Neil Jordan

Neil Jordan - Appearances and Understanding "A Strand of Jordan's work is concerned with challenging sight as the primary sense of understanding and knowledge. Indeed, throughout he is interested in appearances and visual surfaces." A picture paints a thousand words is a proverb that has been used by many to describe the works of many famous artists. A work of art can depict a message that does not have to be said or written, a painting can spark a lot of speculation and indeed this in itself is part of the art form. It could be said that a director is to a film as a painter is to a painting, that a director is the painter and the various other members of staff and cast are the paints in which the director uses to colour the film. This would suggest that the direction of a film is an art form. This is central to the concept of auteurism; that may be defined as "the belief that cinema was an art of personal expression, and that its great directors were as much to be esteemed as the authors of their work as any writer, composer or painter." Ref: Lapsey, Westlake: Film Theory Notes. An auteur is a filmmaker, usually a director, who exercises creative control over his or her works and has a strong personal style. Jordan's authorship is conveyed in a lot of his personal trademarks. His films are dark and moody and sometimes comic, darkly comic that is; he says this reflects the way Irish people are. In some of his films he has taken scripts written by someone else and imposed his own directional style where he makes this script partly his and he becomes a co-writer of that script. This is evident in The Butcher Boy and The Good Thief. His trademark stamps of auteurism include his interest in appearances and visual surfaces to give the viewer depictions of themes and characters. Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy appears together in his thoughts and confident. Dil in The Crying Game appears to be a woman. This is what he wants the audience to understand. He likes to shock and deceive the viewers and plays constantly on realism and fantasy. He delves into the exploration of different genres. His CV includes thrillers, comedies, period romance, horror, crime and historical film. His characters are the tragic heroes and the estranged: Fergus and Dil in The Crying Game, Francie in The Butcher Boy and Bob, played by Nick Nolte in The Good Thief. His themes include politics, transformation, identity, morality, obsession, desire and love. The themes also tie into each other in a lot of cases e.g. transformation and identity; obsession, desire and love. His diverse selection of film genre does not affect the issues and themes that he deals with. The boundaries that he has pushed within the different genres are characterisation of auteurism showing that "genre is not something that imprisons a director but precisely allows him a freedom". Ref: Lapsey, Westlake Film Theory Notes. Jordan is a master of deception. Things are not as they appear. He likes to entice the viewer and force them to keep guessing. While lulling the viewer into a false sense of security he gives the viewers mind a conscious understanding and then shocks them with a different outcome. A prime example of this method is demonstrated in the The Crying Game. Throughout the film Jordan keeps us involved and committed through one plot twist after another. It has a similarity to Hitchcock's Psycho; it involves us deeply in the story and then reveals to us what the story is about; something completely different. Here in The Crying Game we are fooled along with the hero; which lets us identify with him. Fergus is not what he at first appears to be. At first appearance Fergus is that of a hard IRA man as they capture Jody at the fair. As the plot develops Jody toys with Fergus and tries to develop his other side. The other side of himself does not like himself for what he is: a terrorist. This 'other' as described by Freud is a side that he does not want to show Jody. Fergus shows us his caring and considerate side and just as Jordan is building up our hopes that Jody will escape he kills off the protagonist and makes Fergus the new protagonist. This is a false security he builds and we are left reeling. The Crying Game is a love story. Its opening credits imply that that of a love story with a slightly melancholy edge. It has a lovingly sad feel with the nostalgic and ironic When a Man Loves a Woman by Percy Sledge. The cold looking sky and scenery are contrasted against the traditional scene of a fairground, a place where loving happy couples enjoying themselves are associated. Essentially with the 'traditional'

