates, we are left with a resounding silence, and the sense that nothing can be drawn from this event, nothing learnt, and we have been watching a void.

While the largely unknown cast of passengers are convincing, it is the actors playing the terrorists who are particularly striking. Tellingly, while the press notes contain the biographies of the passengers who died, they omit any mention either of the terrorists or the people who play them, as if to credit these actors would be somehow disrespectful. This only emphasises what an odd interzone Greengrass's film moves within, between reality and fiction. The director also has The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum on his CV, and although he is artful in his realism, scrupulous in avoiding either sensationalism or sentimentality, there is impressive fiction here. That actor Lewis Alsamari (who plays hijacker Saeed Al Ghamdi) was actually refused entry to the US to attend the premiere of United 93 is a particularly strange conflation of the real and the unreal that feels most revealing of the "DNA of our times".

Verdict
An intensely upsetting and traumatic film that returns us to the shock and awe of the morning of 9/11.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #36 - This is England (2006)

Twelve-year-old Shaun hooks up with a bunch of fun-loving skinheads during the long hot summer of 1983, until the spectre of racism drives the group apart. Shane Meadows' most personal film to date

At 12-years-old, and young-looking even for his age, Shaun Fields (Thomas Turgoose) looks hardly capable of breaking and entering a boiled egg. As elder skinhead Combo (Stephen Graham) jokes, he looks like "he came out of a box, like an Action Man, or Barbie doll". Shaun's loss of innocence is at the heart of Shane Meadows' most autobiographical work to date (notice how 'Shaun Fields' deliberately echoes 'Shane Meadows'), along with ever-relevant subjects like absent and surrogate fathers, Western imperialism and white working-class marginalisation, particularly in the post-industrial suburbs.

Right on time, the film also addresses the biggest flashpoint issue of the day; an incipient racism virtually legitimised under recent governments and in sections of the press, stoking anti-Muslim sentiment. This Is England packs a lot into its 100 minutes, but never feels hectoring. Therein lies its power. Not to mention a terrific, danceable soundtrack, laid down with love. "I've been picked on three times today, all because of my trousers," Shaun tells poodle-permed mum Cynthia (Jo Hartley), whose soldier husband died a year earlier in the Falklands. Other schoolyard taunts cut deeper: "How many people can you fit in the back of a Mini? Two in the front, two in the back - and your fucking dad in the ashtray."



Salvation comes in the form of kindly, fair-minded skinhead Woody (Joe Gilgun) and his apparently parentless gang of puppyish, moon-faced boys and preternaturally aged girls, all pinched faces and feathercuts. Little older than Shaun himself, burdened with the same juvenile insecurities, they're nonetheless better dressed in their immaculate Ben Shermans and cherry red Docs.

Shaun signs up, receives his regulation uniform and haircut. Not that mum approves. "We've got problems," a wheedling Gadget (Andrew Ellis) tells her obsequiously. But at least he's found some friends. Life is now a fizzy sherbet rush of trashing empty houses on decrepit Nottingham estates daubed with graffiti ('Maggie is a twat') and getting an education in skinhead music - an authentic mix of 2-Tone and rock-steady.

Shaun also gets an education in girls via beanpole Smell (Rosamund Hanson), during some of the film's funniest scenes. "You might look about four," drawls Smell, "but you kiss like a 40-year-old." As usual, Meadows gets great, moving performances from his young cast. When the older, damaged Combo (Graham) shows up, newly vomited from prison, he drives a nail into the group, exemplified in his loaded question for Milky (A Room for Romeo Brass's Andrew Shim), their sole black skinhead. "Do you consider yourself English or Jamaican?" Combo spells out his call to arms: "For 2,000 years this little island has been raped and pillaged by people who would want a piece of it. For what? Just so we could open the floodgates and say 'come in'? Now three-and-a-half million of us can't find jobs 'cos they're taking them all."



Margaret Thatcher is also deeply unpopular with Combo for having marginalised the far right by whipping the immigration issue, and the union flag, from under them. Then there's her war in the Falklands, shipping fine upstanding white men to a "phoney war to kill a load of shepherds".

Having convinced Shaun his father died in vain, Combo drags his splinter cell to NF branch meetings led by Frank Harper's Lenny ("We're the true voice of this country, of the people who pay their taxes." They harass the Asian locals and struggle with racist graffiti - "Hey, how many effs in 'Off?'" - until a brutal incident makes Shaun think again. Working on a characteristically modest budget, Meadows and crew have fashioned a fantastically authentic drama: from the recreation of the era's dingy landscapes; its youth cults (exerting a pull on suburbanites long after their metropolitan counterparts were morphing into Tacchini-clad casuals); that exhilarating soundtrack (Toots And The Maytals, Specials, UK Subs); and the tangled political climate set against a backdrop of mass unemployment, working class disenfranchisement and a phoney war. This is England, indeed.



