#OnTheBigScreen: War & sanity

A man sets out to find his lost family and finally returns to his first home in the Australian film Lion, a German intelligence officer and a French resistance fighter fall in love on a deadly mission behind enemy lines during World War II in Allied, and a man with 23 personalities fights for his sanity in Split. Theatre buffs are in for a real treat with the new season from National Theatre Live at Cinema Nouveau launching with the glorious revival of Harold Pinter’s classic play No Man’s Land, starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.

Lion

Five-year-old Saroo gets lost on a train travelling away from his home and family. Frightened and bewildered, he ends up thousands of miles away, in chaotic Kolkata. Somehow he survives living on the streets, escaping all sorts of terrors and close calls in the process, before ending up in an orphanage that is itself not exactly a safe haven. Eventually, Saroo is adopted by an Australian couple, and finds love and security as he grows up in Hobart. Not wanting to hurt his adoptive parents’ feelings, he suppresses his past, his emotional need for reunification, and his hope of ever finding his lost mother and brother. But a chance meeting with some fellow Indians reawakens his buried yearning. With just a small store of memories, and the help of a new technology called Google Earth, Saroo embarks on one of the greatest needle-in-a-haystack quests of modern times. Adapted from the memoir “A Long Way Home” by Saroo Brierley, the film is directed by Emmy Award-nominated Garth Davis (Top Of The Lake) from a screenplay by Luke Davies (Candy, Life).

Producer Emile Sherman believes the creative team has well and truly made a film that delivers on the promise of the story: “This is a film I am very proud of. It's an incredible story about mothers, and the primal urge to find home. I hope audiences have the same spine tingling experience that Iain and I did when we first heard the story.”

Sherman also believes the film will deliver a powerful message about adoption: “The film gives an insight into the lives of children who have been adopted and I hope will push more Western countries to recognise the need for and benefits of adoption. There are so many kids who never end up in a loving family and there are so many loving families who want a child.”

Allied

For secret World War II operatives Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and Marianne Beauséjour (Marion Cotillard), the key to survival is never being truly known by anyone. They are experts in deception, play-acting, second-guessing and assassination. When they accidentally fall for each other in the middle of an extraordinarily risky mission, their one hope is to leave all the double-dealing behind – but instead, suspicion and danger become the core of their wartime marriage as husband and wife are pitted against each other in an escalating, potentially lethal test of loyalty, identity and love… with global consequences.
From Oscar winner Robert Zemeckis, the innovative director behind Forrest Gump, Cast Away and Flight, comes this mesmerising espionage thriller, sweeping war drama and passionate romance between two assassins who may be fated soulmates or deadly enemies – or both. In a sumptuous, visually evocative production that roams from Casablanca to London’s Blitz days to German-occupied France, Zemeckis creates the kind of grand tale that flourished in Golden Hollywood – full of mystery, thrills and romantic heat – yet told with all the richly immersive power of 21st century cinema.

Zemeckis saw the story as one that asks questions we all ask of loved ones – Do I really know you? Can I trust you completely? Will you betray me? How far would you go to save what we have? But these same questions take on a deadly, mounting ferocity within the high-wire world of WWII spies.

“Allied is absolutely a story of betrayal and that’s the universal theme of this film: how we react when we start to think someone we love isn’t who they say they are,” Zemeckis comments. “It’s something that happens in life, but in the realm of Max and Marianne, you have two people already pretending to be someone else from the get-go and the truth is elusive to them. So how do you establish trust? And how can you even talk to your loved one if you believe the enemy is listening in on you?”

Split

While the mental divisions of those with dissociative identity disorder have long fascinated and eluded science, it is believed that some can also manifest unique physical attributes for each personality, a cognitive and physiological prism within a single being. Though Kevin (James McAvoy) has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), there remains one still submerged who is set to materialise and dominate all of the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the wilful, observant Casey, Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him — as well as everyone around him — as the walls between his compartments shatter. Writer/director/producer M. Night Shyamalan returns to the captivating grip of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs with Split, an original thriller that delves into the mysterious recesses of one man’s fractured, gifted mind.

Shyamalan’s films in the suspense and supernatural genres lead him to draw from the mysterious and fascinating, using those premises as building blocks for his imagination and ask, simply, “What if?”

Shyamalan explains: “I’m taking something you believe and pushing it into the fantastic realm. I wondered what would happen if, in dissociative identity disorder, each individual personality believes they are who they are, 100%. If one personality believes they have diabetes or high cholesterol, can their body chemically change to that belief system? And what if one personality believed it had supernatural powers? What would that look like?”

No Man's Land

Following their hit run on Broadway, McKellen and Stewart return to the West End under direction of Sean Mathias, also featuring Owen Teale and Damien Molony. Harold Pinter’s play takes place on a summer’s evening, when two ageing writers, Hirst (Stewart) and Spooner (McKellen), meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst’s stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated, and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men. This glorious revival of Pinter’s comic classic is not to be missed. A bonus for theatre buffs is an exclusive Q&A session with the cast and director Sean Mathias. Filmed live at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre for broadcast to cinemas globally, it releases at Cinema Nouveau theatres on Saturday, 21 January, for four exclusive screenings only - on 21, 25 and 26 January at 7.30pm and on 22 January at 2.30pm at Cinema Nouveau theatres in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town. The running time of this production is approximately 2hrs 20mins, including a 20-minute interval plus the post-performance Q&A.

For more information on the latest releases visit www.writingstudio.co.za