love story we have strong indication from the start what the outcome may be in the conclusion of the film. We know that two characters will end up winning each other's hearts happily or tragically, but always romantically. What keeps us engrossed is we want to know how they win each other's hearts and see it develop. This is not the case in The Crying Game. Here we are kept guessing, which is what makes this film unexpected and challenging. Issues involved in Jordan's work are sometimes deep and disturbing. This is depicted in the shockingly graphic and unexpected scene of Dil displaying her genitals. We are subjected to a male organ instead of a female's, which leaves Fergus along with the viewers shocked and disturbed. This is also the case in The Butcher Boy when playful but cheeky child Francie Brady kills and chops up Mrs. Nugent. Initial understandings are not as they first appear. In The Crying Game Jordan takes us on a journey. There are deceptions between the different characters; some that we know about from an early stage and some that we do not find out until later on in the picture. The fact that Fergus was a major player and shares responsibility for the death of Jody is a deception to Dil. Also the fact that Dil is a man and not a woman is a deception to us all as well as Fergus and possibly to other characters such as the bartender in the Metro bar. However there are subtle hints throughout the film that may suggest masculinity (she has a deep voice; bartender says "there's something you should know..." doesn't let Fergus's hand up her dress; hangs out in a gay bar even though she seems straight). Immediately from the opening scene in the fairground there is deception with Jude leading Jody into a trap for the IRA. Immediately Jude is depicted as a femme fatale, this introduces the theme of a woman not being at first what she appeared to be, which is a premonition of what is to come. Our first introduction of Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy is that of a bully that has a confident self-assured personality. Francie is deceived by visions in his own mind. As he gradually loses his grip on reality due to constant loss in his life, his mind becomes obscured by deceptions that Mrs. Nugent is out to ruin and destroy his life. Jordan uses a rich texture in his work. He uses this texture with landscapes, especially with the Irish countryside as depicted in The Butcher Boy. In setting scenes he goes to great lengths to capture the beauty of the Irish Countryside. He then uses this imagery to heavily contrast other elements of the film and maybe to make appearances, themes and characters stand out more. There is a use of bold contrast in appearances in The Butcher Boy, notably the appearances of realism and fantasy. Rural beautiful Irish countryside scenes and the depiction of sweet romanticised Ireland in the 1950's and 1960's give the depiction of reality; a feel of purity and a 'nothing added but nature' vibe from the untouched natural greenery. On the other hand this reality is contrasted heavily to Francie's inner world of fantasy, which is symbolised by images such as aliens (Mrs Nugent and humans), nuclear disaster images from atomic bombs and pigs. Mrs. Nugent refers to the Brady family as pigs, which seems to be the beginning of the downward spiral for Francie. Francie Brady starts out as a witty, loveable rogue whose happiness is built around his friendship with Joe Purcell. Both boys live in a fantasy world that is fuelled by TV. TV is central to the theme of fantasy in this film, as depicting that Ireland was not behind the times in the 1960's. Explosions on the TV screen emphasise and symbolise Francie's inner conflict. The beating he gets from his Auntie is not shown; instead the camera pans to the screen showing an atomic bomb. This fantasy world develops more vividly and dangerously as Francie loses his grip on reality as a result of being the victim of a dysfunctional family and an uncaring and abusive environment. This leads to Francie having a disconnection between his mental state and reality. The use of magic realism in Francie's world is fantasy to the viewer. The images such as Sinead O Connor as the Virgin Mary, invading space aliens and an exploding A-Bomb are designed to draw the audience into Francie's world. In reality they accomplish the opposite by erecting a barrier between the audience and the character. Ref: McLoone, Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema, British Film Institute. If the viewer also does not find understanding in the dark comedy of Francie Brady's character they will probably not like the film and may be more so appalled and disturbed. Jordan describes his style and speaks on behalf of Irish temperament: "They're kind of tragic comedies. My temperament is Irish. Dark and sick. That's what we are over there. The Butcher Boy was kind of a comedy, no? You couldn't bear that movie you didn't laugh."