Courageously, the film also rescues the skinheads from all-encompassing neo-Nazi associations. The movement's origins lay in a shared celebration by white working-class Britons and the Rude Boys of Jamaican music, a multiculturalism made more potent and pronounced during post-punk.

Though leaving one in no doubt about the stupidity and crassness of the far right (Combo's race-hate merchants give Smell porn mags for birthday presents. "What do you give her porno for?" cries Shaun exasperatedly. "She's a woman, she's got her own nipples") it also digs deeper, trying to find out what makes them tick. Make no mistake, despite its low-key approach (certainly, less hysterical than Meadows' true masterpiece, Dead Man's Shoes) This Is England is a deeply political film, but here renders the political personal, particularly when depicting the far-reaching consequences of war on the families left behind. There is also a second drama being played out here, one that audiences may not pick up on. As Meadows has revealed, in the film's backstory Combo (like Stephen Graham, the actor who plays him) is mixed-race. His explosive reaction to Milky's description of a large, loving Jamaican family isn't just one of jealousy, but borne from more complex emotions concerning his parentage. However, not knowing this takes nothing away from the film's power.



The use of The Smiths' 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want' at the finale not only captures the film's melancholy yearning, but, historically, heralds the new wave of white working class indie culture, in which Morrissey's brand of wistful introspection would succeed the skinhead's sulphate-fuelled moonstomping; at least for a while. Good times for a change.

In April 2007, just prior to the film's release, the British Board Of Film Classification hobbled the film with an 18 certificate (though Bristol City, Camden and Westminster councils later successfully whittled it down to a 15), decreeing that the movie's use of "vicious racial language... might give out the wrong message to an impressionable audience".

Such a move didn't just preclude Turgoose from seeing his own film, but further prevented Meadows from screening it to 15-year-old schoolchildren, as planned, to "show the dangers of bullying, peer pressure and racism to young people". While it was the filmmakers' misfortune to have released their film at a time when policy is dictated by public perception, it was hoped that this vital piece of cinema would eventually find a proper, receptive audience, making its win for 'Best British Film' at the 2008 BAFTAs a richly deserved and very satisying victory.

Verdict
A brilliantly conceived zeitgeist-surfing dispatch from one of the most vital directors working in Britain today.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #37 - The Seventh Seal (1957)

The great Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal features one of cinema's greatest images - a knight taking on Death in a game of chess

"Nothing escapes me. No one escapes me." Although these are the memorable words spoken by Death (Bengt Ekerot) in Bergman's masterpiece, they could also have been a reference to The Seventh Seal itself, a towering achievement by one of cinema's greatest talents. Such is its power, it has been lovingly and regularly parodied, by Woody Allen (Love And Death), in classic teen comedy (Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) and even in an Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster (Last Action Hero). Whenever cinema turns its attention to mortality, Bergman's Death is there in the wings.

The Swedish director is now used as convenient shorthand to indicate serious-minded filmmaking, but it was only with The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (both released in the same year) that Bergman began to develop his reputation as one of cinema's most spiritual, questioning voices.

Max Von Sydow stars as medieval knight Antonius Block, returning from the Crusades during the Black Death. "I want God to put out his hand, show his face, speak to me," he tells a hooded figure in a church. He gets a revelation, but it's not what he expected. The mysterious figure is in fact Death, who explains that he has been by the knight's side for a long time. The knight strikes a deal with Death: they will play for his soul over a game of chess - winner takes all. Their game continues, on and off, throughout the film, interspersed with some scorching images: a witch manacled to a stake, a parade of flagellants, the Reaper leading his conquests on a macabre dance of death. Along with Through A Glass Darkly and Cries And Whispers, The Seventh Seal finds Bergman questioning the existence of God, and in particular asking how can we be expected to have faith when God refuses to reveal Himself. The title, taken from the book of 'Revelation', signifies the strength of metaphysical and allegorical musing that Bergman sought to explore throughout his directorial career.



