'Rollercoaster Ride' - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To Belle and Sebastian Is Available To Buy Now By Clicking Here
"God Help The Girl"
(A
Film By Stuart Murdoch with musical backing by Belle and Sebastian)
"If
you have to grow up sometime you have to do it on your own" or "I've
been born for ages but now I'm turning the pages" or "We're beaming
to Dudley!"
Musical
soundtrack (performed by cast with * an archival Belle and Sebastian recording):
I Suppose That Was A Prayer/I Dumped You First/Pretty When The Wind Blows/I
Know I Have To Eat/God Help The Girl/The Psychiatrist Is In/The God Of Music/If
You Could Speak/Catwalk Of The Dukes/Perfection As A Hipster/Fuck This
Shit*/Pretty Eve In The Tub/A Loving Kind Of Boy/What Do You Want This Band To
Be?/Come Monday Night/Collective Idiocy/I'm Not Rich/I'll Have To Dance With
Cassie/Stalinist Russia/Baby's Just Waiting/Patrick Whistle/Musician Please
Take Heed/I Just Want Your Jeans/Invisible/The World's Last Cassette/Down And
Dusky Blonde/Dress Up In You*
Corn
Gig setlist: Winter Wooskie/I'm A Cuckoo/Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie/Musician
Please Take Heed/Photo Jenny/Piazza New York Catcher/Turning The Pages
Well, this is fun. We've never done an honest to God
(help the girl) film review on this site before have we? Well not apart from
the odd mini-DVD review we've done down the years for various Beatle films,
Monkees TV episodes and somehow Stuart Murdoch's project deserved more than
that. Goodness how it will fit in with the reviews we'd already written of the
album (which is as different a beast to the film as The Beatles' 'Sgt Pepper's
Lonely Heart's Club Band' LP is to the Robert Stigwood film) and I'm a lot less
convincing talking about this sort of thing than music (I only sat through two
film studies lessons before leaving for more useful and proper things that were
much more likely to help with my employment - like a creative writing course
for instance). The fact remains, though, that 'God Help The Girl' is such a
crucial part of the Belle and Sebastian story (taking up five years of their
lives now, off and on) that it needs to be told properly, not in a throwaway
'oh yes and there's also this' appendix, being so integrally involved with a
(still fictionalised) account of how Belle and Sebastian came together (well
ish, sort of). We also need to give you the plot for those who haven't seen the
film yet, which is something we've toyed with doing for many a prog rock album
but haven't so far because we figure anyone mad enough to click on a 7000 word
review of said album will know it (though apparently we're wrong: lots of
people have contacted us to ask if The Small Faces' 'Ogden's Nut Gone Flake' is
as mad as we made out. Why yes, yes it is). However in a way it makes perfect
sense that a novice is guiding through this film because it's all about
novices. Well, novices with good ideas and talent - not so sure that applies
here but never mind. I'm digressing again. Are all film reviews like this or
just mine? Anyway...
The last six months have been ridiculously busy for
a band who seemed on the verge of retirement last time we reviewed one of their
'new' albums. Worried that he'd 'lose' his band members to other groups and his
audience to other bands, Stuart Murdoch effectively rushed the current Belle
and Sebastian album through: a quirk of that record not coming out till January
and only getting the film for Christmas means I haven't heard it yet except the
opening flurry of singles. What I have heard - and the reviews I've read
suggest it's more of the same as 'The Life Pursuit' and 'Write About Love',
steps further towards the middle of the road and modernity, which as we've
already discussed on this site is what the band probably needs to do to survive
but it isn't what their fan base wants them to do (well, not us oldies anyway -
lots of people seemed to buy the 'Funny Little Frog' single so somebody must
have liked it). I fear from what I've heard that, yet again, Belle and
Sebastian only make sense when going back to old ground - the love songs written
between Murdoch and Isobel Campbell (who left in 2002), the brave hope of new
tomorrows and how people cope once those tomorrows aren't there anymore.
