#eoin macken leopard | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ambercblog · 2 years

Text

Leopard (movie, 2013)

Finally had the chance to watch this small, super indie movie, that is "Leopard" (also known as "Cold") directed and interpreted by Eoin Macken.

Plot: << Cold centres around two disconnected English brothers, Tom (Tom Hopper) and Jack (Eoin Macken), who are ostracised in a small village in the west of Ireland. Drawn back together by the unexpected and mysterious death of their father, they are immediately at odds until they find a girl dumped still alive in the moors. What follows is a bizarre turn of events, both beautiful and surreal, as the two brothers search for their own resolutions. At times both a love story and a tragic tale, the story is inspired by a piece in John Steinbeck's East of Eden >>

Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did I find it weird? Yes, definitely. If anyone wants to know why, here is my review/report on it (be careful, I’m basically telling you the whole story). And, yes, this is a looong post. ***WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD***

What I loved about the movie was the cinematography. Visually is awesome, full of beautiful irish landscapes, super lighted or gloomy, reflecting the mood of the characters and the whole plot. Indeed the movie starts with a panoramic shot ending on a dead wild animal. Hinting something? Of course, but this is something the viewer will get gradually, like solving a puzzle. We see Tom getting ready for his father’s funeral and going to the church. From here you can already get Tom has some mental dirsorder or something (from the way he dressed is clear some OCD behaviour or the way he walks, stiffened and wary). The church is pretty much empty, as if nobody cared about the man.

Outside Jack joins him but clearly Tom is not happy to see him there. They go back home and, again, Tom looks bothered by his brother and Jack does nothing to make things easy: he steals Tom food from his plate, starts talking without waiting for a response or simply opens and closes the door too loudly. Nothing really annoying but still upsetting, especially for someone who used to live alone and with some social issues. You can see him losing control when Jake takes the father's will, almost choking him to retrieve the sheets. About that, they are quite discouraged when they discover that their father has left them nothing (they are about to lose the house Tom still lives in too).

After that, there's a first plot twist. In two different moments we can see Tom walking through the moor doing something. We also see Jack on his way home, drunk from few hours spent at the local bar, crossing the moor. He witnesses the beating of a girl but he passes out. When he comes back home the next morning, he tells Tom (that clearly tries to hide some scratches on his hand) what he saw but Tom is mad at him because he thinks he is there just for their dad’s money. Jack says he is there "for someone" and Tom asks if that "someone" is their mother which, for some reasons we don't know yet, left the family many years ago. Jack admits that but a look on the puzzle Tom is making (it's the paint "Opehlia" by Millais, and I LOVED this reference, since the whole water/drowning thing is a strong theme in the movie) reminds him of the girl he saw the night before, so he convinces Tom to go find her. They actually finds the girl still alive even if really cold. Is this a reference for the movie title? Maybe, maybe not.

They decide to take her home. Their home, and this is one of the things I didn't quite understand and like of the movie. I mean: two men find a woman beated up and instead of searching for help, call an ambulance and/or the police they take her home? Why? Mmmh. The music here is great tho, possibly hinting to something both good and bad. I say so because, after a first moment of the girl panicking (finding herself in an unknown place with two men and no memory of what happened to her), Tom clarify the situation telling her she is safe now. This scene is incredibly cute, since the girl actually seems to trust Tom to take care of her. Tom face almost lightens up when she tells him " You are a good man, Tom. I feel safe. I trust you". It's like is the first time someone spoke so gently to him.

BUT. But. The music slightly changes tone hinting there's something strange in this. Jack's expression seems to say the same. He doesn't say a word but his face does.

Leaving the house Jack goes to town and meets Rory, the bartender, which asks him about a missing girl (his sister I think), accusing him to know something about it. Of course the reason Rory is sospicious is that something serious is happened years before involving Jack and Tom (and/or their father). But Jack denies any accusation, saying that he doesn’t know any girl. To him every girl is the same, "No face, nameless".

Meanwhile at home Tom is making breakfast/lunch for the girl, making sure everything is perfect.

Again here the music is soft, almost mirroring his current mood: he and the girl are sitting on the couch and are smiling at each other for the first time.

There we can see their faces more closely and... an alarm should go off. How is it possible that a girl heavily beaten up has almost no signs of that aggression? A day or so is passed and she has just few faded bruises? No complaints about any pain? Mmmh. Anyway here is the “romantic” or, at least, sweet scene of the entire movie. My romantic heart liked it :D Tom drops something on the table so he starts panicking while she smiles, clearly amused by his awkwardness. He then explains that everything he touches just breaks. (*another alarm here*). Then she asks him to touch her face but he doesn't want to risk to hurt her. She insist.

