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Simon Magus



cast :

Noah Taylor, Rutger Hauer, Ian Holm, Stuart Townsend, Embeth Davidtz

crew :

Directed by: Ben Hopkins
Written by: Ben Hopkins
Produced by: Robert Jones
DOP: Nicholas D. Knowland
Editor: Alan Levy
Music Score by: Deborah Mollison

release date :

1999

Films that defy categorisation and genuinely surprise a viewer are truly an anomaly in the stifling, tepid, slightly narrow-minded world of the British film industry. Therefore ‘Simon Magus’ is a surprise upon first viewing, and perhaps because of the strange creative world it inhabits the film has been somewhat ignored. However, it seems to have recently enjoyed a regular showcase on the American Sundance film channel where it continues to beguile a new set of viewers as evidenced by the many glowing fan reviews on IMDB. It is the debut film by Ben Hopkins, an Oxbridge graduate who produced several short films and plays during his education and although it bears the expected signs of a newcomer dealing with a feature length narrative for the first time it also has enough visual flair and originality to set it apart from our country’s own traditions of sitcom-like romances and children’s literary adaptations. The story is set in a dying European village that’s slowly approaching the turn of the nineteenth century where two communities somewhat uncomfortably co-exist, the Christians and the Jews, and Simon Magus (Noah Taylor) is the hapless character caught in between this somewhat fierce rivalry. However, it is this initial conflict and the title character’s reaction to it that provides the narrative’s subsequent drama and interest, and so I will focus on it for the purposes of my review.


The village setting is muddy and grim and the drudgery of the everyday life there is revealed in the film’s opening credits that show deserted wooden huts, constant rain, and people engaging in repetitive manual work, until finally settling on the title character himself, Simon, who is begrudgingly cleaning the village toilets. Simon is a simple, unkempt, slightly creepy Holy Fool type character who although at first is aligned with the Jews, slowly becomes caught up in their rivalry with the Christians over the buying of some land on which to build a railway station that will bring much needed trade to the village and more importantly, greater numbers of Jewish people. Their community is dwindling so much so that if another member leaves the Jews by law would have to close down their praying group and move to the city thus ending their close-knit community. Despite their diminutive numbers they still don’t allow Simon Magus to pray with them as he is prone to making up his own prayers and shouting them out randomly. On top of this he claims he can talk to the devil, which naturally proves to be embarrassing for his pious contemporaries but psychologically torturous for him. He is mocked by everyone and some believe him to be cursed. Eventually the devil, played with characteristic menace by Ian Holm (Alien, 1979), feeds him enough anti-Semitic rhetoric to send Simon running to the rival Christians asking to be converted. They cunningly seize upon this chance to reduce the Jewish numbers even further and to also use him as a reluctant spy to find out who has made the offer to buy the land to build the station. While Simon’s actual spy mission turns out to be somewhat fruitless, the way the two religions play off against each other and their representation by the director raises some interesting ideas.


Dovid (Stuart Townsend) is the kindly market owning Jew who first approaches the town squire with a cheap yet honest proposal and heartfelt reasoning. The Squire accepts his lowly offer if he promises to read and appreciate a book of poetry he has written. Meanwhile the Christian characters are revealed as conniving, using their superior wealth to attempt to undercut Dovid’s offer at every opportunity but when this fails to impress the enlightened poetry loving Squire they resort to sabotage. This instantly sets up one of the film’s most intriguing conflicts of representation. The Jews are presented as a kind accommodating group who value their religion over money, their modesty reflected in their almost peasant-like lifestyle. They live in wooden houses prone to the raging elements. There are very few unfriendly Jews depicted here although their treatment of the admittedly disturbed and disruptive Simon is often less than charitable. In contrast the Christians seem to value money more highly and use their power for evil commercial gains. There are few positive model Christians here and it is they who eventually resort to dirty tricks in the land dispute. Although this contrast is profound you get the impression that the director Hopkins isn’t trying to make any great commentary on religion, although it seems apt given the context; Jewish and Christianity were the two ruling religions in nineteenth century Europe, but the latter was always more popular and commanded more followers and therefore more money. Rather it seems that Hopkins is using the two groups to present basic conflicts between good and evil, and particularly enlightenment/education versus commerce, basically the greater forces that were at war during the turn of the century as modernism approached. In ultimately making his decision for granting land ownership the Squire fairly favours neither religion on shallow prejudicial terms, like the director himself, and instead makes his decision based on the individual’s displays of cultural worth and human decency, an approach consciously influenced by his education coupled with his deep passion and knowledge of poetry that he hopes to imbue in others. This suggests that if Hopkins was attempting to convey any message through his narrative of conflicts it is one devoutly against the approaching evils of capitalism and in favour of art, beauty, and humanity. The characters with the most money (who happen to be Christian) are evil and scheming and it doesn’t take much to guess with whom the cultured Squire eventually opts for.


