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Cillian's "spacey quality" + reviews for Barley, Sunshine, and Pluto
08 April 2007 at 03:29 PM | by Lilith
A "spacey quality"
Seems all of Cillian's recent interviewers have been wowed by his baby blues. Practically the first thing Andy Dougan of the Evening Times remarks on is Cillian's look:
There is a slightly spacey quality to the 30-year-old Irishman, which is only accentuated by his piercing, unblinking blue eyes and softly-spoken tone. He has the look, and I don't mean this unkindly, of someone who is not necessarily of this planet. You might cast him in a science-fiction film but probably as an alien and not an astronaut.
But Dougan recovers to ask Cillian about the trials of filming an effects-heavy production like Sunshine—what he compares to "being a goalkeeper in a top football team." I can't help thinking this must have been even more difficult after the immediacy of Ken Loach's filming method. Cillian admitted this was a challenge:
"This was four months of intense filming," he explains. "The technical aspect was very hard. Danny [Boyle] was doing stuff that hadn't been done before so there was a lot of waiting around for us while they set up. "To then be totally energised and have the adrenaline flowing, that's really hard to do when you've been sitting down for two hours. It really tests your concentration."
And Cillian jokes about these "student digs" that we keep hearing about:
"It's always good to exaggerate these things for you guys," he says smiling, "so we'll tell you we were in horrible dormitories with shared toilets. It wasn't that bad," he adds. "We all had single rooms."
The United Arab Emirates' 7DAYS just reprinted Eileen Condon's interview from the Belfast Telegraph. As we blogged last week, there's not too much new info in the story, but it's fantastic to think that people all around the globe are getting a healthy dose of Cillian Murphy!
Reviews roundup
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Reviews for The Wind That Shakes the Barley keep rolling in. My favourite comes from Noy Thrupkaew of American Prospect, who praises both Ken Loach and Cillian, and eloquently pinpoints the dilemma that makes this film so powerful to watch:
Loach's film has a sense of inevitability to it—but somehow it's as gripping as its narrative arc is predictable. Perhaps that's because Loach saturates his study of revolution with its rhythms—lurching, volcanic, as jerky as his scenes of violence. His actors' performances also help flesh out roles that otherwise could come across as schematic. Cillian Murphy as Damien is particularly fine—that doomed poet look turns out to be less incongruous than expected. A purist, a romantic idealist, Damien does not dwell in the land of the living. As he grows increasingly obsessed with power and ideological purity, he can't look away from the splotches already on his soul. Compromise would make his past terrible acts—committed in the name of a righteous cause—completely meaningless.
Sunshine
Sunshine is brightening the news too. After posting so many reviews, I've been a bit worried about my expectations upon finally seeing the film. Cosmo Landesman of The Sunday Times set my mind to rest:
What is so refreshing about Sunshine is the way it constantly—at least until the ending—fails to go in the direction you expect it to. Its plot is driven by a series of accidents, goof-ups, and wrong calls. The irony is that these are things that make us human beings and not machines, yet they threaten to destroy all of humanity because they threaten the mission. What follows is a series of struggles, not against life-threatening forces, but with more mundane challenges such as repairing the ship’s solar panels, rebooting the computer or putting out a fire. In space, no one can hear you do DIY.
And Demetrios Matheou of The Sunday Herald adds:
Sunshine may let itself down in the final straight, but for much of the course this is a visually beautiful, well-crafted, absorbing genre movie. If there's one connection with Trainspotting, it's that Boyle really knows how to get his audience, as well as his characters, tripping.
Visually, The Independent's Jonathan Romney agrees that Sunshine is impressive:
Early on, one of the astronauts takes an unguarded look at the sun, a revitalising "shower in light", even though Icarus (the name of the ship's talking computer as well as the vessel itself) warns of "irreversible damage to the retinas." You may well worry about your own retinas, as we're constantly blasted by intense light of assorted digital textures: up close, the sun is a writhing, rustling field of flame, the universe's biggest, trippiest lava lamp.
But reviewers keep remarking on that troublesome third act, and in the end, he concludes that a light show might not be enough:
The presence of the Sublime is signalled in the finale by juddering discontinuity in the editing, and an image stretched as though the projectionist had suddenly switched lenses. The presence of the Almighty, or just an almighty headache? Decide for yourself. I can't help feeling that a simple burning bush might have been more affecting than this all-out forest fire. Like their astronauts, Boyle and [Alex] Garland are on a mission: to prove that a big, bold, intelligent, U.K.-made space epic is feasible. They've succeeded, up to a point: Sunshine is dazzling, but not quite a blinder—your eyeballs may be singed, but don't expect any long-lasting effects on your cosmic consciousness.
Breakfast on Pluto
Last but hardly least is Breakfast on Pluto. The Bay Area Reporter reviews a "first-rate DVD package" with special praise for Cillian:
As hard as it is to describe the magic that allows an almost novel-length plot to soar on the screen, it really can be summed up in two words: Cillian Murphy ... As Kitten, he brings a muscular yet girlishly demur quality to a character who passes through a wretchedly dark chapter of history. The domestic strife in the late 60s/early 70s between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British government featured terrorist outrages in Irish and English cities that oddly parallel our own unsettling times.
Neil Jordan is quoted remarking on Cillian's "transformative" performance in ways that echo what Danny Boyle said recently about Cillian's body being "slight, but like iron":
"I know he seems to be delicate, thin and willowy, but actually he's kind of made of steel in a strange way. He went through the physical transformation for this movie that other actors do in a far more obvious way, they gain 80, 100 lbs., they bulk up with muscle. He became very thin, very delicate. It was a strange thing to do, because he wasn't adopting any obvious mannerisms or anything, he was just entering the soul of this character." Jordan muses that, at this moment anyway, the film world belongs to such transformative genius actors as Murphy.
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