Binge-r #227: The Virtues + White Wall
Holding Back the Years: Stephen Graham (Joseph) in The Virtues
THE VIRTUES
Streaming Service: Stan
Availability: All four episodes now streaming
‘Barely’ is the word that kept coming to me after watching The Virtues, the wrenching, wounding new limited series from English director Shane Meadows. Joseph (Stephen Graham), the fractured protagonist, can barely hold it together, or barely suppress his pain, or barely articulate his desperate need. The first episode opens with the painter and decorator attending a going away dinner for his nine-year-old son, who is moving to Australia with his mother, Joseph’s ex, and her new partner. Straining to do his best, Jospeh nearly breaks down at the dinner table, but later encourages his son to make the most of the relocation. Every innocuous query is answered with a strained “good”, and his want to please is transformed into a gregarious self-destruction when he abandons his sobriety with a lengthy pub session.
The physicality of Joseph’s drinking – the way his hands shake holding the first pint, the violent retching when he comes to the next morning – is palpable, and Meadows carries that into every scene, whether it’s confrontational or deeply caring. The independent filmmaker, who is best known for the This is England movie and series, captures Joe at an elemental level, so that the protective space he holds around himself and the decisions he makes are explained without exposition. His lifeline, is to leave Sheffield and return to Ireland, fetching up at the family home of his sister, Anna (Helen Behan), who thought him dead after they were separated as children after going into state care.
The Virtues is not a complicated work. From early on it is punctuated with brief flashbacks to Joseph’s youth, which give you a grasp of the circumstances he fled as a child but has never left behind. The series wants you to understand what is at stake, and appreciate what it takes for Joseph to experience a long and tearful initial reconciliation with the otherwise capable Anna, or his uncertainty at meeting Craigy (Mark O’Halloran), who remembers him from the institutional home and has a sense of what haunts him. Graham, who was last seen feuding with Al Pacino in Netflix’s The Irishman, embodies every moment of this, so that you fear his sparkplug frame might crack asunder at any moment. This is a raw, unyielding show, but also riveting and – barely – fulfilling.
Going Underground: Aksel Hennie (Lars Ruud) in White Wall
WHITE WALL S1 (SBS on Demand, all eight episodes now streaming): With a backdrop of otherworldly tunnels and industrial landscapes seemingly stricken of humanity, this Swedish-Finnish science-fiction thriller has a menacing stillness. It gives the entire first episode over to the struggle to finish a behind schedule nuclear waste storage facility in Sweden’s remote north, which goes from bad to worse for construction manager Lars Ruud (Aksel Hennie) when a routine demolition operation ends in a deadly accident. What it reveals, amidst machinations at a corporate and political level, is a smooth white wall 700 metres below ground that the workers can’t explain. Depending on your taste, the narrative is slow or a slow burn, but the initial containment of the discovery lets the characters come into focus, especially as the find starts to influence their responses. The crux of shows such as this is how they satisfy a premise predicated on the unknowable, but by savouring each step of the way there White Wall at least maintains a tight grip.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick elevate the critique of corporate culture that should underpin Up in the Air (2009, 110 minutes), turning it into a study of flawed relationships; I don’t care that it’s February – Jon Favreau’s Elf (2003, 96 minutes) is a Christmas classic and Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf is always welcome.
New on SBS on Demand: Based on the true story of a high stakes poker game in Los Angeles that ended with arrests, Molly’s Game (2017, 135 minutes) has all the hallmarks of an Aaron Sorkin script – which he also directed – as Jessica Chastain’s flinty accused and Idris Elba’s lawyer butt heads before Kevin Costner’s dad unnecessarily applies the wisdom.
New on Stan: Our Kind of Traitor (2016, 108 minutes) is a solid John le Carre adaptation, with Ewan McGregor’s academic caught between MI6 and Stellan Skarsgard’s Russian mob boss; The kind of blithely enjoyable romantic-comedy Netflix now make themselves, Just Like Heaven (2005, 95 minutes) lets Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo expertly navigate romance, real estate, and the afterlife.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to get up to speed on Netflix’s chilly supernatural mystery Equinox and Stan’s bonkers ancient drama Britannia.
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