Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 6/4/2017)

So little is known about the reclusive American poet Emily Dickinson that, prior to her death in 1886 at the age of 55, she was known as `The Myth' within her small, enclosed community in Amherst, Massachusetts. This gives Terence Davies the latitude, therefore, to mine her writings in order to construct his own version of her life story, which retains a kernel of `narrative truth' while being little more than a series of intelligent speculations. There's nothing wrong with such a gambit. Indeed, the Hollywood studios once specialised in concocting melodramatic fantasias around the deeds of the great, the good and the maligned. But the problem with A Quiet Passion is that Davies is nowhere near as sophisticated a writer as Dickinson. Consequently, his aphoristic dialogue owes more to an erudite Sunday serial than period speech and this places undue strain on a cast striving to hit a human note commensurate with the immersing mood generated by the impeccable production design.

The action opens in 1844, as Mary Lyon (Sara Vertongen), the founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, divides her students between those who wish to come to God and those who hope to do so. Unable to commit either way, Emily Dickinson (Emma Bell) is left standing in the middle of the room and it comes as some relief when her lawyer father Edward (Keith Carradine) arrives with her siblings, Lavinia (Rose Williams) and Austin (Benjamin Wainright) to take her back to the family home at Amherst. En route, however, they visit Aunt Elizabeth (Annette Badland) in Boston and Emily teases her father about his conviction that soprano Jenny Lind (Marieke Bresseleers) should not make an exhibition of herself upon the stage.

Emily believes that the `Swedish Nightingale' has an inalienable right to share her talent with the world and requests Edward's permission to write poetry between three and six in the morning. She also asks him to use his influence with Samuel Bowles (Trevor Cooper), the editor of the Springfield Daily Republican, and he agrees to publish `Sic Transit Gloria Mundi', even though he disapproves of female authors and considers the remainder of Dickinson's submissions to be overly conventional and mediocre.

He had clearly not read the interminable verses penned by Aunt Elizabeth and Emily does little to hide her disdain when she comes to visit. Reprimanding Edward and his wife Emily (Joanna Bacon) for raising `sophisticated' children, Elizabeth accuses her brother of being an abolitionist and her niece of being a Massachusetts Robespierre during a feisty exchange that ends with Elizabeth sipping on currant wine (for medicinal purposes). Peace reigns once more, however, as the evening draws on. Emily ponders the beginning of `The Heart Asks Pleasure First' as the camera pans around the room to show the family reading, embroidering or gazing into the fire. Mrs Dickinson asks Emily to play an old hymn on the piano and the strains of `Abide With Me' remind her of a young man who sang so beautifully at her church before dying at 19.

Urged by her departing aunt not to fear death, Emily recites to herself part of `Astra Castra' from `Time and Eternity', as the carriage trundles along the woodland road and a series of neat dissolves shift the scene into the 1860s, as Edward, Austin (Duncan Duff), Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle) and Emily (Cynthia Nixon) pose for photographic portraits. Their stiff formalism is ruffled, however, by the introduction of Vinnie's wittily talkative teacher friend, Vryling Buffum (Catherine Bailey), who jokes that her name sounds like an anagram before sympathising with Emily for having had to endure such ghastly alma mater and declaring that she has no fear of death, even though Heaven and Hell sound equally boring.

They walk with parasols, but Vryling has no intention of accompanying the sisters to church to meet the new pastor (Miles Richardson). But Emily gets off to a bad start with him when she refuses to kneel for prayer and defends her right to do as she wishes with her soul. Edward chastises her for such impiety, but she refuses to buckle and smashes a plate on the edge of the table when he complains that it's dirty.

While Emily demonstrates herself to be a free-thinking proto-feminist, Vryling continues to toss off witticisms during a conversation with Austin, in which she opines that men should occupy their time with tobogganing and philately. Edward keeps trying to persuade his daughter to go to church, but she insists that God knows her well enough not to need her presence in a pew to remind Him of her existence. She muses on `I Reckon - When I Count At All' and sews at her desk. But she allows herself to feel excited when Vinnie shows her a picture of their future sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert (Jodhi May).

Emily also agrees to be spontaneously superficial with Vryling and Vinnie at a commencement ball. They gossip about the guests before Emily and Vinnie flutter their fans while Vryling dances a polka with a dashing young soldier (Barney Glover). On returning to the sofa, however, Vryling declares that he danced like a polar bear and she brands him a prig for denouncing Wuthering Heights without having read it. Quipping her way into the garden, Vryling announces that the best way to avoid offending God would be to quit yodelling before departing for a tryst. Emily confides that she would miss Vryling's honesty if she ever moved on and goes indoors to check on her mother, who is reminded of her youth by someone playing `I Dream of Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair' on the piano. Despite being sickly, however, she manages to come downstairs to meet Susan and Emily (who has introduced herself as `Napoleon') reassures her that she would leave a chasm if she ever departed.