She asks him to kiss her. That is a big no for him, so distressed he can't even look at her. She manages to convince him again so he kisses her tentatively but there's something wrong (again the music changes) and she has to pat him hard on the shoulders to get his attention and break the kiss. Needless to say, he is extremely sorry for that.

Meanwhile Jack has a a pleasant encounter with a bartender girl, but they stop because there's something bothering him. I guessed Tom wasn't the only one with issues, especially towards women. And we'll soon understand why. Anyway, the girl sensing there's something wrong asks him what really happened many years ago, if the rumours are true. "Did you kill her? Or she really just drowned?"

So we discover part of the story, with the frames turning in a nice sepia effect as a flashback starts. We can see Tom chasing a girl through the trees until they reach the river/lake near his house. There the girl starts panicking and screaming at Tom so he kills her, drowning her to stop her screams. It's not clear who was the girl and why she was running from Tom, we can only hear him mutters "You always told Jack you would never talk to me. I don't know why. I just wanted to talk to you, ok?". He's definitely not aware that he killed her and when he notices he just runs away leaving the dead body floating in the water, also because of the approach of some hunters.

Again, it's not clear if Jack actually tells all of this story to the bartender or if he just recalls it in his mind. But it's implied that he covered up his brother to protect him and that the two never talked about what happened.

After this revelation we can see another intimate moment between Tom and the NewGirl (to distinguish her from the drowned one). They are relaxing on a jetty, looking almost like a couple, quietly basking in the sun, listening to the water rustling and to some bird tweeting.

The girl asks Tom about his mother. He tells her that actually, even if he's sure he was beatiful (like every kid thinks of their mom) he can remember only her eyes because he always thought "she hated him with those eyes". (*alarm*) He also says that his dad always blamed him of her leaving the family. Then he mention that the father knew a girl, maybe a new love interest, and when the NewGirl asks Tom if he hated the father for that, he tells her that he hated the girl. (Sooo questions arises here: that dad-girl was the same he drowned? If no, who was she? If yes, why he killed her excatly?Too many questions, no answers at all). Then they come back home.

Suddenly the situation worsens. The bar owner, which had previously asked Jack to leave town, goes to Tom's home searching for Jack and he finds the girl body laying in bed. So the real mystery is revealed to us: the NewGirl died during the beating so Tom, actually, talked to, kissed and walked with a corpse (or, maybe, he imagined it all). This makes sense since no one else but Tom talked to the girl. Plus, it was strange that a beaten up person had almost no signs. Now we can see her face paler, blue lips and more bruises. Also the expression on Jack face when they discovered the girl and took her home was weird and wary because he noticed she was already dead. (Then why he didn't say anything and let his brother going on with his "fantasy"? I can't understand his reasons.)

Tom sees the man standing next to the girl and, noticing only now that she is dead, he thinks that the man has just killed her. The man tries to explaining that the girl must have been dead for at least a couple of days already, looking at her conditions.

But Tom can't believe him and blinded by rage he kills the man drowning him in the bath tub (the theme of the water/drowning returns). Jack comes back home finding Tom sitting on a bench with the girl in his arms.

The shocked man confesses this new murder and Jack decides to bury both bodies into the wood. But once again the girl “comes to life” before Tom's eyes.

She tells that it's all right, like she wants to comfort him. He shake is head but after a last kiss he realizes that she is indeed dead and that he has to let her go.

Jack suggests him to say few words and Tom, sobbing, confesses "I loved you. You meant everything to me" and that he's sorry that he was unable to protect her. His pain is heartbreaking (Tom Hopper here is phenomenal).

But again there are too many questions. In his speech Tom is referring to the other girl (the one he killed), as if he were imagining her all this time? Or he's really referring to this NewGirl? And if so, he's talking about the fact that he didn't protect her before the beating, like that if he had met her earlier he could have saved her from the aggression? Or he's talking about the "after death" part, as if he wanted to take care of her forever, especially since he doesn't realize she is dead?(this option doesn't really make sense tho). Too many questions, no answers. Only guesses.

After the burials the two brothers set off to finally meet their mother. Jack found out that the woman is a lap dancer in a private club, so he goes first (to check when/if they can meet her) while Tom, exhausted by the events and the long walk to Jack's apartment, falls asleep. When Jack comes back, Tom just woke up (and let's face it, Hopper had the cutest sleepy face there)

and he changed his shirt and jacket, as he wants to look all clean and nice. But when he asks Jack if their mother is excited to see him (just him, because he assumed that the two have already met), we find out that actually Jack didn't even ever talk to her. Tom doesn't understand why and Jacks explains that if she wanted to see / talk to them, she would have been looking for them too long ago.

