Film: Split

Might not be in the UK, but this is a bank holiday weekend in Ireland - which doesn't mean that much to me, except that the range of tv programmes improves! In particular, the film selection - I was delighted to see Split, on offer this evening. On at the same time as the main evening news - but my mother obligingly agreed to watch the film instead. Sick of the daily diet of morose Coronavirus news, anyway.

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, this is the story of James McAvoy and his multiple personalities. A few of them have become dominant - and have decided to kidnap some young women.. for highly dubious purposes. I always wanted to see this - I like Shyamalan's work, and the idea of McAvoy acting in several different personalities did appeal. Just slipped under my radar - which can happen easily, for films not rated quite as highly.

Perfectly understated, right till the chase at the end - typical for Shyamalan. And as usual, a perfectly simple story, which he can use to tell some kind of a parable about humanity in general. I really enjoyed seeing McAvoy slipping into the different characters - there are supposed to be 23, but in the entire film we only get to see seven - a couple only briefly, mainly for illustrative purposes. Apart from the scenes in the dungeons where he keeps his prisoners, he keeps nipping out to his psychiatrist - and we follow her at a conference, where she gives us a little lecture about dissociative personality disorder.

Otherwise, the only respite we get once the girls are kidnapped is a series of flashbacks about one of them - why we are seeing these gradually becomes apparent. As usual in horror films, this one girl is quieter than the rest, doesn't really fit in - it's unusual for her to have been hanging out with the others at all, and it was them that our psycho really planned to take. And sure enough, this one is the best equipped with survival skills, and the only one with the nous to get out of there using her own skills. An interesting parallel is, in fact, drawn between her and her kidnapper.. as gradually, and subtly, drawn out over the course of the film.

Understated, with a constant tension - as always with Shyamalan, I liked it very much. And the self-powered heroine of the piece, Anya Taylor-Joy, has a haunting intensity about her that suits the tone of the film. Yep, recommended. Delighted I subjected my mother (and her dog) to it - hey, there isn't even much gore..

Waiting for another set of quiz questions from London Literary Walks - due on Tuesday, I believe.

Unusually, I'm attending storytelling on Wednesday! Yes, I intend to skive off for an hour - one of my favourite storytellers, Nick Hennessey, is hanging out for an hour on Facebook.

Now, Friday is a bank holiday (VE Day) - so I'll need something to do that day as well. And I was thinking I'd follow Up in the Cheap Seats' lead from earlier in the week, and have a look at a livestreamed Showstopper! show, filmed in the Lyric a month ago without an audience (!), now available on Facebook..

..and then they advertised Antony and Cleopatra, screened by the National Theatre from that day. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okenedo. Now, that does sound interesting..