Questioning the worth of the film 40 years after its release, Roger Ebert wrote: "Films are no longer concerned with the silence of God but with the chattering of men. We are uneasy to find Bergman asking existential questions in an age of irony, and Bergman himself found more subtle ways to ask the same questions. But the directness of The Seventh Seal is its strength: this is an uncompromising film, regarding good and evil with the same simplicity and faith as its hero."

A palpable aura of doom clings to the film, yet it remains more entertaining than a summer rom-com. The startling gravitas of the performances keep events portentous rather than pompous. There'll never be another film quite like it.

Verdict
A grand, thought-provoking and highly enjoyable piece of cinematic history.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #38 - Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Richly sentimental, and brimming with a contagious love of movies, this Academy Award winner is heartwarming, escapist and inspiring to armchair filmmakers everywhere

One of the most popular foreign-language films ever, this is an exercise in how to warm the heart, raise a smile and create a slightly longing sigh in people of all generations.

The story is simple: a famous director returns to the village where he grew up and relives the moments in his life that formed him. Most of these centred on the local fleapit, the Cinema Paradiso, and the projectionist (Philippe Noiret) who became a surrogate father offering advice on how to live a life well. There are two parts to the film: the first is seen through the eyes of a child, the second is how Salvatore takes over as projectionist and makes a foray into teenage love.

Director Giuseppe Tornatore and his cast never put a foot wrong in obtaining the laughs or occasional tear, but the film belongs to Noiret, who is superb.

Verdict
A justifiably much-loved film. This is a touching, memorable landmark in contemporary Italian cinema.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #39 - Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Powerful New York story of addiction and self-destruction from the cult writer of 'Last Exit To Brooklyn' and the director of Pi

Like Last Exit To Brooklyn, Requiem is a New York tale based on a novel by that purveyor of cheery fare, Hubert Selby Jr.

Sara (Ellen Burstyn), a self-consciously overweight widow, is addicted to TV, chocolate and 'diet pills'. Her son Harry (Jared Leto) and his girlfriend, Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and best friend/partner in petty crime Ty (Marlon Wayans), meanwhile have harder tastes. The habits gradually push aside any other aspect of the characters' everyday lives. Corruption sets in and their degredation bottoms out. It isn't pretty: minds, limbs, freedom and self-respect are all lost.

Requiem is a contemporary fairy tale, with stylised locations and extreme, even simplistic, characterisations. Sara's world doesn't extend beyond the stoop of her Projects block; her obsession is a parody of TV addiction. The young 'uns are unreasonably beautiful and poetically determined to self-destruct. To heighten the unreality, Aronofsky builds on the experimental surrealism of his debut Pi, using rich colours, deep shadows, slow-mo, time-lapse and sundry innovative effects. The style, with its advertising and pop-promo inheritance, is close to that of David Fincher's Fight Club or Danny Boyle's Trainspotting.

What makes this gruesome tale of woe worthwhile is its raw cautionary power. Be warned - despite the funky style, this film will repulse as well as compel. Although the filmmaking has a stylish glamour the portrayal of drug use is nothing short of gruesome. The ruination of these lives will leave a haunting, disturbing impression.

Verdict
A visually adventurous cautionary tale that continues to linger in the system long after the credits roll.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #40 - To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Gregory Peck and Robert Duvall star in this Oscar-winning adaptation of Harper Lee's novel. In America's Deep South a lawyer defends a black man charged with raping a white woman, to the disgust of the other townsfolk

When the American Film Institute held a survey to find American film's greatest hero, it was no great surprise that To Kill A Mockingbird's Atticus Finch romped to victory.

One of literature's most admirable characters before he belonged to the movies, Finch, as brought to life by Gregory Peck, is a walking embodiment of decency and courage. Indeed, such are Peck's dimensions and physiognomy, that when Finch is fighting for justice, you could be forgiven for thinking that Abraham Lincoln had walked out of a history book and straight into a law court.

As Finch is one of Hollywood's greatest champions, so To Kill A Mockingbird is one of America's true film triumphs. Its success is in part due to its source material - Harper Lee's best-selling novel tells a fierce story. When a black man is charged with raping a white woman, Alabama lawyer Finch does the right thing and defends the lad. It's a decision that doesn't sit well with the locals who give Atticus every reason to quit. While his young family makes him vulnerable, Finch's determination to teach his children the difference between right and wrong makes him see the case through.



Winner of three Oscars, To Kill A Mockingbird is one of those films where all the elements came together perfectly. Besides hiring one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, producer Alan J Pakula secured an esteemed director, Robert Mulligan, gifted DP, Russell Harlan and acclaimed composer, Elmer Bernstein. Pakula also struck gold when it came to the supporting roles, and the cast here do much to carry the film - particularly a young unknown by the name of Robert Duvall.