So, against all hopes, they goes to the club. The atmosphere there is almost relaxing, there's a band palying a smooth track, but Tom is clearly in discomfort (that is not his ideal habitat). He can't even look at the waitress offering him a drink, searching his brother eyes for help. When the music stops playing, Jack leaves Tom alone in a private room with just a letter, asking him to read it to the mother. She enters the room and, because she doesn't know who Tom is, she just starts dancing and flirting with him, like she would do with any other customer. He can barely move, just asks her to listening to what he has to say, after begging her to not look at him so he can read the letter.

*MAJOR SPOILERS HERE*

This is the last piece of the puzzle as we find out what happened in that family. The story Jack wrote is pretty simple yet sad (something we viewers have already in part guessed): a married couple was in love and had two kids (Tom and Jack) who just wanted to be loved. The mom wasn't bad but she left the family. The kids (someway) figured out that she left them because the father, "a hard man", beated her and the kids up, so they hoped on her return to save them from the dad but she never came back. The kids still love the father but while one boy (Tom) locked everything up, like it didn't never happened, the other (Jack) left too, leaving his brother to their father mercy (this sounded like a confession, an apology to Tom from Jack). Jack left also to serching for the mother, to ask her why she really left. The letter ends there.

The woman listens to all of that in silence, she almost looks sad, contrite. For a moment - just a moment - this looks like a family reunion, with her looking up at him with sparkling eyes.

"Wow, my baby grown up!"

BUT. But suddently the background music changes as she sits on Tom's lap, making him extremely distressed. And she starts telling the real truth behind the story they thought they knew: she was actually abused by the father (because, she explains, "if you are married there's no rape"), so Tom and Jack are the results of violence. Just watching them grow up was too much for her, she felt trapped, so she left.

These revelations hit Tom so hard he has a strong panic attack. The woman tells him "You still get your strange panic attacks. Of course you do" and "You're still just a child" and that suggests that Tom has suffered from that since he was a kid, that's why she also accused them to be "needy kids": not only they were unwanted, but also they probably had “special” needs or something. Tom calls Jack for help which comes in a hurry to calm him down. But the mom keeps flirting and making sexual allusions with both the stressed men. Is pretty obvious that the past abuses have left marks on them all and have created a toxic environment where everyone has an unhealthy conduct about sex and social relations: Tom can't even look girls in the eyes (he has probably never had an intimate relationship, that's why the kiss was so clumsy and out of control), Jack seems to be a one-night stand type of guy, as if is afraid to bonding with someone or as if he doesn't really trust anyone, and the mom too. She tells Jack that she saw him watch her dancing many times (not knowing he was his son but still) and then asks him "Do you love me, Jackie?" and he says "Yes... you are my mother", but his tone is almost insecure, as if he as if he could really consider the idea of incestuous love (or, at least, this is what the woman thinks).

Anyway, all the hustle and bustle attracts the club owner's attention which demands both the guys to leave. Jack leaves immediately. Tom, still in shock, can't really move and when the owner get too close he attacks him. Only Jack's intervention prevents him from choking the man.

Eventually the brothers leave the place, leaving a slightly shoked mother. Like I said, the meeting left everyone upset, even the woman. One of the other dancer suggests her to quit for the night but the owner is mad because of what happened and reminds the woman that that's her job so she accecpts to continue (better to say she is forced to) with a new customer. This suggests that, despite she said she is loved by her "audience", she is still trapped living a sad, lonely life doing an humiliating job, especially after what she's been through.

In the end we can see Tom and Jack back in his apartment. Jack locks himself in the bathroom, taking some sort of pills (?). Tom joins him, taking away whatever he is taking, and for the first time we can see Jack falling apart. Tom hugs him as he starts sobbing.

The movie ends with the fading shot of the two embracing each other.

It's a pretty angsty ending but I liked it nontheless because, even if their relationship is damaged too, it's like the brothers can rely on each other, no matter what, especially now that they are truly alone (mom and dad definitively gone from their lives).

Sooo... This was my summary/explanation of the whole movie. I liked it but I think it could have been better. The pros (for me) are. - The shots. Great frames with impact and meaningful, visually nice - The music. I LOVE music and movie soundtracks are key elements for me. Here I find it pretty good, both the music-solo and the songs with lyrics - The psychology behind all. - Tom Hopper. Every actor was good in here but Tom definitely stole the scene, even from Eoin. They filmed this just after shooting "Merlin" or so, so watching this (even after 10 years) reminded me of it: physically they were basically the two Camelot knights in plain clothes, especially Eoin character :') But, again, Tom was reaaally good, super cute and I just wanted to hug his character forever.