'God Help The Girl', however, is refreshingly retro
and makes no bones about being concerned with the past. No date is given
throughout the film but it 'feels' early-to-mid 1990s in the way that 'Tigermilk'
and 'If You're Feeling Sinister' both did (caveat: Eve's misguided boyfriend
makes a joke about her having the world's last cassette tape which would
suggest a later date - then again people were joking about my large cassette and
vinyl collection the moment CDs arrived in 1987) so that doesn't completely
nullify my dating . The film's main heroine, Eve, is effectively an innocent
abroad - but abroad in this case means out of the room and asylum where she's
been locked up for an unspecified amount of time; a throwaway line makes her
out to be Australian and so more literally abroad. Since becoming anorexic
(and, so some film reviews say, depressed although that's more of a secondary
issue by the look of the dialogue)Eve has found that her world has collapsed
since she left home and - reading between the lines - that she's too much of an
'artist' to be a fully functioning adult (we get very little about her
back-story actually). Gradually forgetting to eat, she's ended up in a mental
asylum where lots of well-meaning nurses with stern faces try to encourage her
to eat, only to escape one day, attend a gig where a local band's two
guitarists have a row and beat each other up on-stage (both hilariously taking
off their glasses first) and one of them - James - gets talking to Eve and
takes her to his flat when she collapses. He's a musician, she happens to write
songs and he's currently teaching a promising young singer - bring it on! However
Eve has a boyfriend of the pretty-but-pretty-simple Justin Bieber-meets-Red-Hot-Chilli-Peppers
sort, he lets her down she lets James down and her world comes crashing down
and the film ends with their tearful goodbye as she goes off to be a 'grown-up'
and take a proper adult course. We won't spoil the ending, about whether they
fit their last gig in or not, before Eve goes away, although suffice to say
this isn't a film you watch for plot but character. As you'd expect from
anything made by Stuart Murdoch, though most of the plot revolves around long
walks, wasted summer days where not much happens and an awful lot of shots of
scenic shots of Glasgow looking particularly beautiful. The theme of the film
is a time when nothing in your life was sorted out and stuck in a strict regime
just yet, when anything was possible and when music is the most important thing
anyone could do with their lives.
Nobody says it here and Murdoch is careful to both
change the gender and the illness of his main protagonist, but this is clearly
his life-story writ large on screen, together with the usual quirks and, well,
characters he's famous for giving his characters. In fact I'd go so far as to
say it's the most personal creative project yet, telling the world stuff that
was going on in his head that he wasn't ready to tell when 'Tigermilk' was
being made and had forgotten for most of the past few albums. For those who haven't
read our new expanded review of 'Tigermilk' yet here's the story: Stuart tried
to go to university when he was 21, burnt himself out and fell ill with chronic
fatigue syndrome and ended up confined to bed for most of the next nine years. This
is the story of what happened to him when he returned slowly to health, finding
that he had a 'voice' for his songs (most of whom became 'characters' who'd
lived in the Glasgow he'd known before falling ill because being confined to
the same old four walls everyday let his imagination soar), meeting and falling
for Isobel Campbell in a scene not unlike the meeting between Eve and James in
the film (although neither were playing at the time) and enjoying the summer of
his love when after nine years of nothing and silence his head was full and his
imagination was overflowing. I too suffer from this horrendous illness (which
is why I live my life through the careers and music of others - I'm too poorly
to make music myself) and though scriptwriter Murdoch deliberately changed the
story to Eve being anorexic (Murdoch later gave an interview claiming that this
was for 'visual performances as 'shots of people sleeping wouldn't have been that
interesting!') I absolutely see the parallels: Eve sleeps an awful lot
throughout the film, often after a hard day of living the night before, nobody
believes her or listens to her and everyone lectures her instead of helping her
- she's obviously been through the ATOS disability scheme too. She often wakes
up uncomfortably, the radio still playing through her earphones in her
over-darkened room, music the only outlet from the outside world allowed in
(that settles is - Murdoch comes in and checks in on me, angel style, when I'm
asleep - there's no other possible explanation). Note too how out of touch with
the 'real world' Eve seems to be (including - inevitably for a one-time bus
driver trainee - a memorable scene of her riding on a bus, looking on in shock
at the world around her moving; it's a subtle scene if you don't know about the
illness and how rare it is to leave the house, but it's clearly there if you
know).