Verdict
One of Hollywood's finest achievements, To Kill A Mockingbird is truly timeless.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #41 - Jules and Jim (1962)

Landmark film from French New Wave player François Truffaut about the evolving relationship between two friends and the woman they both love

Jules (Oskar Werner), an Austrian, and Jim (Henri Serre), a Frenchman, are best friends, young carefree bohemians sharing intellectual and physical pursuits and, eventually, a love for the capricious Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). At the end of the First World War, in which the friends have fought on opposing sides, Jules marries Catherine and takes her to the Rhineland, where they have a daughter.

This ambitious film, based on a novel by Henri Pierre Roche and vaguely inspired by Goethe's 'Elective Affinities', covers some 30 years, beginning in the early part of the 20th century and culminating in the Depression-era with Hitler's rise to power. The early, more joyous, third of the movie has Truffaut revelling in technical tricks; jump cuts, frozen frames, zip pans. There are a few failed experiments, but far more that has passed into cinema lore. When he succumbs to the influence of Renoir in the latter part, the filming becomes languorous, melancholy and humanism taking over as the wilful Catherine brings about a clash in the relationships. For all it's technical audacity it's the fundamentals - expert storytelling, a fantastic script, beautifully realised characters and a fine cast - that really contribute to the film's enduring appeal. Jules and Jim are instantly likeable, their friendship utterly convincing (if bizarre). Catherine is bewitching and flawed, one of cinema's greatest enigmas and quite rightly the role that has ensured Moreau's lasting fame.

And of course, there's the skill of the director himself. The unconventional morality of the love triangle and emotional turmoil of the later stages of the film are beautifully rendered. Truffaut's calm, detached approach, with wistful narrative interjections and the leisurely emergence of domestic detail, is unusual, but very effective. He later described it as like "an old photo album": the audience is made to feel as if it's reminiscing over events long past. It's sad and evocative rather than immediate; gentle rather than histrionic. We're left to wonder and to judge the events for ourselves, countless questions are raised and remain open - the mark of a fine work of art.

Verdict
Truffaut's most popular work, and for good reason. A gentle understated triumph.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #42 - American History X (1998)

Hard-hitting drama starring Edward Norton as a reformed neo-Nazi who returns from prison and tries to prevent younger brother Edward Furlong from making the same mistakes he did

Since the 1989 release of Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee's seminal film on simmering inner-city race relations, convincing cinematic studies of the effects of racism have been rather light on the ground. John Singleton's underdeveloped Higher Learning didn't quite get there, leaving Russell Crowe's performance as a brutal skinhead in the 1992 Australian film Romper Stomper as the last time a film attempted to take an unflinching look at the brutal world of neo-Nazism.

The controversial subject matter of white supremacists and their violent tactics is tackled in 1998's powerful American History X, a film that produced a different type of controversy on its release when director Tony Kaye battled publicly with New Line Cinema over the final cut.

Putting on more than two stone (13kg) of muscle for the role, the shaven haired and tattooed Norton is barely recognizable as the film's lead, Derek Vinyard. The movie captures the tense 24-hour period after Derek is released from prison for the murder of two black men. Through a series of illuminating black-and-white flashbacks, audiences are given an insight into how Derek's poisonous views are cultivated and ultimately changed after his brutal stay in prison.

Edward Furlong (Terminator 2: Judgment Day) is Derek's younger brother Danny, a troubled teen who is tempted to follow in the jackbooted steps of his sibling. The complex relationship between the two is played out against a harsh Venice Beach backdrop, a place where a violent tribalism is at play among the area's multiple racial denominations. Offsetting Norton's rabble-rousing racist rhetoric is Dr Bob Sweeney (Avery Brooks), an African-American teacher who has taught both of the bright but misguided Vinyard brothers. Sweeney acts here as the film's moral conscience, a man who illuminates American History X's commentary on the futility of unrelenting hate and bigotry.

It's rumoured that, during post-production, Edward Norton stepped into the editing suite, ultimately giving his character a lot more screen time. Although this move might be seen as egomaniacal even by Hollywood standards, viewers will be more than thankful since Norton delivers another one of the gripping performances that have become his signature.