While the set-up and resolution of these conflicts provides much interest and emotional engagement the middle scenes of the film drag slightly thus rendering the tone of the film slightly uneven, which is perfectly understandable for a feature film debut. The mid-section also somewhat maligns Simon Magus himself. Although eventually proving his heroic worth in the climatic Passover based finale, for a while Simon simply roams around in a drunken stupor, stumbling about the countryside experiencing terrifying visions. However, the searing visual power of these hallucinations brings me on to one of the films other main appeals, its cinematography by Nicholas D. Knowland. The devil character as a figment of Simon’s imagination is presented as suitably demonic and menacing, often appearing out of a foreboding layer of nigh time fog and, in a memorably deranged moment towards the end, from underneath the ground in Simon’s hut as a kind of grotesque rotting vegetable that can talk. Simon’s other chilling vision is of a monstrous looking train that tears through the middle of the village billowing steam. As it passes Jews stare out at him accusingly from the windows. He believes this to be a vision of his people being transported to hell although in the context of the film as a whole it’s tempting to read the train as a symbol of modernism whisking away the Jew’s old-fashioned religious values. Whatever their representative value moments like these render the film as being pleasingly and resolutely cinematic. Too many British film directors fall victim to the trappings of TV formalities as this is where many of their numbers begin their careers. However, Hopkins, coming straight from the fertile world of film school shorts, has a real visual flair that is rare for a newly emerging home-grown talent. Considering its period setting the film could have easily resembled a made for TV drama to be shown on a Sunday night. Even the less cerebral narrative driven moments are brilliantly shot, capturing the countryside setting, in a widescreen palette of conflicting warmth and bleakness, muddy filth and sun dappled beauty. At moments it resembles Roger Deakins’ cinematography work on the Coen Brothers’ similarly period based ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ (2000).


The indie-like ensemble cast is also highly commendable. Ian Holm, as previously mentioned, is a horrific vision of Simon’s fears of the antichrist while Rutger Hauer, despite adopting a slightly confusing accent, is highly impressive bringing gravitas, warmth, and a kindly authority to his friendly town Squire thus revealing a versatility that belies his reputation as a token 80’s bad guy. However, it is Noah Taylor as Simon Magus who impresses the most. He pitches this confusing, conflicting character just right, inspiring in the viewer a balanced mixture of sympathy, respect, but also slight annoyance. He is easily led and ultimately kindhearted, but it’s also equally clear to see why figures from both religions find his bizarre anti-social rants and childish outbursts aggravating. Taylor has since gone on to eke out a respectable career playing interesting smaller roles in a series of mainstream American indie films such as ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ (2004) and ‘Almost Famous’ (2000) but on this evidence it would be nice to see him take on a challenging lead once again. The sparse original score is also noteworthy; limited as it is to lone strings its atmospheric chamber-style music perfectly encapsulates the period setting and the sometimes dark, occasionally warm, but overall melancholy mood of the narrative and visuals. All of these positive elements combine to create an impressively convincing feel of the ‘end of a century’ time period the story is set in as it becomes tragically obvious that although the humble protagonists may succeed in smaller conflicts such as these, there are still much bigger changes afoot that would reap much harsher consequences as modernism approached. It’s worth noting that some postmodernist theorists see the two World Wars that eventually ravaged Europe as evidence of the ultimate failure of modernism.


However, moving away from weightier readings the film succeeds mainly on its intriguing narrative conflicts and grim fairytale-like visuals that make it seem more a product of offbeat European cinema rather than a film made and funded in England. Indeed, it’s tempting to believe that had the film been made in France, Germany, or Austria it may have, through sole regard of it being in a foreign language, acquired the dedicated art house audience it so deserves. Instead, the English film industry’s poor handling and lack of promotion for its more esoteric products means that the film may remain a compelling yet rarely seen footnote in film history, which is a shame.


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Country: UK
Budget:
Length: 101mins


Filmography:
'Alien', 1979, Ridley Scott, Brandywine Productions
‘Almost Famous’, 2000, Cameron Crowe, Columbia Pictures
‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’, 2004, Wes Anderson, Touchstone Pic
‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, 2000, The Coen Brothers, Touchstone Pictures


Pub/2008


More like this:
The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz, 2000, directed by Ben Hopkins
The Living and the Dead, 2006, directed by Simon Rumley
Zombie ja Kummitusjuna (Zombie and the Ghost Train), 1991, directed by Mika Kaurismaki