| Product: |
Pierrepoint (DVD) |
| Date: |
11/01/07 (586 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: A thoughtful and well-made film
Disadvantages: No extras whatsoever on the DVD
This is a review of the DVD.
Albert Pierrepoint was one of the last hangmen in Britain. He hanged hundreds of condemned criminals during his 20-year career, and is probably the most famous British executioner since Jack Ketch (I mean, how many others could you name off the top of your head?).
This low-budget film from last year is a biopic of Pierrepoint. A seemingly perfectly ordinary Yorkshireman who works as a grocer, he decides one day to become a hangman (following in his father’s footsteps). He quickly gains a reputation as one of the best at his job, but although he takes pride in his work he doesn’t discuss it with anyone, regarding it as a private matter; he doesn’t even tell his wife for several years. But after executing several Nazis at the end of the Second World War he comes to public notice, and the strains of the job finally start to show.
Timothy Spall is very good as Pierrpoint. One of the few actors who can do comedy and drama with equal skill, I’ve got a lot of time for Spall (he’s especially good in Secrets and Lies). Pierrepoint is a schizophrenic character, stating that he stops being himself when he steps into the execution chamber, and Spall is totally convincing both as the reticent working class Yorkshireman and as the frighteningly inscrutable hangman. He manages the gradual change in Pierrepoint’s attitude to his work very well, going from modest pride in his work to having doubts and eventually coming close to a breakdown as his duties take him far closer to home than he could ever have imagined. It’s a masterful evocation of repressed Englishness, but without being annoying like it is when someone like Anthony Hopkins does it.
Juliet Stevenson plays his wife Anne. I wasn’t so enamoured of her, but that’s probably because she’s an actress I regard with deep suspicion. (She was in Truly Madly Deeply; even the most exemplary subsequent career isn’t going to wash away that particular stain.) Maybe it’s just because she usually plays posh people that I didn’t find her entirely convincing as a humble Yorkshire shop assistant. In fairness she’s pretty good in a difficult role – a woman who refuses to face up to the nature of what her husband does for a living, but who is still willing to profit from it.
The rest of the cast are all perfectly adequate. The best is Eddie Marsan as Pierrepoint’s friend Tish (they do terrible comedy routines in pubs together). The film looks wonderful, perfectly evoking life in the olden days (1930s to 1950s). The director, Adrian Shergold, keeps things under control more or less, although the film makes occasional, unnecessary use of unusual camera angles or slow motion, which succeeds only in breaking the otherwise realistic mood. The music is what you might call sinister-emotive – heavy on strings and piano, it’s perhaps a bit too sombre for me and it underlines events on screen a bit unsubtly, but it’s difficult to see what else they could have used.
Of course there are plenty of hangings, but they’re never shown in great detail – for the most part all we see are people falling through trapdoors. There is a scene where Pierrepoint strips and washes the body of one of his victims while she still dangles on the end of the rope – part of the hangman’s job I’d been unaware of. (Pierrepoint is very gentle towards his victims after death.) But that’s about as gruesome as it gets, and is no doubt what earned the film its 15 certificate.
Although it’s too intelligent to beat us over the head with it, the film has a fairly powerful anti-capital-punishment message. Pierrepoint’s early obsession with speed and efficiency is put into context when he is sent to Germany to execute concentration camp guards (who belonged to a regime that really perfected the fast and efficient execution of its victims). We are forced to wonder how many of Pierrepoint’s terrified victims truly deserve their punishment (especially since one of the hangings we’re shown is that of Timothy Evans, who is widely believed to have been innocent. Pierrepoint also hanged Derek Bentley, although oddly that isn’t included in the film).
But more than that, we’re shown the effect that being state executioner has on Pierrepoint. We never learn why he decides to do it, and nor are we ever really privy to his thoughts (he occasionally alludes to the damage it’s doing to him). Timothy Spall really shines in making Pierrepoint likeable enough that we hope he does well for himself, while also making him a monster. As the years go on and he’s subjected to distraught mothers, pub jibes and angry mobs of protestors we see him gradually turn against what he does. In a way he’s as much of a victim as his victims – the sympathetic smile Ruth Ellis gives him as he slips the hood over her head is a great little moment. I guess execution degrades those who carry it out as much as any other killing.
Unfortunately there is a needless ‘emotional climax’ scene. Spall and the film have shown us perfectly clearly the toll his life has taken on Pierrepoint, but for some reason they decided to make the point again in a climactic ‘soul laid bare’ scene (you know the kind of thing – repression, drunkenness, shouting, sobbing, in that order. Exactly what happens in soap operas). This is followed by an unimpressive dream sequence. A shame, as I thought the film would have been a lot stronger without them.
But apart from that one mis-step I was very impressed with Pierrepoint. It’s intelligent, well-made, realistic, quite moving a couple of times, and has a macabre enough subject matter to keep most people’s interest without being tacky or too horrific.
Although this is a review of the DVD, there aren’t actually any extras apart from things like subtitles and scene selection. This is disappointing. I guess it wouldn’t have had much budget, but surely a director’s commentary wouldn’t have been too expensive? When I see a film that interests me I usually want to know a bit more about it; Pierrepoint is no exception. The film looks and sounds fine, of course, but the lack of extras drops this from four stars to three.
Summary: The life and career of Britain's most famous hangman
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