Verdict
A well-made, well-acted and often violent film that offers a compelling portrait of redemption and the destructive nature of racism.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #43 - The Pianist (2002)

Roman Polanski returns to form with this true story-based account of Wladyslaw Szpilman, "the greatest pianist in Poland - maybe even the whole world", as he aims to evade capture by the Nazis in war-torn Warsaw

After the disaster that was The Ninth Gate (1999), Roman Polanski's career, already on the wane, looked to be heading for the exit door. Enter Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiographical account of his time in the Warsaw Ghetto - the perfect means for Polanski to distill his own experience of his time in Krakow during World War II, a subject he had wanted to tackle for years.

As it is The Pianist is Polanski's greatest work since his heyday in the 1970s, a classically structured and shot movie that undoubtedly rivals Schindler's List as one of the most detailed and shocking examinations of the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis.

Spanning the length of World War II, the film begins in 1939. Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is performing classical pieces on the radio as bombs begin falling on Warsaw. As the months role on, Szpilman witnesses the restrictions the Nazis place on Polish Jews - from compartments on trams they are not allowed to travel in to the startling sight of walls being built around parts of Warsaw to enclose the Jews into what became the infamous ghetto. As his family (including his mother, played by Maureen Lipman, and his father, played by Frank Finlay) are rounded up to be shipped off to the labour camps, Szpilman manages a dramatic escape - only to find himself in hiding for the remainder of the war in various abandoned apartments across the city. In an already distinguished career that has seen him work with Ken Loach, Spike Lee and Barry Levinson, Adrien Brody gives his best performance to date. As the years tick by, and Szpilman moves from one bombed-out house to the next, so Brody becomes a shadow of his former self - losing over 30 pounds of weight to the point where he looks like a ghost. But this is not just a role that requires drastic physical change; dominating the screen from beginning to end, Brody is required to journey through just about every emotion an actor can elicit.

Surrounded by Allan Starski's awesome production design, Brody is also aided by the fact that Polanski's film resists the temptation to show mass extermination. Rather, The Pianist is very much concerned with showing the sly means by which the Nazis took control of Warsaw. From the moment we see a German beat an old man in the street for not prostrating himself in front of him, the film concentrates on a series of isolated moments that echo the terror Polish Jews were suffering. The result is a triumphant and elegantly paced affair, which builds momentum over the two-and-half hours to the point where Szpilman is finally found by a German captain (Thomas Kretschmann) and must play the piano, literally, for his life.

Verdict
Polanski's best film for well over two decades, The Pianist emerges as a moving depiction of one man's struggle for survival, carried off with a committed performance from star Adrien Brody.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #44 - Mean Streets (1973)

The breakthrough movie for Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Martin Scorsese, a classic tale of small time hoods, family, violence and the shadow of religion in New York's Little Italy

As far as making an entrance goes, it takes some beating. Johnny Boy (De Niro) saunters into the bar in slow motion, a girl on each arm, as The Stones' 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' kicks in on the jukebox.

So marks the official arrival of one of US cinema's greatest actors, and possibly its greatest director too in the form of Martin Scorsese. Scorsese's previous features were the prototype New York Italian American tale Who's That Knocking At My Door? (1968) and the Roger Corman produced Boxcar Bertha (1972). With Mean Streets his directorial personality really comes to the fore.

The story of tested loyalties and destructive Catholic guilt among a group of small-time hoodlums in Little Italy with an unforgettable 60s pop soundtrack, it is a simple blueprint that would be copied by lesser directors who could never dream of bettering it.

Keitel, as Charlie, a tortured soul trying to keep it all together, and an electric, jittery, possessed and demented De Niro put in unsurpassable and believably human performances that kick-started their careers. To paraphrase Charlie, Scorsese didn't make up for his sins in church. He did it at the movies.

Verdict
A tight, intense masterpiece from Scorsese, writing collaborator Mardik Martin and the iconic stars.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #45 - Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

A newly divorced man battles his ex-wife for custody of their only son

On the surface, Robert Benton's Kramer Vs. Kramer doesn't look like a classic tearjerker. The courtroom locations of the film's final third couldn't be more unsentimental. The picture's colour palate - inspired by David Hockney's 'Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy' - also renders the film sterile and standoffish rather than warm and accessible. Ironically though, this muted quality is what makes Kramer Vs. Kramer, in the end, so emotionally devastating. Adapted from the novel by Avery Corman, Kramer Vs. Kramer opens on the collapse of a marriage between Joanna (Meryl Streep) and her workaholic husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman). With Joanna fleeing the family home to 'find herself' Ted is left to juggle work with raising the couple's only child, Billy (Justin Henry). Being a single parent proves difficult for Ted, but it's a role he eventually comes to relish. That is until Joanna re-enters Ted's life and demands custody of the boy.