Even the scene of her being told to keep up her
'pyramid' so that eating, sleeping and exercise can 'prop up' level two (a
social life and work) and only then level three (arts and creativity and -
curiously - 'morality') sounds spookily reminiscent of some of the tripe I was
given (though like Eve's carers it's the paperwork not the people: they're not
the monsters lesser writers would have made them and 'something to escape' -
they clearly want her to get well, they're just clueless how). This is, of
course, wrong: music is so integral to Eve's wellbeing because it isn't something
she can switch on and off when she feels like it; it's a part of her that
actually comes more naturally than eating and more effortlessly than sleep. Those
of you who read my outburst about three years ago about 'why I write this site'
will know my feelings on this (the biggest argument I ever had at school was
aged eight refusing to put 'music' down on a list as a 'luxury' item during some God-help-the-teacher
awful lesson about social science: to me it's always been more important than
eating, sleep and shelter, the supposedly 'essential' items needed for life - I
can cope without a house if I have to, will last a few difficult days without
food and my illness means I often go days without sleep as it is but I cannot
last any length of time without music, which is the equivalent of asking me to
live without hope, or dreams, or escapism, or happiness, or beauty).
While it's not spoken out loud in this film (the
sub-texts are part of what makes it so clever, a writing trait that's
thankfully held over from the albums) but the biggest thing Eve needs to help
her recover is to actually have a future to recover too; in this context it's a
tragedy that see her leave on a train at the end of the film, her friendships
and future apparently broken (this too is paralleled with Murdoch's decision to
end his 'fun summer' and go back to university; his story turns out happily
thanks to a brilliant music teacher, several like-minded classmates on a youth
training course and a business studies project that sees him and his pals and
an SOS to his girlfriend back home all getting together to make 'Tigermilk',
one of the greatest records ever made by anybody anywhere - her story is
open-ended, with success and failure equally likely). Eve does end up at the
end of the film receiving the same treatment as Stuart, incidentally, when Eve
visits the house of a faith healer who cuts her hair early on in the film and
imagines a 'man standing over me - so I shut my eyes tight'; the filmic equivalent
of 'The State I Am In's 'gave myself to God - there was a pregnant pause before
he said 'ok'). Religion is a loose theme throughout the film, wrapped around
the character's shoulders like a shawl (James' character goes to Church, Eve
surrounds her cassette demo-tape with a drawing of a church and of course the
project title: the hint is that God does help Eve but she has to work out what
he wants her to do). Even James' flat looks remarkably like the one Stuart and
drummer Richard Colburn shared during the band's early days when they worked as
caretakers and lived on top of a Glasgow church.
Clearly there's a lot of fictionalisation going on
here too and this is not a straight story: Murdoch is an excellent creator of
characters, one of the greatest in fact (if he'd lived in the nineteenth
century famous for caricatures that would be him working with W S Gilbert satirising the MPs of the
days as fairies or perhaps working with Charles Dickens as his editor) and
there are lots of little quirks each has that help define them as characters.