The cons: - What I already said in the review. It’s all too complicted. The movie starts as a thriller, with the case of the missing/beaten up girl, but then it adds too many things in the mix: the illusory element of Tom talking to the dead girl, the difficult relationship between different brothers and, in the end, the raw truth of abused kids and women and the entire judgment of a small town. And the fact that none of the problems ultimately find a solution bothered me. The movie makes you taking guesses without giving you the right one. Too many unresolved things. Plus, all the questions left without answers: - Who really killed the beaten girl? - Who was the girl Tom killed? why she was running from him? Where was Jack in that moment? And the father? What was that last shot with her looking back at Jack over her shoulder? what’s the meaning? - Why Jack didn't say anything when he realized the girl they rescued was dead? I mean, I can understand maybe to protect Tom (from having a crisis or something), but still that was a dangerous behaviour (in fact, Tom ends up committing another homicide). - Why the mother acted that way, so weird and cruel? I understand her trauma and pain but back then Tom and Jack were just kids and it's never kids fault (unless it is some creepy possessed kid in horror movies, lol), and now that they are adults (more or less) what do you, flirting with them recalling old traumas instead of talking to them? You are too overwhelmed by feelings and bad memories to talk? Ok, totally understandable, just ignore them then. You had to rage against them, just to get screwed too.

And some other other stuff that confused me.

So, in the end, I recommend it? Yes, I think it's worth watching. It's a slooow burn with a unhappy ending but it makes you think about sensitive topics (abuses, mental disorders, the importance of an healthy family environment). And for the old Merlin fans out there, at least we have two of our beloved knights.

I mean, look at these two! <3

#leopardthemovie #eoin macken #tom hopper #tom hopper and his freaking puppy eyes #knights of the round table #merlin #indie movie #movie recap

6 notes · View notes

arthurpendragons · 7 years

Text

A model performer | Writer, director, actor and even cinematographer, Eoin Macken has proved he’s more than just a pretty face

THE FIRST time we see Eoin Macken in the new Resident Evil film, Milla Jovovich has him in a headlock. The Bray native might be the closest Ireland has to a renaissance man — given his dalliances with writing, acting, directing, modelling and cinematography — but when crushed between the biceps of a former supermodel who is versed in Brazilian jiujitsu, he looks surprisingly useless. Macken proceeds to fight zombie dogs, repel armies of undead with a nail gun and risk amputation from giant turbines.

In Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, a conclusion to the action horror franchise, he plays Doc, the leader of a group of rebels attempting to survive the apocalypse. The film is solid action from start to finish. In the most emotionally revealing sequence involving Macken and Jovovich, the pair converse while running.

“Milla had a baby about six months before we started filming,” says Macken, 33. “She was doing all these action sequences. I don’t know how she did it. I was knackered after 12 hours. She was doing 18 hours [a day], including training. She’s hardcore.”

Arriving at a bar on Dublin’s Leeson Street, the actor has more important things on his mind than zombie armageddon: he left a woollen hat on the Dart and is mourning its loss. Then he receives a call from his mother; at the same time I receive a text message from mine. “What a pair of mummy’s boys,” he snorts. No wonder Jovovich could have had him for breakfast.

Despite the gruelling workout, he insists the film was a breeze. Jovovich and Paul WS Anderson, the director, are married and have made six Resident Evil films together since 2002, so it’s a family affair. “Because they’ve been doing it for 15 years, they never get stressed. It’s a $70m movie; we’re in South Africa — Johannesburg and Cape Town — in these mad, wrecked locations; but it was very easy.”

When we meet, Macken is just back from the movie’s Japanese premiere, which was almost as unhinged as the film. Capcom, the Japanese videogame company behind Resident Evil, laid on a red carpet, and fans turned up dressed as zombies. His mother accompanied him and they visited robot restaurants, temples and sumo wrestling bouts. He wanted to see the Aokigahara woods, the setting for The Forest, a recent horror film in which he acted, but requests for directions were lost in translation. Locals thought he was looking for the electronics district Akihabara, he explains with a sigh.

Over the past few years he has worked in Tunisia, Morocco, Serbia, Canada, France, Spain and Mexico. He has lived in Los Angeles and spent a lot of time in Albuquerque, where he shoots The Night Shift, a series for NBC. Macken plays a doctor, TC Callahan, following in a long tradition of medical screen hunks.

As you can see from an early publicity photograph in which Macken sits astride a motorbike in a hospital lobby, while badly Photoshopped characters run in all directions, the show does not take itself too seriously. It’s more M*A*S*H than ER.

