Whimsicality walks a tightrope in the cinema: your cute is my twee. Bill Forsyth's attempt to update Ealing comedy falls off the tightrope because the screenplay, his own work, is muddled, compromised and fails to give the audience the steers it needs and deserves. His whimsicality irritates.
Forsyth is so in love with his "subtlety" that he cannot be seen to make his mind up about anything. Take the basic plot premise: Knox Oil & Gas, stridently established in the opening sequence as a money-mad Yankee corporation, is hellbent on turning a bleak but charming spot in western Scotland into a dock and refinery. (Curious siting for North Sea purposes, incidentally, but perhaps Arisaig and Morar were more photogenic than Helmsdale). So is this US invasion a good or bad thing? Ecologically sound, disruptive of a traditional way of life based on crofting and fishing, philistine? Or just what these backward folk need to shake them up? We don't know at the off, and we don't know at the end. Do the villagers welcome their windfall, dread the loss of their community? We don't know- ever. They seem, apart from Lawson their omnicompetent negotiator, indifferent or obtuse like a herd of sheep, barely differentiated. Even Fulton Mackay, who threatens to derail Knox's plans by hanging on to his beach, seems to be more baffled than outraged by the business.
And here is the crucial way in which Forsyth differs from Sandy Mackendrick in "Whisky Galore!", the comparison for which critics grasped. The islanders of Todday are agents, not victims. They plunder the Scotch and hoodwink those who come to retrieve it by a hundred clever means while wearing down Captain Waggett's moral resistance. And this is illustrated by a brilliantly plotted and photographed collection of incidents.
It may be objected that Forsyth's is not a message film about pollution or cultures clashing, and that we should study the human interest instead: the loneliness of the long-distance go-getter, and how it is chastened by contact with a more authentic, slower, saner way of living. But that noble-savagery stuff is not a strong enough to carry almost two hours of what is meant to be a comedy.
The sentimental nostalgia to which Macintyre succumbs at the end of "Local Hero" is based on no such re-orientation of the audience's sympathies as occurs in "Whisky Galore!", and is depicted with no such skill. He does not soak himself in the hamlet's way of life; he remains a pratfalling, gawping tourist when he is not briskly haggling with Denis Lawson, an accountant who apparently has plenipotentiary powers to sell the property.
When Latin American novelists lapse into implausibility, it's called magic realism. There's a wee dram too much of MR in this screenplay: are there no wider concerns about Knox's plans, no government inquiry, no save-the-harbour protests? Forsyth and Puttnam picture Riegert and his Scotch quisling/sidekick like Catholic friars trafficking with the Indians in "The Mission". It is patronising to them and insulting to the intelligent spectator. A film supposedly rooted in what is real and abiding, contrasted with Happer's neon-lit inferno, should have more respect for the givens of modern life, which include planning procedures.
With this film Forsyth and Puttnam began to court America, and one can almost hear the Hollywood money urging them to beef up the belly laughs for the multiplex crowd. Hence, one guesses, the subplot about Happer's demented shrink: matter so coarse and stupid that it is fit only for the likes of Terry Gilliam. Lancaster became more and more intense vocally as his physical vigour waned, and he overbalances this movie: you keep waiting for him to turn up in his chopper and shoot a little vim into the wan, whimsical string of incidents.
Riegert appears bemused throughout as if the switch from "Animal House" was too much, too soon. As usual in a Puttnam production, the women are remote goddesses or walk-ons, and the subject is male befriending and jockeying. Other "meeting cute" moments are tossed in, such as the Russian fishermen's visit, to compensate for the lack of real tension and jeopardy in the primary encounter.
The trademarked off-beat moments are mainly cursed by the magic-realist taint too. Why would Urquhart hide his second role as an accountant? What is the frisson in a character as undeveloped as Seagrove's having mermaid toes? What besides PC dictated making the minister black, a circumstance as unlikely as the demographics of 'Ballymory'?
The cinema-going public never got on to Bill Forsyth's wavelength. He duly went Stateside, along with Puttnam (for a brief reign as the Savonarola of Columbia Pictures) but Forsyth was no defter at conveying the moods of quiet places and lives there than in the Highlands. Since 1993 his only feature has been a sequel to "Gregory's Girl", the film which bankrolled "Local Hero".
