Chris Morris' Four Lions - Stills Released

[therockbox]

Chris Morris's 'jihadi comedy' - a first look

The first official stills from Four Lions, the Brass Eye creator's feature film about would-be suicide bombers, have emerged

Certain artists establish such a niche for themselves that they become journalistic shorthand for a certain category. For Chris Morris, the satirist behind The Day Today and Brass Eye, the category is the absurdity of modern media culture: these days, coverage of the latest reality-TV inanity or tranche of government-issued gobbledygook is pretty likely to include an accompanying note of surprise that Morris wasn't involved. From the man himself, however, there has been barely a peep since Nathan Barley aired on Channel 4 in 2005: a cameo on The IT Crowd here, a report from the Cern Large Hadron Collider there.

Those paying close attention, though, will know that Morris has been at work for several years on a project that marks something of a departure for him in formal terms (it's a feature film) if not in his proclivity for provocative subject matter: Four Lions is a comedy about suicide bombers. Which isn't to say he is taking jihad lightly: he has embarked on serious research, talking to everyone from police and security experts to imams and Muslim community workers. (There was also a public spat with Martin Amis along the way.)

Chris Morris's Four Lions On the set of Chris Morris's Four Lions

Morris's conclusion, according to the film's producers, Warp Films, is that it's a daft as well as a deadly business. "Even those who have trained and fought jihad report the frequency of farce," the company has said. "At training camps young jihadis argue about honey, cry for their mums, shoot each other's feet off, chase snakes and get thrown out for smoking … Terrorist cells have the same group dynamics as stag parties and five-a-side football teams. There is conflict, friendship, misunderstanding and rivalry. Terrorism is about ideology, but it's also about berks." Morris's project, they maintain, "understands jihadis as human beings. And it understands human beings as innately ridiculous."

Made with funding from Film4, Four Lions includes writing from Peep Show's Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. It was partly shot on the streets of Sheffield – this amateur picture shows Kevin Eldon as an armed police officer – and at one point locations in the Alps were being scouted to double for terrorist training camps. Official stills released this week seem to be from such scenes. With editing on the film under way, Warp reports that "its small tornado of industry is now trapped and humming in a box". It will be intriguing, to say the least, to see what emerges when that box is eventually opened.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/aug/12/chris-morris-jihadi-film

[Emperor Fuckshit]

I'm looking forward to this: Morris' stuff is always worth watching, even when he misses the mark. I don't think he's done anything of real merit since "Brasseye" (although I should point out that I haven't heard "Blue Jam" yet. I have it all ready to go and should really get around to it.) However, I think that "Jam" displays Morris' ability to be interesting and worth discussing even when his comedy is, you know, not much good...

I have concerns that the essential conceit of the film won't move beyond the bathetic "do you see? wacky things in a place where you wouldn't EXPECT wacky things!!!!" I know that, if that is the case, then people will argue that the film's purpose is to re-assess the issue of terrorism in a way that is non-political (or at least extra-political), and that this in some way "humanises" extremists. But if the content of that humanisation is just the assertion that terrorist activity involves an ineluctably "absurd" element, then the statement isn't especially revealing. Are we dealing with terrorists as individuals so that we can better appreciate their motives? If so, are Morris, Armstrong and Bain qualified to provide such understanding? I hope this doesn't turn into "Peep Show" with Islamist politics in place of agonised centrism. (Or "Shaun of the Dead" in a new setting -- "I'll blow up Westminster... when I've finished this saaaaaaandwich").

Ultimately, I don't think the film will be able to avoid political interpretation, so it's useless to pretend that it can (not that I'm accusing Morris / Warp / whomever of doing so). Even a de-politicisation would be distinctly ideological.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Nathan Barley was awesome. Those that don't like it are buffoons.

[Emperor Fuckshit]

Nathan Barley was awesome. Those that don't like it are buffoons.

"Nathan Barley" was shit. Those that like it are cunts.

Come on, we can do a bit better than that, can't we?

I haven't seen "Nathan Barley" since the original t/x, so I can only judge it on broad issues rather than episode-to-episode specifics. But there was so much wrong with the show at a conceptual level that I don't think that matters, really. And, to a certain degree, the fact that I have no desire to see it again says a lot about my opinion of the series.

For me, the main problem -- and one that I really can't get past -- was the horror of seeing Morris (once the nation's premier comic performer and one of its best writers) playing catch-up to twatty mediocrities like Ricky Gervais. "... Barley" was incredibly ersatz and owed a clear "debt" to "The Office" in terms of its naturalistic dialogue, use of field removed video, tight reaction shots, etc.. Those devices had been deployed by Gervais to very little comic return already, and Morris showed no real ability to claim them for himself -- using, for example, the close-up reaction shots to hammer home simplistic character emotions. Deploying the device might have made some sense if Julian Barratt were a capable enough comic performer actually to give us something interesting or unexpected in those shots, but we instead got repeated shots of him doing the same twitchy-face expression over and over again -- even when the hijinks of "the idiots" were more punchable than confounding. It was kind of difficult to escape the conclusion that, with "The Office" proclaimed A National Treasure by all available rent-a-gob hacks, Morris was -- for maybe the first time in his career -- following rather than leading.