More than that, though, he seems to have split both his and Isobel's personality
into three: 'Eve' is his artistic side coupled with her take-no-prisoners
attitude and the moment she decides to suddenly become a 'blonde' at the end of
the film (the beginning of the end, as she 'becomes' what others want her to be
instead of her 'real' self) she even looks a little like Isobel. The almost
equally wonderfully drawn 'James' mixes his athletic side (he's a lifeguard),
slightly awkward physical presence and musical knowledge (which results in
several excellent conversations about the chemistry of bands and what you need
to be in one that sound very like the sleevenotes from an early B and S record;
more of this would have been highly welcome; not to mention his excellent
record collection still on vinyl), but Murdoch gives 'him' Isobel's side of the
story - equally passionate about music but slightly left behind, a
part-of-the-band-but-not-in-the-band and having to pick his life back up when
he leaves, despite knowing it will never be the same. And then there's Cassie,
James' still-at-school-pupil who falls into their older crowd remarkably easy
for someone that age: she shares Murdoch's bubblier side, the part that talks
to crowds nineteen to the dozen despite being intrinsically shy, the natural cute
lead singer with the good looks (though the camera still doesn't quite
love actress Hannah Murray quite as
euphorically as it does Eve, Emily Browning) but is also slightly clueless, out
of her depth amongst crowds older than herself (how Murdoch must have felt finding
his old friends of the same age had done so many extra years of living he never
got to see). Cassie also shares a little something with Belle and Sebastian's original
bassist Stuart David (the second member of the band, who joined before even
Isobel): she's quirky and full of odd ideas yet always happy to fall in with
what everyone else does (you can imagine her spending the rest of her summer
before going back to school writing the sort of letters Stuart David once shared
with future wife Karn, or the weird equally-fictionalised pen-and-ink drawings
he made of how Belle and Sebastian 'really' formed!) Murdoch's writing means
that all three are likeable and very different, the films seen from all three
points of view along the way (James even tells Eve to 'go away' from his
monologue scene as they try to say goodbye, a clever breaking of the fourth
wall which says much about this film's playfulness).
For those who don't know, this project started life
in 2003 - inevitably the moment when Campbell left the band and Murdoch wasn't
yet ready to open up his vulnerable heart (the band will eventually delay this
with the rather good pop album 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' in 2003 instead). Perhaps
out of guilt at not using his missus' talents enough (Isobel's been far more
prolific over the past decade than her former partner and had better critical
acclaim of late) or out of a need to still hear her voice, lots of the new
material Stuart was writing sounded like a girl's voice to him and much of it
dealt with their shared past. The project was shelves while he worked out what
to do with it, reviving it again in 2007 when the fuss over 'The Life Pursuit'
and resulting tour had died down. Looking round for a singer and writing a
first draft of the script, Murdoch toyed with the project across the next two
years and persuaded the rest of the band to back a now extended cast of three
singers (Catherine Ireton, Celia Garcia and Alex Klobouk) who sang the leads on
the album. A single 'Come Monday Night' was released in May 2009 (it turns up
right at the very end over the start of the final credits and had an exclusive
B-side attached), a fourteen track album followed in June (which featured eight
songs re-recorded for this soundtrack) , another single (a re-recording of
'Funny Little Frog' with another exclusive B-side, neither of which made the
film) was released in July, a five-track EP 'Stills' followed in November
(adding just 'The Psychiatrist Is In' to the film soundtrack) and finally a
third single 'Baby You're Blind' appeared in May 2010 (the B-side was 'A Down
and Dusky Blonde' - the A side has never been heard of again). With B and S
busy or resting, these projects weren't promoted and none of them did very well
- but then measuring releases by commercial success has never been the B and S
way. Thereafter the project was put on the back burner while Belle and Sebastian
wrote, recorded and toured 'Write About Love' (released at the end of 2010).
The project also underwent a complete re-write, with several sub-sections taken
out and others inserted, while Murdoch feebly tried to interest every one of
the big cinema production companies to make it: nobody wanted to know. However
just as 'Tigermilk' made pioneering use of the internet to sell copies before
most people had any idea what it was or what it could be, so Murdoch turned
early to the relatively new 'Kickstarter' project, with fans and movie-goers
building up funds (rather sweetly one of their bigger backers even gets to
introduce the band and hang around on stage for the 'premier' gig in Edinburgh
as featured on the DVD).
Murdoch jokes during the 'introduction' of the
film's premiere in Edinburgh (as seen on
one of the DVD extras) that 'you do all know that this is a musical, right?
Because if I knew I'd want to leave - right now!' However we all knew that 'God
Help The Girl' would be one of those films where the music plays throughout:
Murdoch's songs have always been like film scripts anyway, full of visual clues
and character enhancing phrases. We've already covered some of the songs used
on our site already by reviewing the full album and two EPs released as 'God
Help The Girl' in 2009. Being a Belle and Sebastian spin-off band, though,
means that many of these fine songs ('Beneath My Umbrella' 'Stills' 'Mary's
Market' and the glorious 'Act Of The Apostle' as released by B and S on 'The
Life Pursuit' in 2006) aren't here. Luckily neither is 'Funny Little Frog', a
great song (and still B and S' biggest hit at the time of writing) that always
sounded wrong for this project. The music that does make the film is largely excellent.
