Shooting the Past
by Stephen Poliakoff
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Actor: Andy Serkis, Liam Cunningham, Lindsay Duncan, Timothy SpallDirector: Stephen Poliakoff
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Stephen Poliakoff
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: Unknown
Running Time: 194 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-05
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Worldwide
DVD Reviews of Shooting the Past
DVD Review: Know When to Walk Away
Summary: 3 Stars
If we can all agree that cameras are now a main weapon used by the rich against the poor these days (see: surveillance cameras everywhere protecting monied interests, NYPD videotaping protestors, etc.) then we can recognize this film as a sort of fairy tale where that conventional wisdom is turned on its head. Here the good guys turn their ginormous photo collection into a retroactive Big Brother, showing the bad guy (an American businessman, how apt) all the naughty things his grandmother was up to back in the day, and in the process getting him to care about something other than money. It would never happen, I know, but I got some perverse pleasure out of watching the look on The Man's face as he was presented with pictures that he had no idea existed that proved his past was less than pious. Now does that mean that they made a convincing case that all 10 million photos in this collection should be saved? Well not to me they didn't. To hold on too tightly to the past is to make you a pack rat or overly nostalgic (something I consider myself, and trust me it is not an positive attribute), so we must shed it because as Mike Ditka might say, "You live in the past, you die in the past."
The story involves Christopher Anderson (Liam Cunningham), a businessman who comes to England to start a business school, only once he gets there he finds Marilyn (Lindsay Duncan) who previously owned the property and had no idea that he intended to destroy her entire photo collection. Her and her employees strike back, but as it turns out Marilyn isn't very good at blackmail or deceit. Christopher and his employees colonize the building and begin sniffing around the place like a dog in heat looking for the photos with real cash value as the rest are totally useless to them. Eventually Marilyn is given an extra week to find a home for the photos, but doing that the week of Christmas turns out to be no easy task. Meanwhile, her employee and friend Oswald (Timothy Spall), continues to play the chess game trying to save the collection and make life a little harder for Christopher along the way. That becomes a little bit more difficult for him when he is kicked off the premise for refusing to bow down to the all powerful American dollar. It is a fairly conventional Davis vs. Goliath story told in the modern world, but to its credit it never takes the obvious route. It is stuffy and respectable, but for the Masterpiece Theatre that it is, it is much more spunky than I was expecting.
I am going to recommend this film, on the condition that if you are one who suffers from short attention span syndrome you not take me up on this recommendation. Then again, if you do have that syndrome you have no business watching BBC, Masterpiece Theatre, or most anything with Timothy Spall in it anyways. Besides its strong spirit and clever use of photographs I also appreciated its refusal to tout the party line about change. Most movies will tell you that change is good and that to not change is to not adapt and that that is bad. But here they point out, correctly, that a lot of times change can bring about loss of the most profound kind. It is very nice to believe that things are always getting better, that it is always onward and upward, but a quick look around this world of ours and you will realize that change has the capacity for evil. ***1/4
Description of Shooting the Past
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