Jordan likes his characters to appear realistic to the viewer when he introduces them. He then likes to play with the viewer and bring them into fantasia, as Jordan says himself: "I like to take stories that have a realistic beginning, that start from the point of realism and go to some other place that is surrealistic. I suppose there is a certain impatience with reality. That sort of thing, that's Irish." Web Ref: Combustible Celluloid http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/intnjordan.shtml This implies that Jordan thinks that Irish people are impatient with the real world. The Butcher Boy raises a number of issues specific to 50's/60's Ireland that are just as relevant today. The issues include cultural identity, aspiration and Ireland's relationship with Britain. At the very start of the film there is a contrast of reality and fantasy from a comic strip opening credits sequence straight into a scene from rural Ireland. Francie Brady's increasing psychotic behaviour and the swinging pendulum behaviour of his mental state from reality to fantasy is contrasted against the picturesque rural countryside. Jordan deals with imaginative landscapes and believes that the landscape of Ireland is part of our heritage. He also believes there is an imaginative landscape that has been mapped out by the likes of Joyce, Yeats, Swift and Beckett. "Myths, obsession with metaphysics are as much part of our heritage as the concrete landscape" quote Jordan in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. In The Butcher Boy he literally explodes the scene of romantic rural Ireland. Jordan frames a scene of a panoramic view of clichéd Ireland with picturesque postcard beauty. It is a familiar image that is identified with a romantic rural Irish landscape. There is a pregnant pause as the camera holds the shot; suddenly an atomic bomb erupts out of the lake. The scene is unexpected and crushes the cultural representation of the countryside. This completely destroys the idea of the stereotypical Irish scenery from our minds. The aftermath is the depiction of the small town after a nuclear explosion littered with the charred remains of pigs heads and images of humans that have insect heads. This explosion is symbolic of the inner conflict within Francie's mind and maybe a glimpse of things to come. The use of premonition is typical to Jordan's style and he uses it also in The Crying Game, (Deception by a female in the first scene repeated towards the end). The explosion is in this scene is completely unexpected and takes the viewer by total surprise; this is typical of Jordan's work. Again he is lulling the viewer into a way of Irish life and then completely destroys it with an atomic bomb. Ref: Rockett, Rockett Neil Jordan Exploring Boundaries Referring again to the opening credits in The Butcher Boy there is another of Jordan's depictions of Ireland. The images include comic action heroes. Jordan suggests that by the time of this film's setting in the early 1960's, these images and the imaginative universe that they conjure up had sunk deeply into the conscious minds of young Ireland, as much as anywhere else in the world. Maybe Jordan is trying to dispel the old romantic way of Irish life. The violent exploding of the exaggerated Irish landscape enforces this. Also the ghastly murder of Mrs Nugent finally destroys the softness of quaint Irish imagery. The nature of an individual and morality are central themes to Jordan's films. The appearance of his characters and the understanding of the viewer's perception can be dramatically changed throughout the course of his movies. Jordan has been influenced by the auteurs of yesteryear. Jordan has spoken of his respect for prolific film director and auteur Nicholas Ray. He talks of Ray's out of sync and rebellious characters in his film noir "Thieves Like Us". As Jordan says with an interview with the Daily Telegraph: "This couple had backgrounds that led them into crime, but society was unable to forgive or redeem them. That was Nick Ray's whole thing - the adolescent's drift, out of sync with the world. He made Rebel Without a Cause in 1955, but it would have been the perfect title for a whole bunch of his films." Jordan says he was very much influenced by Ray. "His [Rays] films had an elegance that I could see myself achieving". Both directors use themes of morality in their films. (Jordan: The Butcher Boy, Good Thief, Crying Game) (Ray: Bitter Victory, Thieves Like Us, They Live By Night). Jordan uses out of sync and rebellious characters in his films also. Notably in The Crying Game Jody as well as Fergus are rebellious towards the IRA, however in subtle fashion in Fergus's instance; he just turns his back on them. Francie Brady is understandably rebellious in The Butcher Boy and rebellion is the central theme to Michael Collins. Web Ref: Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/02/22/bffmof22.xml

Jordan has put Ireland on the film map by making diverse groundbreaking films. He is constantly trying to push the boundaries of filmmaking and exploring new territory. Disturbing and shocking the audience is what he likes to do best. Challenging the viewer's perception of understanding with the use of reality and fantasy, he takes us on unusual moral journeys. As an auteur he even pushes boundaries of the art form itself by introducing diversity, most auteurs remaining solid in their themes and genres. His diversity is what gives him his recognisable authorship. As we wait in anticipation for his next diversion, we wonder what visual pleasure he have in store for us next. Bibliography Lapsey, Westlake: Film Theory Notes. Rockett, Rockett Neil Jordan Exploring Boundaries McLoone, Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema, British Film Institute. Combustible Celluloid http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/intnjordan.shtml The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/