For instance 'I Suppose That Was A Prayer' captures Eve's escape from her
mental and physical prison over the opening credits magnificently and sums up
her character in one go: acting more confident than she feels, buying an
Independent newspaper to make her look clever and desperate for new
experiences. 'Musician Please Take Heed' heard during Eve's last breakdown
(when James has learnt the truth and is hiding from her) is exceptional: this
is Murdoch, older and wiser in his 40s trying to remember the first lesson he
learnt from rock and roll and not to get too carried away, while simultaneously
capturing Eve's new-born hurt and fury that James can get away with living a
life separate from hers (even though that's exactly what she's been doing the
whole time; this too sums up the 'hurt' situation of 'Pursuit' and 'Love' and
especially 'I'm Waking Up To Us', the extraordinary EP announcement of the
impending Murdoch-Campbell split released in 2001). Even Eve's decision to take
along her wind-up gramophone to the river bank and spending hours working out
what to play in order to wallow in her hurt is pure genius (if only she'd taken
a book called 'The State I Am In' to read too for us fan completists, eh?!)
'Pretty Eve In The Tub' is weird, Murdoch doing Noel Coward but it works in
conjuring up the pair's blossoming gentlemanly romance where both sides are too
afraid to make the first move. The title track is a clever condensing song that
sums up everything curious fans need to know about the style, mood and plot of
the film: God help the girl - she needs all the help she can get, even from the
unlikeliest sources. Finally 'Dressed Up In You' may have already been used by
the band on the 'Life Pursuit' album here, but it's the perfect accompaniment
to the end of the film: James, left sadly bidding goodbye on the station
platform (till Cassie and bike come to his rescue) contemplating his empty and
her bright future while it plays out in music over the credits ('Now you're an
actress, though you're made of card - you couldn't act your way out of a paper
bag!' 'I'm knitting jumpers' and 'We had a deal there - I thought that you
would keep your word'. Suddenly this song becomes clear: we reviewed this song
as if it was Murdoch singing to Campbell but it's actually her singing to him).
Only one song fails and fails spectacularly: I didn't like 'The Psychiatrist Is
In' on the record and I hate it in the film: Eve is afraid, only just out of
her room for the first time and nervous of people - and yet she seduces the
kindly boy she's just met? Hardly - even if Eve was desperate for attention
she'd do something like fall in the swimming pool and make James rescue her
before promising him a reward - stringing him along, in other words, until he
falls for her and thinks it was all his idea; the Eve of the rest of the film
would have the fire but not the motive to do this (even her dalliance with her
'other' bloke in the film seems out of character: while pleased at having
bedded someone every other girl wants - a great boost to any ego - she'd have
done so with more doubts and guilt than she does in the film, where she only
regrets it when learning that the completely unsupportive twit didn't pass on
her demo tape to his contacts like she asked - yeah, she's an innocent abroad
and all that, but even she's not thick enough to think he ever would, surely?)