The satire was also weak, as Morris diverted away from the big, thumping, significant targets he took aim at in "On the Hour", "The Day Today" and "Brasseye" so that he could instead take a swipe at a minor element of media subculture apparently confined to Hoxton. Sure, Morris had always had an interest in his own world -- that of the media. But his solo projects had showed a number of other conceptual interests -- animals and children, most specifically. "Nathan Barley", by contrast, basically took aim at a phenomenon to which I really don't think many of his viewers could honestly relate. I mean, what's the circulation of Dazed & Confused these days? Instead, media types lined up to impress upon us how much they could relate to it:

Mark Lawson: So, Kwame Kwei-Armah, did you get it?

Kwame Kwei-Armah: YES, I GOT IT!!!!!

(Above possibly paraphrased.) But even if one could relate to it, that doesn't necessarily mean that "the idiots" were a useful target. People of that sort are of basically no importance, aren't they? If you strip away the precise cultural context to which Morris is referring, you're basically left with a comment that "idiotic idiots are idiotic". Great. Considering Morris' ability accurately and trenchantly to turn his attentions to bigger and broad topics, wouldn't you have liked to see him have a real go at (say) "The War on Terror" instead? Instead, we got that music video extra from the "Peep Show" DVD extended from three minutes to one hundred and twenty.

And, as a foray into the sit-com genre, it really lacked any of the dramatic elements required by the form: the plots were formulaic, the characters either boring or horribly unsubtle or both, a lot of the performers chosen were unspectacular.

The only way I can see "Nathan Barley" as a salvageable project is if it's someday revealed as a supremely allegorical attack upon the comedy industry "idiots" who claim Morris as their geen-yuss inspiration without understanding his work. But, since he continues to work with Brooker and Ayoade -- and might even be planning a second series of "... Barley" -- that seems unlikely.

Excuse the buffoonery.

Edited August 14, 2009 by Emperor Fuckshit

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I've watched the series probably 4 or 5 times now in it's completeness and while I enjoyed it the first time (my wife hated it to begin with and now really enjoys it), with every viewing I think it offers more.

Of course the character of Nathan in the pilot episode is closer to the Nathan from the Charlie Brooker's TV Go Home and the pilot plays very interestingly. I think the series ages relatively badly (not as badly as Spaced though which surprised me as I loved it for the first couple of years) but I think it offers an interesting perspective that goes deeper than first appears. My opinions on the characters change and evolve on repeat viewings which is more than can be said for some "great" comedies of recent times.

The recent "fashion" of those "in the know" to slag off Chris Morris for anything after Brasseye (although it's admitted that Jam was darkly interesting) is feeble. I doubt Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker would ever suggest that Nathan Barley was the best thing they'd ever done and I'd agree with that (for me The Day Today is probably up there with the greatest "surreal" comedy there's been).

I like the idea of being one of the "Idiots" that, to basta-paraphrase Ayoade, think's it's good because you think that it's supposed to be not good but IS actually good, so you think it's good even though it's not. Just because it's not heavy hitting world shaking PAEDO-RAPE-DRUGS satire doesn't mean it's bad. Much of his early career was defined by such wide-reaching satire.

Also, just because YOU think something, doesn't make it so, despite your general long explanations as to why you're right every time such a discussion on pretty much any subject comes about. Sometimes you are, sometimes you're not. Sometimes you've got factors of right and wrong in your arguments. You're not actually the paradigm of cultural understanding on the board (though neither am I as a general cultural bottom feeder who clearly eats what I'm told to eat), although you are the most outspoken and your arguments often make an interesting read. Your buffoonery is excused.

[therockbox]

Brass Eye creator Chris Morris's new comedy film about a group of jihadis has been shortlisted for competition at the Sundance Film Festival in the US.

Four Lions, which depicts British Muslim men training at a militant training camp, is one of the films in the world cinema narrative shortlist.

Morris, whose spoof about paedophilia prompted controversy in 2001, has written and directed the movie.

The Sundance event takes place in Utah from 21-31 January.

A total of 113 films from the US and around the world will be screened at the annual event.

Among the movies in the main competition is Sympathy For Delicious by director Mark Ruffalo, starring Orlando Bloom and Juliette Lewis.

Duped celebrities

Morris's film, fully-funded by Film Four, was initially rejected by the BBC and Channel 4.

He has said that the film shows "the Dad's Army side to terrorism" and reveals its farcical, human dimension.

The satirist's series of Brass Eye, which aired on Channel 4 in 1997, caused a furore by inventing a drug which celebrities were duped into warning against its dangers.

Morris shot to fame with spoof news show The Day Today, which was screened on BBC Two from 1994.

His first venture onto the big screen in 2002 won the Bafta award for short film.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8393736.stm

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Heh, celebrities weren't "duped" into warning against the fictional drug's dangers. It was an exercise in showing the the self-promoting and self-whoring nature of celebrity. Of course that doesn't sell the new "controversial" movie so well.

I'm looking forward to it.