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Friends and Crocodiles
Directed by Stephen Poliakoff
Starring Jodhi May, Damian Lewis and Robert Lindsay
Rating: 7/10
For the first hour of Friends and Crocodiles I feared debauched millionaire Paul (Damian Lewis ) was a projection of writer/director Stephen Poliakoff. Flush with Lost Price success, had the man with an always casual relationship with sanity finally gone off the rails? The parade of freaks soon got boring and I found myself looking through the eyes of Paul's exasperated secretary Lizzie (Jodhi May), despairing that the director would never get off his arse and do something productive with his talents. What was the plot? Hedonism is self-destructive? Thanks but it doesn't take me two hours to work that one out. Anyone else and I'd have turned off.
But Poliakoff's name was enough to keep me watching, and I'm very glad I did. Once the circus ended Friends and Crocodiles effortlessly justified the theatre of excess as it showed how that bastard child of Thatcher, the nineties fad for high-tech economics, could transform someone as practical and straight-laced as Lizzie into a debauched monster far worse than Lewis' Gatsby figure. Poliakoff has always specialized in turning our initial impressions of a character on their head (20 years before Lost, and 20 times better), and this summersault was one of his best. Suggesting economic excess brings hubris and corruption isn't anything original, but suggesting the core values of our present society, values preached by morally upright busy-bodies, are fundamentally hedonistic was a wonderful subversion. The first hour was an essential mirror to bring into focus what lurked under the crisp jackts and Oxford shirts of the business world. A world that makes being fashionable a merit in itself, to the point it's all the justification needed to toss away 20,000 jobs. Paul's excess could never hurt a fraction of that number, yet Lizzie felt able to condemn the "seventies anarchy" with a straight face.
In a typically succinct Poliakoff line Paul said to succeed creativity needs both the Pauls and Lizzies of the world, but although "such people need to work together", they "cannot bear to work together". But Paul without Lizzie eventually prospered because unchecked imagination, for all its many flaws, is self-replenishing. Lizzie without Paul crashed and burned because without imagination she was left hollow.
In the riotous party that terminated her employment with Paul a key moment came as hired troublemakers destroyed the elaborate file system Lizzie created to actualize her boss's ideas by tossing it in his swimming pool. Imagination run wild had destroyed the means of its success. It was a leitmotif that returned to devastating effect when Lizzie watched her fellow New Labour dotcom fanatics commit a far worse crime when they destroyed some antique Victorian electric lights for not functioning perfectly. In a world in a rush, if value isn't immediate it's worthless. As the smug executives slung the beautiful old glass to shatter on the concrete below they could just have easily been slinging away trial by jury, the photo archive of Poliakoff's masterpiece Shooting the Past, or anything old and valuable. Destruction of memory, destruction of the appreciation of beauty.
"I keep thinking back to your Eden," Lizzie said in a tearful phonecall to Paul after the dotcom bubble finally burst, "it was hell at the time, wasn't it, but I keep thinking about it". Paul's "Eden" was never sugarcoated by Poliakoff, but he still celebrated it, for without the anarchy of imagination, for all its dangers, your world is left hollow.
A great message, a beautifully shot film, and a fine way to spend a Sunday night.
Starring Jodhi May, Damian Lewis and Robert Lindsay
Rating: 7/10
For the first hour of Friends and Crocodiles I feared debauched millionaire Paul (Damian Lewis ) was a projection of writer/director Stephen Poliakoff. Flush with Lost Price success, had the man with an always casual relationship with sanity finally gone off the rails? The parade of freaks soon got boring and I found myself looking through the eyes of Paul's exasperated secretary Lizzie (Jodhi May), despairing that the director would never get off his arse and do something productive with his talents. What was the plot? Hedonism is self-destructive? Thanks but it doesn't take me two hours to work that one out. Anyone else and I'd have turned off.
But Poliakoff's name was enough to keep me watching, and I'm very glad I did. Once the circus ended Friends and Crocodiles effortlessly justified the theatre of excess as it showed how that bastard child of Thatcher, the nineties fad for high-tech economics, could transform someone as practical and straight-laced as Lizzie into a debauched monster far worse than Lewis' Gatsby figure. Poliakoff has always specialized in turning our initial impressions of a character on their head (20 years before Lost, and 20 times better), and this summersault was one of his best. Suggesting economic excess brings hubris and corruption isn't anything original, but suggesting the core values of our present society, values preached by morally upright busy-bodies, are fundamentally hedonistic was a wonderful subversion. The first hour was an essential mirror to bring into focus what lurked under the crisp jackts and Oxford shirts of the business world. A world that makes being fashionable a merit in itself, to the point it's all the justification needed to toss away 20,000 jobs. Paul's excess could never hurt a fraction of that number, yet Lizzie felt able to condemn the "seventies anarchy" with a straight face.
In a typically succinct Poliakoff line Paul said to succeed creativity needs both the Pauls and Lizzies of the world, but although "such people need to work together", they "cannot bear to work together". But Paul without Lizzie eventually prospered because unchecked imagination, for all its many flaws, is self-replenishing. Lizzie without Paul crashed and burned because without imagination she was left hollow.
In the riotous party that terminated her employment with Paul a key moment came as hired troublemakers destroyed the elaborate file system Lizzie created to actualize her boss's ideas by tossing it in his swimming pool. Imagination run wild had destroyed the means of its success. It was a leitmotif that returned to devastating effect when Lizzie watched her fellow New Labour dotcom fanatics commit a far worse crime when they destroyed some antique Victorian electric lights for not functioning perfectly. In a world in a rush, if value isn't immediate it's worthless. As the smug executives slung the beautiful old glass to shatter on the concrete below they could just have easily been slinging away trial by jury, the photo archive of Poliakoff's masterpiece Shooting the Past, or anything old and valuable. Destruction of memory, destruction of the appreciation of beauty.
"I keep thinking back to your Eden," Lizzie said in a tearful phonecall to Paul after the dotcom bubble finally burst, "it was hell at the time, wasn't it, but I keep thinking about it". Paul's "Eden" was never sugarcoated by Poliakoff, but he still celebrated it, for without the anarchy of imagination, for all its dangers, your world is left hollow.
A great message, a beautifully shot film, and a fine way to spend a Sunday night.
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