So, is this film any good? Largely, yes. We've been
saying for a while now (since 'Fold Your Hands' in 2001 if you've been reading
these reviews in order) that Murdoch had a game-plan in his sick-bed for how he
dreamed his life would turn out. He never bothered thinking past that point
because he never thought it would ever happen, so when life caught up with
fiction he struggled to know what to do next - his songs get less, the rest of
the band do more and the band sound changes (inexplicably from about 2006). We
said on both 'The Life Pursuit' and 'Write About Love' that for all the really
clever inventive decisions to go into new directions (some successful,, some
not) it was the songs that returned back to those early days and looked afresh
at Murdoch and Campbell's Summer together (either trying to recapture it, or
seen as a distant memory, or spoken to a picture of 'her' in the present day
and wondering what happened to her as per the 2006 'Dressed Up In You' that
works remarkably well over the end credits) that were the most emotionally
involving, the way B and S always used to be. However Murdoch clearly has been
struggling to return to that theme as often as he wants: the band are older,
their fans know the story and there are few angles he can get out of it now that
we've gone from love to rage and betrayal to acceptance over the past few
years. By making himself a 'character' (or three in fact) Murdoch has finally
discovered how to best return to the year that influences him and excites him
the most without having to do it as himself. You don't need to know or like
Belle and Sebastian to enjoy this film. Anyone of any age who ever dreamed of doing
something artistic that either took off or failed miserably will get something
out of this film and like these characters (although no doubt the sniffy
critics who think the band are 'twee' and middle-class will think the same
about them; incidentally where does Eve get all her money in the film? We need
a missing scene where she has to apply for her money to the DWP endlessly, be
sent on random job centre courses despite being desperately ill and end up
trying to decipher their weirdly worded letters in the middle of the night to
work out whether she needs to do anything about them or not. Even James can't
be that generous, especially when they 'fall out' - he's clearly a trust fund
kid to afford a flat that gorgeous and with a conveniently empty room; he only
works a few hour at the local swimming pool and as a council employee won't be
earning that much).
What's more this isn't just a sad and serious film
either: there's a life to this project despite the emotion of the script and
the earnestness of some of the scenes, with Murdoch's comments that forming
Belle and Sebastian 'really was like the comedy scenes in A Hard Day's Nights'
coming over in the film too - in every giggled conversation, debate and
argument. Music is a deadly serious business - but it also involves a lot of
laughing, especially in the early days: just like 'A Hard Day's Night' I can so
see youngsters who see this film unsuspecting leaving the cinema determined to
start their own bands (maybe we'll even cover them at the AAA in the future,
who knows).
The film works partly because of some cracking lines
and tender scenes in Murdoch's script and partly because of the largely
excellent musical score, but mainly because of the excellence of the cast. As
anyone whose read our review of the three attempts to tell this story on album
back in 2009-2010 will know, I was slightly worried. It's not that the original
Eve (Catherine Ireton) is a bad singer: she's got a lovely voice and I'll
gladly buy any future album she does, but she was too tough and not vulnerable
enough for Murdoch's character, moving the band further away from their natural
sound. Emily Browning is pitch-perfect, her wide brown eyes of innocence a nice
contrast to her naturally charisma and flirting style with the other
characters; you can well believe her as both the troubled friendless teen going
through hell but too tough to say so, the struggling innocent so easily pushed
into bad ways by forces beyond her control and the blossoming writer whose
suddenly found a way to connect with the world and will do anything to get back
on stage (oh alright then, it's not exactly a big secret: yes the band do get
to play their gig!) Eve is also Murdoch's single best and most rounded
character since the early days, at one with Photo Jenny, Lisa and Lazy Line
Painter Jane, dancing to the beat of her own drum but with consequences this
time round. Dare I say it, her comedy strops might well be an essence of Murdoch
too, especially her grumpiness over Scottish weather. The camera loves her and
her ever-changing face in the same way that the microphone loves Murdoch's
voice; despite their near-enough 30 years age difference and sex change the two
are believably, recognisably the same and she's a natural at speaking through
his voice. Olly Alexander is the perfect Murdoch-style mix of energetic
just-seen-the-world toddler and grumpy old man as James. Hannah Murray as
Cassie doesn't get much to do but does it all with aplomb. All three are
clearly going to be stars of the future, although they might never be lucky
enough to get dialogue this rich again. Amazingly all three are unknowns,
chosen by Belle and Sebastian after adverts placed in the acting trade
magazines and their own website (from what I've read only Olly had even heard
of the band before the audition or had any desire to go into music). The theatrical
world owe Stuart Murdoch big time for finding three actors who will all surely
be around for a long time to come.
