EIGHT' GETS A 10.
Issue: Jan 25, 1999
Stephen Daldry, auteur?
That's an initial response to the unveiling of the first celluloid project
of the Tony-winning director of "An Inspector Calls": a 10-minute short
called "Eight" that
is far more resonant and affecting than most full-length films.
Those who recall the opening of "Inspector" -- a young boy pushing the curtain upwards -- will have noted Daldry's interest in children, which, with "Eight," reaps major rewards in the study of a fatherless 8-year-old Liverpool lad who is obsessed with football.
The credit, of course, must be shared among writer Tim Clague, 22, whose script was the inaugural winner of the new Jerwood Film Prize (the judging panel included Emma Thompson, the Coen brothers and Anthony Minghella); 8-year-old actor Jack Langan-Evans, whose open-faced exuberance nonetheless allows, wrenchingly, for grief; and even Rodgers and Hammerstein, though one could argue that the use of "You'll Never Walk Alone" (from "Carousel") signals "Eight's" only slide into mawkishness.
Nonetheless, the film is a real film, something of which not every British theater director is capable. On this evidence, Daldry would seem to be headed in the heightened direction of Terence Davies ("Distant Voices, Still Lives"), though the true test will come with his two features in varying states of preparedness for Working Title.
COPYRIGHT 1999 Cahners Publishing Company
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group
