Red Riding: 1974

The "Red Riding Trilogy" (based on the novels by David Peace), originally screened on British TV last year. The three films clock in at just short of five hours. I found out about this trilogy of films after reading a review in The New Yorker magazine, though I can't remember whether it was David Denby or Anthony Lane who wrote about "Red Riding Trilogy", but whoever it was, gave the films a very favourable review. So good, that I wanted to see the films for myself because it's not often that either David Denby or Anthony Lane who gave this film such fulsome praise. The first film in the trilogy deals with a series of child murders and one journalist's attempts to find out who is responsible for these atrocities. The second film is set against the backdrop of the efforts of the police to catch the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, while the final film revisits what happened in the first film. Woven into this apparently simple plot-line, is a back-story about corruption in the West Yorkshire police, and its ties to organized crime. Each film is labyrinthine in their complexities, and you have to pay close attention, otherwise what is revealed in the first film, won't make much sense in the second and third films. The acting is first class, though the direction in the second film is pedestrian compared to the other two films. My only gripe is the sound quality especially in the first film, as if the actors are talking with mouths stuffed with cotton wool. Otherwise, the "Red Riding Trilogy" is a gem, and deserves a viewing.

The acting superb, the setting haunting and the tale of corruption well told. But damn this movie was depressing. Hats off to Andrew Garfield who puts on a bafta level performance while Ensuring tortures await him. I recommend but watch it with somebody so you don't get haunted and sorrowful alone.

A binge watching of RED RIDING TRILOGY, three TV movies adapted from David Peace's RED RIDING QUARTET, where its second chapter 1977 is skipped. Directed by three different directors in three different formats: 1974 by Julian Jarrold in 16mm film, 1980 by James Marsh in 35mm film and 1983 by Anand Tucked with Red One digital camera, the trilogy forebodingly trawls into the organized crimes and police corruption in West Yorkshire through the prisms of three different protagonists while they are wrestling with a series of murder cases, and overall, it inspires to achieve a vérité similitude of the bleak milieu while sometimes being mired with its own navel- gazing, such as narrative banality (1974), over-calculated formality (1980) and poorly indicated flashback sequences (1983).

In 1974, the bright-young-thing Eddie Dunford (Garfield) is an ambitious crime reporter for The Yorkshire Post, who takes it on himself to probe three similar cases of missing or murdered teenage girls, which puts his own life on the line. He hits every nook and cranny of procedural clichés, from losing a dear colleague Barry Gannon (Flanagan). who knows too much of the dirty business (after being inauspiciously warned about his own safety) nevertheless withholds crucial information from Eddie, to the police's porous covering-up of the culprit with a scapegoat Michael Myshkin (Mays), until Eddie meets Paul Garland (Hall), who channels a shopworn ambiguity between a grieved damsel-in-distress and an inscrutable gangster's moll, whom he incurably falls in love with. Finally his path comes across with John Dawson (Bean), a local real estate magnate, and after succumbs to an excruciating reality check signed by both Dawson and police force, Eddie despondently realizes he cannot save nobody, a final vigilante bloodbath is his last gamble to right the wrong in the only option he is left with (again, manipulated). The movie is shot in subdued retro-sheen, Garfield fleshes out Eddie's fix with absorbing commitment, and Hall is magnificent to behold in her blond charisma.

It is 1974. Our protagonist, young and hip, has shaggy hair, sideburns, and a slick leather jacket. Asked about his suit at his father's funeral: "Carnaby's," he admits. "Oh, ay," says one mourner, with a hint of added dismay.

He's been in the South, you see. American viewers with a limited perception of the UK may, at the beginning of Channel Four's remarkable Red Riding trilogy, have little understanding of what difference that makes. They will soon learn. "This is the North," says one of the terrifying policemen who populate this film's haunted Yorkshire. "Where we do what we want."

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 begins under lowering skies. A girl of ten has vanished. A young and callow crime reporter Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) gets clued in by a conspiracy-minded colleague that the vanishing resembles two previous cases within a close range. Eager to make his mark, he senses opportunity, and in excitement at the idea that a serial murderer might be at work he blurts, "Let's keep our fingers crossed."

As the story deepens, however, so does the character. The grief of the victims' families needles him; he begins a relationship with one girl's heartsick mother (Rebecca Hall). Picking apart the story that emerges, he is drawn into the orbit of a wealthy developer (Sean Bean) with an unwholesome degree of influence in Yorkshire and its power structure. The perpetrator of the crimes is unquestionably psychopathic -- he stitches "angels' wings" into his victims' backs. Yet, in the film's most disturbing element, the police department itself functions as a psychopath, achieving its desires through brutalization, torture, and even possibly murder.

Caught in a conscienceless land, Dunford's own conscience, in reaction, grows, and what began as mere ambition transforms into a perhaps doomed lust for the truth. If this sounds like a conventional trope of the genre, it is -- plotwise much of what happens here is conventional. But Red Riding makes the narrative fresh by treating it not just as a story of crime and justice but as one of the soul, and its environs. When Dunford begs the mother to escape with him from the prevailing madness, he tells her, "In the South the sun shines." What he's telling her is that the sickness is inseparable from the place. Yorkshire is filmed (with gorgeous gloom) as a cloud-shrouded ruin, an economic disaster site in which financial power trumps morality. Starting out fresh-faced, vain, and cocky, Dunford will, by the end of his journey, be considerably the worse for wear. Looking at the landscape around him, we think, how could he not be?

Red Riding 1974 is not flawless -- some scenes feel repetitive and the bleakness can be overwhelming. But it compels you forward, it stays with you, and it genuinely rattles the spirit. This is not easy viewing, but in approaching the continuing saga, it promises hard- earned reward.

Don't let the 1974 fool you, this year merely indicates the time period in which this British crime drama is set. The first film of a trilogy, 1974 sets up the desolate Yorkshire town which has again been struck with the grizzly and brutal murder of a young girl. This makes her merely an entry in string of disappearances over the previous decade. Despite atmosphere thick enough to ski upon, this movie fails to offer much compelling and is a tough slog not only due to its grimy nature but also its convoluted narrative.

What begin with an investigation into a young girls disappearance, gives way to a murder, then to police corruption and bureaucratic cover-ups. Dropped squarely in the center is amateur journalist Eddie Dunford (Andre Garfield) whose combination of determination and coyness take him down a dark road. I will not even delve into the plot more than I have, as not only is it too complex to adequately lay out, but I am still trying to sort it all out myself.

While the performances are uniformly good, the characters are thoroughly unlikeable. Even our protagonist Eddie has a smarmy quality to him that makes it difficult for a real connection to be achieved. This is so with much of Red Riding: 1974, we are kept at arms length; never able to engage with any of the players nor the grief and depression the town is experiencing. Such is amplified further by the engrained ugliness at every corner which inhibits any discernible depth; everyone has demons, everything is wrong and nobody is happy. Thus, the instances of violence are muted by the grimness by which it is surrounded.

If you are really hankering for a dark tragic crime film starring Andrew Garfield, check out Boy-A; a supremely better and more resonant film. The highlight of the film for me was seeing Sean Bean again. His presence in films is an iota of what it should be and he gives one of the films best performances. Not having yet seen the following two instalments of this series I can not say with confidence this film will not be elevated when viewed in context. At this point, what I can say with confidence is Red Riding: 1974 was not an enjoyable experience. Perhaps, then, it was a success in its own right.

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