While it's very much a movie of its time (the fashions, fabrics and soundtrack reek of the late 1970s), Kramer Vs. Kramer hasn't dated as badly as some of its contemporaries. This is due to the continuing relevance of its subject matter and its affecting performances. Besides fine supporting work from Howard Duff, Jane Alexander and Justin Henry, (who's surprisingly sincere for a child actor), Kramer also features Academy Award winning turns from Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman.

Streep, who also starred in the mighty Manhattan in 1979, is slightly handicapped by a character whose desire to discover herself never feels convincing. On the other hand, Hoffman, who came to the film after going through a painful divorce, couldn't feel more real. Apparently, Hoffman contributed so much to the script that Benton offered him a writer's credit. Although the actor refused, it's clear from his heartfelt performance that he was bringing a lot more to the role than simply his talent.

Verdict
Oscar-dominating 1970s weepie that is just waiting to be rediscovered.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #46 - Magnolia (1999)

Tom Cruise actually gives a credible (and wonderfully deranged) performance in this assured third feature from Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson. Also starring a fabulous ensemble that includes Julianne Moore and John C Reilly

Covering 24 hours in the lives of what seems at the outset an impossibly large cast of characters, Magnolia may have video viewers reaching for the pause button in the dizzying opening scenes and making copious notes to keep track. However, as the film progresses the remarkable assurance that won Paul Thomas Anderson such acclaim in Boogie Nights comes to the fore.

Story hands baton on to story seamlessly, interweaving the lives of the disparate characters that include Tom Cruise as a misogynistic sex-guru, William H Macy as a washed-up quiz-show star and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the aspiring male nurse who wants to look after everyone.

With Anderson borrowing freely from fellow auteurs Altman, Scorsese and Demme, Magnolia's finest achievement is the sheer ambition running through every vein. Anderson pulls off the ultimate coup de grace to leave viewers wondering about their own lives, mistakes and fates long after the final credits have rolled.

Verdict
Boogie Nights is remarkable but is Magnolia Anderson's first masterpiece?

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #47 - Hotel Rwanda (2004)

A hotel manager struggles to save 1,200 refugees during the Rwandan genocide in this drama starring Don Cheadle

Hotel Rwanda is based on the real-life story of African hotelier Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu whose compassion, humanity and quick thinking allowed him to save 1,200 Tutsi refugees from being slaughtered during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

A Schindler's List for the Third World, Terry George's account of that slaughter - in which around one million Tutsis were killed by the Hutu majority over the course of 100 days while the West turned a blind eye - works best as a powerful indictment of our own culpability.

Repeatedly emphasising the failure of the West to send an intervention force into the troubled country, Hotel Rwanda asks probing questions about the lack of a coalition of the willing - and comes to damning conclusions about the First World's racist foreign policy decisions. As Nick Nolte's exasperated and impotent UN officer Colonel Oliver growls helplessly at Rusesabagina, "You're not black. You're not even a nigger. You're African". Elsewhere, George's film is strictly business as usual - a hand-wringing series of liberal platitudes that telescopes gruesome historical reality into sanitised, popcorn-friendly viewing. Insulating us from the horror of genocide, Hotel Rwanda pushes the slaughter off-screen and focuses instead on the hotel itself where Paul desperately tries to keep his Tutsi charges safe through a series of bribes, bartering and the liberal distribution of free beer to the Hutu troops.

In fairness, there are powerful moments - a nighttime excursion along a misty, strangely bumpy back country road ends with Paul realising that he's bouncing over hundreds of dead bodies; a UN convoy carrying refugees is forced into a stand off with machete-wielding thugs as Oliver and a handful of Belgian troops fight to keep their human cargo alive.

In the lead roles, Cheadle and British actress Sophie Okonedo acquit themselves well - panic-stricken faces contorting in the gathering hysteria. Whether they deserve quite as much praise as has been heaped on them is debatable, but then there's a certain value in over-praising Hotel Rwanda since to do so is to tacitly acknowledge our guilt and then seal it away in the past. The fact that Paul is styled in very American terms as a sharp, go-getting, self-made (business) man, only makes his heroism more appealing to the target US audience. This is cathartic cinema - watch it, feel bad, then go home and wait for the sequel, 'Hotel Sudan'.

