Glasgow Film Festival: Patriots Day

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Published by Glasgowist.

Patriots Day, directed and co-written by Peter Berg, is electrifying, violent, unnerving, and thoughtful – emerging as an unprecedented highlight of the Glasgow Film Festival.

The film documents the Boston Marathon bombings and the city-wide manhunt that ensued when two bombs were detonated 12 seconds apart on April 15, 2013. Considering how recent this tragedy was – in which three people were killed and several more receiving lifechanging injuries – the wounds are, understandably, still raw. But Patriots Day honours Boston with a faithful, respectful, and commendable tribute to their bravery and solidarity.

Interspersing the film throughout with real footage from CCTV cameras, helicopters, and drones, Berg gives the film an utterly chilling, unnerving, and authentic edge. Particularly, the sequence of a minute’s silence for the Newtown massacre victims before the marathon’s opening gunfire creates a nail-biting, suspenseful calm before the storm which is beautifully executed.

In the film’s introduction, we meet the no-nonsense, lovable rouge cop Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) whose talents are seemingly wasted when he is sent to marshal the race following a suspension for allegedly assaulting a fellow officer.

Boston-born Wahlberg is a true revelation as he portrays a tough guy with heart, humour, and grit who saves lives and takes charge, despite his own fear, in a situation of true chaos. As the film’s lead protagonist, Tommy takes on a leader’s role, confronting the FBI (headed up by a superb Kevin Bacon as Special Agent Richard DesLauriers) on their flawed practice, and insisting on the merit of his own profound understanding of Boston’s people and his knowledge of the city’s geography.

In the leadup to the explosions, we are offered glimpses into the lives of ordinary people – a married couple, Patrick Downes and Jessica Kensky, and a father and his young son – who we realise will soon be affected by the tragedy that is mere minutes away. A succession of moments of increasing volume, excitement, and movement that quickly disperse into quiet allow for palpable tension to build and build to an almost unbearable level until the moment of the explosions comes.

Following the thrilling panic of the attacks, Berg provides a thorough, detailed re-enactment of the complex manhunt that followed with a close look at the FBI’s recreation of the event, their efforts to fine comb through CCTV as well as footage and images from the public, and how they utilised anti-terror technology to track down those responsible.

In a gripping, climatic, and, literally, explosive showdown between police, and terrorists Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff), the brothers plan their mission to travel to New York to detonate more bombs, kill more civilians, and become martyrs. Melikidze is outstanding and chilling in his portrayal of a determined, callous, ice-cold killer. Wolff, too, is excellent as a brainwashed layabout watching bomb-making tutorials like they are videogames – a character so detached from reality that he texts his friends ‘LOL’ when they question why his image is all over the news.

With excellent direction and casting, Patriots Day doesn’t glorify American heroes, glamorise war, or demonise villains. It paints the real heroes as the people of Boston themselves who came together to help friends, family, neighbours, and strangers in their time of need.

The film illustrates the resilience of the human spirit and the kneejerk reaction of overwhelmingly love, not hate. It is an appropriate homage to Boston Strong and a reminder of how an entire city that was shook, terrified, and completely shut down, came together to support each other instead of rushing to hate.

In a genius conclusion, real-life survivors of the attack, including Patrick Downes and Jessica Kensky, and members of the police service and the FBI give their thoughts on that day and the impact it has had. A particularly moving moment is when Kensky describes the tragedy as the worst and best time of their lives as we see her and her husband embrace in tears as they finish the marathon on prosthetic legs for the first time since the bombings.

Patriots Day is about just that, patriotism. It’s about American spirit, resilience, and solidarity. It’s about pride, community, and strength in the face of adversity. But the overriding message of the film is that these barbaric acts of brutality, violence, and terrorism that happen in cities around the world do not succeed in causing the immense hateful reaction they are intended to incite. Instead, they bring civilians together and evoke an unrivalled, awe-inspiring level of humanity, kindness, and love.

★★★★★

What did you think of this review? Let me know in the comment section below.

Happy Halloween: A Spooky Poem and Short Story for Hallows’ Eve

Since today is Halloween, I thought it was only appropriate for a little Halloweeny blog post. Below, you’ll find a creepy, gothic poem by Edgar Allan Poe, and a ghoulish short story by me called ‘Myrtle’. Have a read and let me know what you think of this spooky Halloween reading in the comments section below.

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Spirits of the Dead by Edgar Allan Poe

Thy soul shall find itself alone
‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone —
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy:
Be silent in that solitude
Which is not loneliness — for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee — and their will
Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

For the night — tho’ clear — shall frown —
And the stars shall look not down,
From their high thrones in the Heaven,
With light like Hope to mortals given —
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever :

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish —
Now are visions ne’er to vanish —
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more — like dew-drop from the grass:

The breeze — the breath of God — is still —
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy — shadowy — yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token —
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries! —

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Myrtle

Hattie clambered up into bed and rolled herself up inside the cold pink Barbie quilt, imagining she was a snug little worm, wriggling around with a human head. Footprints crept along the strip of light at the bottom of the door and the seal cracked open. As the door opened, light from the rest of the house flooded in and clung to the fairy dust dancing around in Hattie’s bedroom.

“You almost forgot Myrtle,” Hattie’s mum said as she stepped into the room.

Hattie’s face beamed in the new blinding light as she giggled and outstretched her fingers for the dolly in her mother’s hand.

