Month: June 2022

Determination trumps inexperience in fun fairway tale

Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance) is a golf novice when he lands a chance to play in the 1976 British Open.

By Richard Ades

Maurice (Mark Rylance) seems unphased when he learns he’s finished dead last in the qualifying round at the British Open. After all, he explains cheerfully, it’s the first round of golf he’s ever played.

The Phantom of the Open, which tells the story of a rank amateur’s participation in the prestigious golf tournament, would seem far-fetched if it weren’t based on fact. In 1976, a working-class Brit named Maurice Flitcroft really did stumble into the tournament, where he played so abominably that officials realized he never should have been allowed on the fairway.  

How did he get there in the first place? And why?

Actor Rylance, working under Craig Roberts’s direction, depicts Maurice as a naive shipyard worker who fails to recognize his own limitations. After learning his job might not last forever, he happens upon a news story about the Open’s 1975 winner and the hefty purse he took home. Thinking this is a sign that golf will be his new career, Maurice decides to enter the 1976 tournament despite the fact that he’s never even picked up a club.

Simon Farnaby’s script, based on a book by Scott Murray, tells the seemingly tall tale in a homey, funny and good-natured way. Flashbacks explain that Maurice married single mom Jean (Sally Hawkins) and provided the fatherly support that helped her son Michael (Jake Davies) grow up to be a successful professional. He also supported the couple’s twin sons James and Gene (Jonah and Christian Lees) in their decidedly less-practical quest to become world-class disco dancers.

Indeed, “support” could be the family’s watchword, which is why no one questions Maurice’s decision to enter a major golf tournament despite his lack of experience. Eventually, though, the more worldly Michael pushes back against his stepdad’s pie-in-the-sky ideas, leading to a father-son argument that threatens their happy home.

Committed performances by Rylance, Hawkins and others help to sell characters defined not only by their decency but by absurd levels of optimism and naivete. Along with Roberts’s savvy direction, they also help to sell a script that sometime slices into predictable territory in service of its upbeat sentimentality.  

Once the hazards are crossed and the scorecards are added up, the flick emerges as an irresistible tribute to a real-life Brit who became a hero simply by refusing to take “no” for an answer.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

The Phantom of the Open (PG-13) opens June 24 in select theaters.

Otherworldly trip through a futuristic Africa

Cheryl Isheja as a transformed Neptune in Neptune Frost (Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber)

By Richard Ades

Neptune Frost may be the most mesmerizing film of recent years. It’s also one of the most beautiful. And, frustratingly, one of the most puzzling.

Set in a futuristic version of Rwanda, the sci-fi musical introduces us to Neptune (Elvis Nagabo), who cryptically announces through a narrator, “I was born in my 23rd year.” Then, while we’re still pondering that bit of information, the film switches its attention to Matalusa (Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse), who works in the local coltan mine. (Coltan is a mineral used in high-tech products, a fact whose significance soon becomes clear.)

After each of their lives is waylaid by an act of violence, Neptune and Matalusa separately take to the road and begin wandering through a countryside damaged by war and oppressed by authoritarianism. Eventually, they cross paths in an enclave of technologically minded rebels, but not before Neptune undergoes a transformation that leaves the masculine-looking individual looking decidedly more feminine (and played by a different actor, Cheryl Isheja).

The script by Saul Williams, who also composed the beautiful score, is obscure and sometimes blatantly symbolic. Characters with names such as “Memory” and “Psychology” discuss mysterious topics such as “binary crime theory” and make statements along the lines of “The motherboard is bleeding.” Furthermore, the standard greeting is “Unanimous goldmine,” and the standard answer to the everyday question “How are you?” is “Shining!”

All of this creates an eccentric world that might have been a chore for viewers to navigate if co-directors Williams and Anisia Uzeyman hadn’t filled the screen with hauntingly surreal and dreamlike images—and if composer Williams hadn’t punctuated the action with music that ranges from infectious rhythmic chants to ethereal ballads. Imaginative makeup, costumes and sets add to the otherworldly atmosphere.

Despite the ambiguities, it eventually becomes clear that the film has two overarching themes: It opposes the colonial-type exploitation that continues to plague Africa now that natural resources such as coltan have made it indispensable to modern technology. And it supports the freedom of every individual—including unconventional individuals such as the intersexual Neptune—to live the life they were meant to lead.

These themes add up to a moral structure that helps to ground the flick despite the fact that it doesn’t fit into any recognizable pattern.

As intriguing as it is, Neptune Frost is almost the definition of a film that’s not for everyone. For some, its refusal to explain itself makes it a frustrating challenge. But for those who are content to lose themselves in its unfamiliar world of images and sounds, it’s a fascinating journey.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Neptune Frost opens June 3 in New York and expands to other selected theaters June 10.