Verdict
Well-intentioned and worthy, this account of the Rwandan genocide swaps atrocities for melodrama. Its accusation about the West's failure to intervene works well.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #48 - The Sea Inside (2004)

The true story of a Spanish quadriplegic campaigning to get the law changed so that he may choose to end his life without recrimination for those who help him. Javier Bardem stars in this dramatisation from Alejandro Amenábar, director of The Others

After his international success with The Others, Alejandro Amenábar could easily have gone to Hollywood to feed at the studio trough. Instead, he returned to Spain to create a beautiful, heart-wrenching work that will have you in floods of tears by the final quarter. Based on a true story, it might be easy to dismiss Mar Adentro as a 'disease-of-the-week' movie, were it not for Javier Bardem's incredible turn as Ramón Sampedro.

It's 1996 and Sampedro - now in his mid-50s - has been confined to his bed for the last 28 years after being paralysed from the neck down following a diving accident.

The film begins as he is introduced to Julia (Belen Rueda), a lawyer who agrees to present his case in court (and later helps him publish a book, 'Letters From Hell', about his experiences). His need is simple. Refusing a wheelchair as it represents the "crumbs" of what freedom he has left, he wants to die. As he says, "I believe that living is a right, not an obligation." But the law in Spain will punish anyone who helps him. While some support his plight, others - such as a similarly incapacitated priest and also his brother, who thinks "he'll have to live as long as God wills" - do not. The story takes a turn when Julia discovers she has a degenerative brain disease, initially leading her to suggest that the pair die together in a suicide pact. While Sampedro is attracted to her - despite the fact she's married - he also gets close to Rosa (Lola Dueñas), a separated mother-of-two who makes ends meet by working at a canning factory. She visits Sampedro, he thinks, to make her feel better about her own life - although she claims it is to help him realise life is worth living. They soon become dependant upon each other, ultimately forging a bond that will tear Sampedro from his family.

At the same time, Julia drifts out of the narrative with only a postscript in the story to reveal why. It leaves the film's second half feeling rather unbalanced, but it scarcely matters, given that Amenábar concentrates on cranking up the emotions.

Depending on your point of view, what follows is either sentimental claptrap or highly moving. We glimpse Sampedro's past life - when he travelled the world working on a boat - via a series of photographs that remind us how active he once was. As he listens to opera we witness how he returns, in his mind (with the camera flying across the countryside) to the sea, the scene for him of so much pleasure and pain. And we experience the moment when he finally leaves his bed to travel to La Coruña and sees simple scenes of daily life around him. All of it will melt even the hardest of hearts.

While Amenábar narrowly avoids being accused of manipulation, the film never feels like a campaign for euthanasia - perhaps because at its core is Bardem. Confined to bed, with a body left limp, he just has his face to express anger and joy. With those sad eyes of his, the actor who impressed in films like The Dancer Upstairs and Before Night Falls takes his work to another level. Avoiding simplification, he brings to life a fully-rounded character, as dignified as he is bitter. As he says, "When you depend on others, you learn to cry by smiling." It's a fine tribute to Ramón Sampedro, who died in 1998.

Verdict
Immensely moving, Mar Adentro is an astounding piece of work with a captivating performance from Javier Bardem. Stunningly directed by Alejandro Amenábar, he shows yet again what a precocious talent he is.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #49 - The Deer Hunter (1978)

Opening with a wedding and ending with a funeral, Michael Cimino's Vietnam odyssey takes three Pennsylvania steelworkers to hell and back. Starring Robert De Niro, the film introduced cinemagoers to Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep

It takes a true visionary to see exactly how the times are a-changing. In the latter half of the 1970s, with only Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974) to his name, Michael Cimino approached the Hollywood studios with his pitch for The Deer Hunter. They all baulked, unconvinced that the American cinema-going public was ready to see the recent wounds of Vietnam reopened.

Unconcerned, Cimino secured financial backing outside the usual channels by turning to Britain's EMI, and then took further decisions that, at least at the time, seemed crazy: making the film last a whopping three hours (with a Russian Orthodox wedding sequence near the film's beginning matching the length of all the war scenes in the middle), and placing alongside his established star Robert De Niro an ensemble of relative or total unknowns, as well as John Cazale, whose cancer meant there was a real risk that he would not live to complete his final part (in fact he died shortly after the production ended).