However there's one major flaw with this project:
the beats are all wrong. A lot of the time the film is simply rushing to a
conclusion instead of spending time on the plot. This is annoying simply as a
viewer watching events unfold: one minute the band are together, the next
they're apart and meeting up again without any idea how long time has passed. It's
the same problems a lot of new writers have: how do you keep having character
enter a room and make it interesting? The answer is you don't they just
magically appear, teleportation like, which looks good on the scripts but not
in real life (Eve's many hairstyle changes - seemingly intended to showcase her
desire to change her personality to 'fit in' - means you don't always recognise
her at the start of a scene anyway). Eve's songwriting seems to disappear
somewhere about the middle (a scene of her stressing over writing new material
now that she has people to sing them - something she never ever thought would
happen - would have been an apt and Murdoch-like touch I feel). The trio's
backup band comes out of nowhere (well, actually one brief audition: B and S
didn't get that much interest even when they let people know they might be on a
real live record!) So does Eve's job - when did she have time to become a
waitress (and how ironic is it that someone with an eating disorder serves
other people food? Presumably she's hired because she's pretty and thin -
coincidence or marked comment?) Weirdly none of the trio have a back-story
involving family: Eve and James are forever calling on Cassie at home and she's
always willing to run off with them (even threatening to climb out the window
in one funny scene); it would have made the story even more poignant if Eve had
received a postcard from home asking where she is and if she's alright, or if
James' parents turned up asking when the rent is due and who is his new lodger
who keeps making a mess of his bath, making him blush in the process or if
Cassie had a fiery speech about being old enough to make her own mistakes and
how she trusts her rather antiquated, properly brought up elder friends more
than the idiots her own age (there's a scene where the trio are paddling on a
canal where some passing boys from Cassie's school ask her to go out with one
of them - while meant to show Cassie as innocent, it seems to make her woefully
thick; surely one of them would have asked her out in school, where they could
alternately laugh at her or show off to their friends depending how the
conversation turned out). While both Chris 'Beans' Geddes and Mick Cooke make
lovely audience-pleasing cameos in the film (Beans is the referee in the
football match, with Mick at the back tutting and looking on - sadly most
people are too busy gawping at DJ Josie Long in an excellent cameo as the
captain of the mental asylum's team) and Stevie Jackson gets a random song
playing on a radio during the scene in the clothes-shop (where Eve's nasty
boyfriend gets her to try on lots of clothes that are just so not her), it
would have been lovely to have everyone there. For instance, why aren't Belle
and Sebastian themselves the backing band at the final gig? It's not as if
they've gone out their way to find anyone the right age (and that is indeed
Bobby Kildea on bass anyway). Did we not emphasise this enough earlier? 'The Psychiatrist
Is In' is a truly awful song, at completely the wrong point in the movie (and
turning Eve from victim to predator so quickly its in danger of making her
whole character unravel - yes she is a predator in the sense that she's 'playing'
her boyfriends against each other, but she shouldn't be aware she's doing it -
it should be a side effect of her not understanding how to control her own
beauty).
Above all, though, this film should not have been a
100 minute movie but a 300 minute TV series: that way it would have mattered
less that the project is all about character rather than dialogue, that the
'beats' are 'out' and the symmetry if the film so uneven and lumpy, given the
characters more time to naturally develop and could have sported the greatest
theme tune ever devised if they'd gone for the title track (a clever summation
of the film). Of course Murdoch would have been even less likely to get this
project made then, however (films tend to make more money back than TV, even
Kickstarter projects like this one): in which case it's a sacrifice worth
making. 'God Help The Girl' may be out of synch with the big action
blockbusters that were hits in 2014, every other film ever made and what fans
might have been expecting, but it's perfectly in synch with Murdoch's career
arc and offers old fans like me much more than a modern Belle and Sebastian
album would (although I'm open to being proved wrong when I get round to
getting to know the new one). The end result is far from perfect and badly
needs a stronger second half resolving the first (is James really that settled
in his ways and unable to move up a gear, the crime that Isobel once threw at
Stuart? He was gigging long before she was, in both cases!) but is still an
absolute triumph. How the hell can godawful rivals like 'Mama Mia' get such a
following when this film all but disappeared is beyond me (admittedly it's been
received very well by experts, getting a nomination at the Sundance Film
Festival, but seems to have disappeared and is available in HMV at the time of
writing for the highly reasonable price of £7).