Myrtle was Hattie’s favourite birthday present of the day. Myrtle was a smaller-than-usual China doll with a porcelain snowy face, rosy flushed cheeks and luminous blue eyes. She wore a floral patterned dress with lacy hems and a matching bonnet that concealed some of her wiry tightly curled blonde locks. The label attached to the doll’s flimsy ashen neck read: Myrtle Adams born in 1839 to John and June in Cambridge, England. When Hattie held Myrtle she could sense the lightness and hollows in her arms and legs and wondered why she wasn’t whole.

Myrtle’s scent was a musky smell with several intricate layers. At first, the scent was purely an overwhelming odour of thick festering dust, but the doll’s hair had the pungent scent of dampness; a stench so strong that Hattie imagined little green germs scuttling around under her fingernails and had a strong urge to scrub her hands with bubbly soap after running her fingers through the yellow strands. But when Hattie held her warm living cheek to Myrtle’s cold hard face, she could almost taste the sugary fragrance of fresh baby powder. Myrtle was Hattie’s fifteenth China doll in the collection that her grandmother had originally started.

Hattie cuddled Myrtle to her chest, said goodnight and placed her with the rest of the dollies on the large Victorian fabric armchair across from her bed and beside her blackboard and colouring books. Hattie’s mum turned on the blue starry nightlight before kissing Hattie on the forehead and leaving the room. Hattie loved her nightlight. The spinning blue cylinder filled the room with faint swirling liquid light that made Hattie feel like she was underwater. She lay in bed flailing her arms and legs around, doing the breaststroke on top of her mattress until her limbs were tired from all the swimming. She finally decided to stop fighting sleep and closed her eyes.

Through her thin eyelids, Hattie could still see the glow of blue water swaying in the room. Just as Hattie was about to doze off into dreamland, a small electrical pop sparked from the nightlight and snapped Hattie awake. Her eyes flew open and she realised the bulb had blown. All the water drained from the room and she was now in complete darkness.

“Uh oh,” Hattie whined. She was frozen and too afraid to call for her mum.

Hattie jumped up from under the covers, reached up, threw the curtains of her bedroom window open wide, collapsed back onto the bed with a thud and threw the duvet back up over her head. She stayed hidden under the quilt until her stunted breathing settled again. After building up the courage, she finally edged the covers away from her eyes and had a peek. The room was still dim and filled with shadows that Hattie could have sworn were forming shapes and moving around, but the moonlight now illuminated her dolls which made her feel safer. Her fifteen little dolls with bleached, painfully white faces were all huddled together and stared at her with perfectly still turquoise eyes.

Hattie held Myrtle’s gaze until her pulse steadied to a normal rhythm and then to a silent beat. Just as Hattie felt relaxed, Myrtle’s dead eyelashes twitched and her eye winked. Hattie’s pupils widened, she blinked hard and looked back at Myrtle. The China doll’s glass eye winked again. As Hattie edged up in her bed, the lifeless eyes of all fifteen porcelain dollies blinked together in perfect haunting unison. Hattie whimpered and shook her head repeatedly, biting her lip to hold back tears. The dolls’ cold eyes shuddered closed and jerked open again in a restless, agitated motion and their arms began to spasm.

The dolls’ makeshift joints creaked as their arms robotically elevated and stretched towards Hattie. They edged forward in the armchair and as the dolls towards the back of the chair pushed, the line of figurines at the front fell off and landed on the floor.

Hattie finally found her voice and let out a shrill baby’s cry, as loud as she could. When no-one responded, she called for her mum but nobody heard her screams.

“Get away! Get away!” Hattie shouted at the dolls in an attempt to be brave but they didn’t stop.

All the dolls had now jumped from the chair to the carpet and were slowly skulking across the floor to Hattie’s bed. Hattie tucked her duvet underneath her feet and pulled the blankets tightly over and under her body so that she was wrapped up in a skin-tight cocoon. She imagined her quilt was bewitched with a protective magic that would stop the dolls from getting to her. She closed her eyes, hoping the dolls would disappear, and repeated “please make them go away” over and over.

Hattie held her eyes shut so tightly that she started to see a kaleidoscope of fuzzy pixilated colours in her eyelids, until a piercing sound forced her eyes to fly open. It was the jarring, sharp and agonising sound of a piece of chalk being slowly dragged down a blackboard. A sound that pierced into Hattie’s ear, pushed through her brain and back out of the other ear like a long thin needle. Myrtle was dangling from the corner of the blackboard.

Myrtle was holding a piece of milky chalk that matched her complexion with an unsteady, shaking hand. In childlike, rickety handwriting, next to the long line she had just made, Myrtle etched onto the board: DON’T BE AFRAID. WE ONLY WANT TO PLAY WITH YOU, HATTIE.

Like the head of an owl, Myrtle’s face slowly turned on its axis away from the board and towards Hattie. In the corner of Myrtle’s face, her porcelain shell was beginning to crack and crumble. Her floral lacy dress was torn, her blonde locks were now straight and standing on end as if electricity had jolted them alive, her glazed blue eyes were flickering around the room in panic but her features remained frozen in ax dainty China doll pout. Hattie glanced down to the bottom of her bed in horror to see the other fourteen China dolls descending on her.

Their necks broke with sickening cracks as their heads snapped back and they stared at Hattie. From the gapes in their broken necks floated the silver translucent faces of several little girls. The ghostly faces contorted in agony and they screamed without sound. The dolls were now crawling up the bed posts on their hands and knees, creeping onto the fringe of the mattress and slowly, they edged towards Hattie’s tiny recoiled toes.

Featured image via Flickr. Edited by Sophie McNaughton.