The rest is history. The Deer Hunter swept the board at film awards ceremonies, was a phenomenon at the box-office, and launched the cinematic careers of newcomers Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken. The reasons behind its great success are easy enough to see: it boasts extraordinarily nuanced performances from what is, at least in retrospect, a dream cast; it is technically very accomplished, without once seeming flashy or ringing false; and it manages to root its grand epic themes in a compellingly intimate human drama. The Deer Hunter is, in short, a deserved classic. The film also, in its day, courted considerable controversy, chiefly because of its portrayal of Vietcong soldiers forcing their prisoners (American and Vietnamese alike) to play Russian roulette. 'Hanoi' Jane Fonda, whose own, similarly themed film Coming Home was in fierce competition with The Deer Hunter at the 1979 Academy Awards, accused Cimino of racism, historians denied that there was any evidence of Russian roulette being played in the conflict, while a confederacy of psychologists and media pundits blamed the film for a spate of Russian roulette-related deaths in the US following its release.

There is no doubt that Cimino's chosen focus is on his American characters, although whether this constitutes racism is more open to question - he certainly does not shy away from showing American brutality. Cimino has subsequently defended his film's historical accuracy by claiming that Russian roulette is used on POWS even to this day as a weapon of torture - but it does not follow from this that it was ever used in Vietnam, and the uncomfortable probability remains that the 'continuing', if thankfully marginalised, practice in today's conflicts is inspired less by the realities of the Indo-Chinese experience than by the accessible fictions of The Deer Hunter itself.

What is certain is that the film's Russian roulette sequences constitute an arresting metaphor for the random cruelty of death in war and, thanks to the care which Cimino has taken in building up the viewer's investment in his tormented characters, these scenes are as involving, upsetting and unbearably tense as anything that has ever appeared in cinema. Viewed now, some decades after it was made, what seems most striking about The Deer Hunter is the sensitivity with which it charted the shifting mood of its times. After Vietnam, after Watergate, after nearly a decade of self-examination, anti-authoritarianism and cynicism, when all the old American verities had fallen away and patriotism had become a dirty word, Cimino seemed almost alone in discerning that, in a nation shaken to its very foundations by distrust, there still remained a growing desire to return to some of the old faiths, values and traditions.

His story of three young working-class men from the heartlands (De Niro, Walken, John Savage), whose lives are all forever changed by their tour of duty in Vietnam, is a harrowing reflection of America's experience in the first half of the 1970s; but the film's final, ambivalent sequence, in which the two survivors gather at a wake for the third with a small group of friends and lovers and find solace in the words of 'God Bless America', instead looks forward to the future.

Cimino's characters, who are only semi-articulate at the best of times, never actually voice an opinion on America's Indo-Chinese ventures, and it is not clear whether Michael, Nick and Steve go to Vietnam because they are patriots, or conscripts, or because it is in their eyes, much like the mountains back home where they hunt for deer, just another all-male domain in which they can play out their games of cameraderie and machismo. In this way, Cimino side-stepped the narrow ideological controversies of his times, making a film that could (and did) touch both fervent supporters and vehement opponents of the Vietnam War - and the same is true for his ending, which seems to reassert an America that rests on faith and patriotism, even as it calls into question whether such terms can any longer have the same meaning as they did before. It is a mixed message that looks back to all the doubts and disillusionments of the seventies, while at the same time paving the way for the new conservatism of the eighties under Reagan.

On top of all this, The Deer Hunter is at once a war epic (whose focus on the homecoming of De Niro's hero Michael Vronsky evokes both Homer's 'Odyssey' and Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'), a realistic portrait of a sleepy Russian Orthodox steeltown in Pennsylvania, and a story of male friendship that, post-Brokeback Mountain, seems full of unspoken desire and sublimated longings. It is rich, messy, and unmissable.

Verdict
Gauging the shifting moods of the 1970s, this tale of life and love disrupted by war is as arresting as a bullet to the brain.

The 50 Greatest Dramas: #50 - Mississippi Burning (1988)

Hard-hitting - if somewhat simplistic - tale of hideous racism in America's Deep South. Stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as FBI investigators

This powerful movie represents Alan Parker's best work and remains pertinent, although the events it borrows from occurred in 1964.

Two FBI investigators, the bright, by-the-book Yankee Ward (Dafoe) and the older, calmer Southern boy Anderson (Hackman), visit a small Mississippi town after the disappearance of three civil rights workers (two of whom were white). Their clash over working methods provides the subplot as they reveal the extent of the racism and brutality simmering in the town - especially from the wife-beating, black-baiting law enforcers (headed up by Brad Dourif).

No recent film has generated such convincing Southern atmosphere. It's like a fly-on-the-wall observation wrapped inside a handsomely mounted thriller, and ensures that the message, told in potent but arguably simplistic terms, reaches a wide audience.