Our review in a nutshell then: don't watch this film
if you want a strong plot, hate musicals and don't like movies with young
people in them (the band's cameo and the nurse aside, nobody in this film is
older than 25; this may deliberate given that Eve has been surrounded by older
carers for most of her recent past: that might be why she chides James so much
for being old before his time)or you expect B and S to play a major part in the
film: two old songs, one new mumbled Stevie Jackson part and a couple of cameos
they don't. But do watch it if you love low budget character-driven films, love
the fact that at last they've made a film about Glasgow (a beautiful city), if
you want to discover new talent (all three actors plus writer/director Murdoch),
if Stuart's writing has always made you cry or if you're currently stuck in
some cell of your own, waiting for your one glorious summer of sunshine. Fan
response has been largely positive but quite often negative (often the fans who
joined the party from 2003 onwards and expected a bigger production). We say:
God help the fan who doesn't like this film - they need all the help they can
get.
A quick word too about the impressive extras on the
DVD: there's a typically shambolic half hour B and S gig from the premiere which
took place at the Corn Exchange in Edinburgh and was beamed to select cinemas
across the UK (including Dudley, much to Murdoch's amusement, although he gets
the fact that it's in Lancashire wrong - its actually in Staffordshire). Typically
the band only do two songs from the film, only one song the casual audience
might know ('I'm A Cuckoo') and open with their most obscure song ever: Stuart
David instrumental B-side 'Winter Wooskie!' The rest of the band don't get much
to do sadly (this would have been a fine moment to show the world how united
they still are) but Murdoch is on good form, admitting to the crowd that it was
him hiding in the car park trying to listen in to what they thought of the
film! There are also four puff pieces about the making of it (which are informative
on details and the 'hows' and 'whens', but not too good on the motivation and
'whys'), a trailer and a fun music video of the title track - which is actually
a better trailer for the film than the trailer!
Other Belle and Sebastian related articles from this website you might be interested in reading:
A Now Complete Link Of Belle and Sebastian Articles Available
To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
'Tigermilk' (1995) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-98-belle-and-sebastian-tigermilk.html
'If You're Feeling Sinister' (1996) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/news-views-and-music-issue-82-belle-and.html
‘The Boy With The Arab Strap’ (1998) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/belle-and-sebastian-boy-with-arab-strap.html
‘Fold Your Hands, Child,
You Walk Like A Peasant’ (2001) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/belle-and-sebastian-fold-your-hands.html
'Storytelling' (2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/belle-and-sebastian-storytelling-2002.html
'Push Barman To Open Old Wounds' (EP compilation 2003) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-100-belle-and-sebastian-push.html
'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' (2004) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/news-views-and-music-issue-139-belle.html
'Push Barman To Open Old Wounds' (EP compilation 2003) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-100-belle-and-sebastian-push.html
'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' (2004) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/news-views-and-music-issue-139-belle.html
'The Life Pursuit' (2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-life-pursuit-2006.html
'Write About Love' (2010) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-86-belle-and.html
'Write About Love' (2010) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-86-belle-and.html
'God Help The Girl' (Stuart Murdoch Film) (2014) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/belle-and-sebastianstuart-murdoch-god.html
Girls In Peace Time Just Want To Dance (2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/belle-and-sebastian-girls-in-peacetime.html
Belle and Sebastian: Existing TV Clips http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-existing-tv-clips.html
Belle and Sebastian: Existing TV Clips http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-existing-tv-clips.html
Belle and Sebastian: 12 Unreleased Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-12-unreleased-songs.html
Belle and Sebastian: Non-Album Songs http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/belle-and-sebastian-non-album_29.html
Belle and Sebastian: Solo/Live/Compilation/Rarities
Albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/belle-and-sebastian-assorted.html
Essay: B and S Talkin’
‘Bout My Generation https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/belle-and-sebastian-essay-talking-bout.html
Five Landmark Concerts and
Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/belle-and-sebastian-five-landmark.html
