This is a review of How I Live Now (2013)
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3 October
This is a review of How I Live Now (2013)
* May contain spoilers *
Piper (unclear why she is called that, but played, somewhat precociously, by Harley Bird) says the title words to this posting to Daisy* (Saiorse Ronan), who, rather clumsily / unconvincingly tries to reassure her that there is not a connection between her mother not being there and eating chocolate : as we may well know, in cases of a separation, children can look for an explanation and end up blaming themselves, finding a causal connection and a regret, e.g. If I hadn’t eaten chocolate, mum wouldn’t have gone. (Daisy probably blames herself for her own mother’s departure : her mother, we are told, loved this location, and we see a photo of her by a sundial, later seen atop a hill.)
Pure observational / empirical psychology. Later, Daisy talks about chocolate, too, saying what she thought she was doing by not eating it, but, much more than that, her depiction as a person with intrusive commands in her head, and who describes herself more than once as a curse, suggest that she may be meant to have (touches of) obsessive-compulsive disorder (better known as OCD). It is not merely that she is fastidious (calling the contents of the fridge ‘gross’, and claiming that cheese is ‘a lump of solidified cows’ mucus’), but that she believes that something dreadful will happen, if she does not do certain things, and we hear what is in her head, compelling her.
Certainly, Edmond (Eddie, played by George MacKay) knows that Daisy has an inner conflict, and seeks to encourage her that she does not have to do what she is telling herself, after he has toppled her, fully clothed, into the plashing current of the family watering-hole, and thereby makes a further connection with her**.
Shortly before, he has whispered the herd of cows away that puts Daisy off proceeding, and, when she clumsily climbs a gate with barbed wire on, heals her hand, magic elements no doubt from the novel, and which enliven a fairly inert story, which would otherwise be of type ‘upheaval plus making a dangerous journey to be with loved ones’***, e.g. The Day After Tomorrow (2004), Lord of the Rings : Return of the King (2003), etc.
Anyway, back at the OCD, we hear Daisy talking about the change in her way of thinking that she has found herself making during the course of the film, and we have long since seen her doing things that would have made the earlier Daisy squirm or scream. I doubt that this ‘progress’ is anything other than symbolic, although, with psychological treatment, people can learn to do things that would otherwise overwhelm them with disgust, but I do not know what it is meant to mean on a figurative level, as some may be confused by what she does and hears anyway
As, considered differently, a story about insurrection or war, there are brutal moments, such as the enforced ‘evacuation’ (though less harrowing, because of the sheer violence, than an equivalent scene in Sarah’s Key (2010), and later parts of the film leave one wondering, from the available evidence, what need there could have been for splitting up the family) and when Piper is under threat from two men, as well as sudden detonations and overflights of aircraft.
Such things apart, there is a fairly static presentation of military conflict by means of low-frequency notes in the score and shots of burnt-out cars or the debris of an airliner (although there is the failure to appreciate that a box of chocolates might not be so pristine that it even has a tag on it (a tag to play on Piper’s mind ?)). The strife, then, seems too staged, almost as if it might only be happening in Daisy’s mind…
That may be the answer to it. When we knew that Daisy was with the family for a summer, it all seemed a bit My Summer of Love (2004), and the representatives of (full) adulthood being largely absent in a rather Narnia way, until the trees shook (in Tarkovsky vein, or that of Looper (2012) maybe) and Something Happened (again, a bit Narnia). Fairport Convention performing Tam Lin, about a magical abduction, has already paved the way ?
If it is all symbolic, then the ending can be reinterpreted as seen from knowing the beginning, as the ending voice-over invites us to do. Probably a comparison with Beckettt’s novel Molloy is pretentious, but his fastidious character Moran makes a punishing journey (in more sense than one ?) and ends up transformed. Moran opened his part of the book with ‘It is midnight. It is raining’, and closes it with ‘It was not midnight. It was not raining’. (Here, maybe that means that the end condition does not differ much from the starting condition, and maybe Eddie is no more than another aspect of Daisy's own personality, as there are certainly touches of A Beautiful Mind (2001), suggesting as much.)
With this film, it is all (for good reason) reminiscent of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, too, with another dramatic transformation. That said, it is the words spoken over by Ronan that make one think that anything is significant, since the ‘journey home’ with Piper seems hare brained, succeeds against all the odds, and sees Daisy using excessive force and threats to protect her – unlike in Lore (2012), there is no great sense of something that needs to be done except in terms of telepathy and / or dream, or of Daisy being / becoming a different person because of what happens.
Coupled with the fact that the film, even at only 101 minutes, seems to drag, all of this makes me think that it will not do very well, as comments that I heard were that it was like Twilight, and at least they had had a free ticket…
End-notes
* Daisy is really Elizabeth, but has chosen this name for herself (although using both to introduce herself to her aunt) : not surprisingly, such renaming is not often unassociated with some turmoil about identity.
** Previously, she had declared, rather abruptly, that she did not fish, did not swim, but then decides to go along for the ride.
*** Of which, I take The Road to be another such.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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