“I knew you were going to bring that [photo] up,” he says. “We all had a laugh about that. Why am I on a motorbike in the studio? No one knew. The show isn’t quite as cheesy as that. The Night Shift has a mixture of comedy and drama. It’s not as dark as a lot of medical shows. There’s a warmth, even a cheekiness, to it.”

Although his mother works as a nurse, Macken insists that he would not be any good in a medical emergency. “Hopefully that won’t happen. We did a week of medical stuff before we started the show, and we do a few days’ top-up before each season.”

The show premiered in 2014 and has been a hit with audiences. It was recently commissioned for a fourth series, making its leading man a hot property. When in Japan, he met the voiceover artist who dubs him for the local version. “He also does the voices for Frozen, Tangled and Tom Cruise,” Macken marvels.

He never wanted to restrict himself to a single line of duty. While studying psychology at University College Dublin, he moonlighted as a model and an actor. But he suffered the same prejudices that Jamie Dornan faced at the start of his career: casting directors refused to take him seriously. “Because I did modelling, people would remark on it in a derogatory way. Casting people questioned why I wanted to act. In America, they don’t care. In Ireland, they did. It didn’t really bother me, though.”

In 2009, he teamed up with another male model to make a documentary, The Fashion of Modelling, which he sold to RTE. The concept may have teetered on Zoolander territory, but the screen credits revealed a production-oriented mind. Macken was credited as director of photography, director, editor, producer and writer. From his early days as an actor on Fair City, he strove to explore every facet of film-making.

“Modelling paid for my acting training, camera equipment, and ultimately allowed me to make my own films. I went to New York to model and spent four nights a week training. After finishing college, I studied cinematography for a year.”

In 2008 came his first outing as an auteur, when he wrote, directed, edited, acted in and worked as cinematographer on the film Christian Blake.

He piled a cast and crew of 10 into a Volkswagen camper van, which he used as a production base, and crafted a slipshod narrative out of action sequences. The results were amateurish, he admits, but the actor was eager to learn and unafraid to experiment.

He worked the cameras on Stalker, Mark O’Connor’s stunning yet underappreciated 2012 film starring John Connors as an unhinged vagrant. He also shot Charlie Casanova, a Terry McMahon opus that provoked an angry critical reception in 2011. “I’m even prouder of that film now,” says Macken. “A crew of six people made it. Terry made the film for about €1,000. Some people were scathing because it misses aspects from a $2m movie. It should be celebrated rather than denigrated.”

The actor considers his entire career a learning process. Working with independent Irish film-makers such as O’Connor and McMahon encouraged him to create experimental projects. The Inside (2012), for example, was a found-footage horror, shot in Dublin, which included a 20-minute unedited sequence in which the actors cut loose.

Leopard (2013) and The Green Rabbit & The Ice Cream Girl (2015) were inspired by his love of Wim Wenders and John Steinbeck. The latter was shot in Ireland, the former in the Mojave desert in southern California.

“The more I’ve lived away from home, the more I want to come back and make a film in a style influenced by America or European cinema in Ireland. Being away makes you look at Ireland in a different way,” he says.

In 2014, Macken made his debut as a novelist with Kingdom of Scars, a coming-of-age story. Hunter and the Grape, his second novel, about a road trip from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, is due for publication later this year.

Ultimately, he considers himself an actor “because that’s what pays the bills”. But his diverse talents inform his roles and on-set interactions. “Film-making is a collaboration: from acting to sound, costume to cinematography. Sometimes actors can be overly celebrated. There’s an inherent narcissism attached to the job. Understanding how it works behind the scenes is important. I suppose I’m an actor who likes to make things.”

The Night Shift is broadcast on RTE, but the show has more traction in the US, South America and Asia, so he longs to work more in Ireland. For his next project, he has adapted Here Are the Young Men, Rob Doyle’s novel about a debauched summer in Dublin at the height of the Celtic tiger.

Homesickness may have been inevitable, but seeing the world has informed his creative vision. One of his most formative experiences, Macken reveals, was travelling to Mozambique in 2014 to make a documentary about Sightsavers, which tackles avoidable blindness — he was overcome with western guilt. “It was humbling and made me appreciate friends, family, everything I have. It made me question my place in the world, what I’m supposed to do with my life.” He sighs. “I’m still figuring out what type of films I want to make, which is why I’ve tried so many different things.”

Macken is determined to reach creative enlightenment, one headlock at a time.

SOURCE

#eoin macken #merlin #i have a subscription to the times #so i thought i'd share the article here #to save people joining if they don't want to #this dude is too talented for his own good

6 notes · View notes