He might have fared better if he had stayed in Scotland, gone into TV drama and cured Scottish Television of its obsession with Glasgow murderers. But there is a gulf of snobbery between telly and "film", and Forsyth tumbled into it.
Forsyth is so in love with his "subtlety" that he cannot be seen to make his mind up about anything. Take the basic plot premise: Knox Oil & Gas, stridently established in the opening sequence as a money-mad Yankee corporation, is hellbent on turning a bleak but charming spot in western Scotland into a dock and refinery. (Curious siting for North Sea purposes, incidentally, but perhaps Arisaig and Morar were more photogenic than Helmsdale). So is this US invasion a good or bad thing? Ecologically sound, disruptive of a traditional way of life based on crofting and fishing, philistine? Or just what these backward folk need to shake them up? We don't know at the off, and we don't know at the end. Do the villagers welcome their windfall, dread the loss of their community? We don't know- ever. They seem, apart from Lawson their omnicompetent negotiator, indifferent or obtuse like a herd of sheep, barely differentiated. Even Fulton Mackay, who threatens to derail Knox's plans by hanging on to his beach, seems to be more baffled than outraged by the business.
And here is the crucial way in which Forsyth differs from Sandy Mackendrick in "Whisky Galore!", the comparison for which critics grasped. The islanders of Todday are agents, not victims. They plunder the Scotch and hoodwink those who come to retrieve it by a hundred clever means while wearing down Captain Waggett's moral resistance. And this is illustrated by a brilliantly plotted and photographed collection of incidents.
It may be objected that Forsyth's is not a message film about pollution or cultures clashing, and that we should study the human interest instead: the loneliness of the long-distance go-getter, and how it is chastened by contact with a more authentic, slower, saner way of living. But that noble-savagery stuff is not a strong enough to carry almost two hours of what is meant to be a comedy.
The sentimental nostalgia to which Macintyre succumbs at the end of "Local Hero" is based on no such re-orientation of the audience's sympathies as occurs in "Whisky Galore!", and is depicted with no such skill. He does not soak himself in the hamlet's way of life; he remains a pratfalling, gawping tourist when he is not briskly haggling with Denis Lawson, an accountant who apparently has plenipotentiary powers to sell the property.
When Latin American novelists lapse into implausibility, it's called magic realism. There's a wee dram too much of MR in this screenplay: are there no wider concerns about Knox's plans, no government inquiry, no save-the-harbour protests? Forsyth and Puttnam picture Riegert and his Scotch quisling/sidekick like Catholic friars trafficking with the Indians in "The Mission". It is patronising to them and insulting to the intelligent spectator. A film supposedly rooted in what is real and abiding, contrasted with Happer's neon-lit inferno, should have more respect for the givens of modern life, which include planning procedures.
With this film Forsyth and Puttnam began to court America, and one can almost hear the Hollywood money urging them to beef up the belly laughs for the multiplex crowd. Hence, one guesses, the subplot about Happer's demented shrink: matter so coarse and stupid that it is fit only for the likes of Terry Gilliam. Lancaster became more and more intense vocally as his physical vigour waned, and he overbalances this movie: you keep waiting for him to turn up in his chopper and shoot a little vim into the wan, whimsical string of incidents.
Riegert appears bemused throughout as if the switch from "Animal House" was too much, too soon. As usual in a Puttnam production, the women are remote goddesses or walk-ons, and the subject is male befriending and jockeying. Other "meeting cute" moments are tossed in, such as the Russian fishermen's visit, to compensate for the lack of real tension and jeopardy in the primary encounter.
The trademarked off-beat moments are mainly cursed by the magic-realist taint too. Why would Urquhart hide his second role as an accountant? What is the frisson in a character as undeveloped as Seagrove's having mermaid toes? What besides PC dictated making the minister black, a circumstance as unlikely as the demographics of 'Ballymory'?
The cinema-going public never got on to Bill Forsyth's wavelength. He duly went Stateside, along with Puttnam (for a brief reign as the Savonarola of Columbia Pictures) but Forsyth was no defter at conveying the moods of quiet places and lives there than in the Highlands. Since 1993 his only feature has been a sequel to "Gregory's Girl", the film which bankrolled "Local Hero".
He might have fared better if he had stayed in Scotland, gone into TV drama and cured Scottish Television of its obsession with Glasgow murderers. But there is a gulf of snobbery between telly and "film", and Forsyth tumbled into it.