LONDON FIELDS
UK, 2018, 118 minutes, Colour.
Amber Heard, Billy Bob Thornton, Jim Sturgess, Theo James, Jason Isaacs, Caro to Lavinia, Gemma Chan, Lily Cole.
Directed by Matthew Cullen.
London Fields, based on a novel by Martin Amis who co-wrote the screenplay with Roberta Hanley, is curious and bizarre. It did not get wide release – and many potential audiences may not persevere with it.
In fact, the film was made in 2013 but delayed for a number of years in release. The film was recut by the producers (and around 30 of them are named in the credits). Eventually, there were two releases, the producers’ cut and, to a limited extent, the longer director’s cut.
In fairness to the director, he shared more of Martin Amis’s cosmic vision for this bizarre story, including footage of the cosmic, potential disasters, nature upheavals. These gave a tone to the telling of the story. While there are some traces of this in the producers’ cut, they seem more bewildering than indicating themes. Some of the action was also cut and the character, played by Johnny Depp, was introduced much earlier than intended by the director.
The setting is London, vistas of the city, a range of locations, mainly apartments and sidestreets, but also some parks – and the gala featuring of a national darts’ competition.
Amber Heard plays a clairvoyant who knows that she will be killed but not by whom. Billy Bob Thornton portrays a writer coming from the United States for an exchange with another author, Jason Isaacs, for staying in their homes. He encounters the clairvoyant and is attracted to her, spies on her in the above apartment, plans to write a book about her. There are many sequences of his writing and the text on his computer.
She is a highly ambiguous character, played for sexiness and intrigue. (Amber Heard was nominated for a Razzie for her performance – but Jim Sturgess, surprisingly and hugely overacting, should have been nominated – and won.) She encounters two men, observed by the writer, who are quite opposites. Jim Sturgess, unashamedly mugging, is tough, a gambler, an expert darts player, married with a daughter, who gets entangled with the clairvoyant. Theo James, on the other hand, is a respectable businessman who also gets entangled, her making an appeal to him for finance for a friend in need. He is also married – but succumbs to her.
In her manner, conversation, dress and undress, she responds to each of the men in different ways, adapting to their characters and lifestyles.
And, there are lots of conversations. But also with the ominous vision of the car, the dark street, her impending death.
Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were a couple of the time, later acrimoniously separating, and Johnny Depp does one of his highly eccentric performances, tough and money demanding.
So, a strange amount of interactions, which may be of interest or not, leading to the downfall of each of the men. And, as might have been anticipated, it is the writer who is to be her killer.
And, there is continuous irony with Jason Isaacs as the writer who went in exchange to New York, keeps in touch with the American writer, finally arrives back to find the clairvoyant dead, the American writer with a terminal disease having taken tablets, lying beside her. He has his manuscript – taken by the novelist who is seen then claiming authorship and reading excerpts on television.
It is clearly one of those films which audiences may make of it what they will and what they can.