Following a garden conversation with Vryling about marriage and leaving the family hearth, Emily experiences a shooting pain in her side and reprimands the servants for dropping the bread she had baked for an agricultural show. Edward admonishes her for treating Thomas (Turlough Convery), Margaret (Verona Verbakel) and Maggie (Yasmin Dewilde) with insufficient respect and she offers them the money she won in the bread competition by way of apology. However, she is scarcely able to hide her disappointment when she learns that she only took second prize.

Now an aunt, Emily cradles young Ned (Daan and Eve Cools) and recites `I Am Nobody, Who Are You?' to the delight of the assembly. But Edward spoils the mood by revealing that Fort Sumter has been fired upon and that Civil War will almost inevitably follow the South's secession from the Union. Austin asks permission to enlist, but his father refuses to consent and an argument about filial duty and gentlemanly honour ends with everyone leaving Edward alone and Emily declaiming `To Fight Aloud Is Very Brave' in voiceover.

An awkward montage of colour-tinted combat photographs and combined casualty figures follows - Gettysburg (51,112), Spotsylvania (31,086) and Antietam (23,134) - before Austin dismisses Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as `not memorable' and Emily takes him to task for disagreeing that the conflict had been as much about gender as slavery. She also criticises him for implying that women should only be decorous when explaining to Vinnie that he will be away in court for two months. He begs her not to fight on his last night at home and she acknowledges that she will be unhappy while he is away. But she feels closer to Susan, who finds her writing in the middle of the night and confesses to finding the physical aspects of married life to be a duty rather than a pleasure. Emily envies her having a life while she merely has a routine and accuses herself of living a lie in deceiving people into believing that she is content with her lot. Moreover, when Susan commends the rigorousness of her soul, Emily laments that it is no substitute for happiness.

When Vinnie enthuses about the sermons of the Reverend Charles Wadsworth (Eric Loren), Emily suggests inviting him to tea. Vinnie points out that he is married and Emily opines that it's equally upsetting to lose a friend to marriage or death. Upbraiding her for being so dismissive, Vinnie assures her sister that she will meet the man who wins her heart. But Emily insists she is `a kangaroo among the beauties' and will only find love if her suitor is interested in zoology and spirituality.

Initially, Wadsworth proves a disappointment when he appears as abstemious as his excessively demure wife, Jane (Simone Milsdochter), who considers tea to be as sinful as alcohol. She also disapproves of the `Yorkshire gloom' of the Brontës and is piqued by Emily's curt dismissal of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's `The Song of Hiawatha'. But she allows her husband to take a turn of the garden with Emily, who slips a small book of verses into his hand in gratitude for the inspirational beauty of his latest sermon. He sits to read and cannot understand why so few of her poems have been published. She claims it's easy to be stoical in the face of utter rejection and fears that posterity will be as comfortless as God, as a posthumous reputation suggests that someone was unworthy of attention during their lifetime.

She does crave some recognition, however, and responds to Wadsworth's encouragement with `If You Were Coming in the Fall'. But her happiness is curtailed by Vryling's announcement that she is to marry. As they wander in the garden, she urges Emily to remain a rebel, but have the wisdom to embrace the noble American virtue of hypocrisy by keeping her thoughts to herself (as no one likes a radical). Emily protests that she will always kick against the system, even if it distances her from God. But Vryling avers that Emily is closer to His grace than anyone else she knows and implores her to succumb to her vices while staying true to herself (even if it means becoming the thing she most dreads).

No sooner has Vryling departed than Wadsworth leaves for San Francisco and Emily argues with Vinnie about her peculiar attachment to a married man. Having consoled her mother over her regret for having done so little with her short time, Emily has become conscious of her isolation and she curses herself in the mirror for having underachieved. Vinnie tells her not to melodramatise and Emily (exhibiting little of her supposedly sweet nature) snaps back by accusing her sister of being smug. But they cling to each other during `We Outgrow Love Like Other Things' before `The Dying Need But Little, Dear' follows Vryling and her groom out of the church, as Emily refuses to wave them off.

Emily also proves unable to stand beside her father's coffin, as she gives way to sobbing while the rest of her family grieve less demonstrably. Moreover, on the rainy day of the funeral, she remains indoors and comforts herself with `Of So Divine a Loss' as she watches the cortège depart from beneath her window. But, after three days of incarceration, she leaves her room and opts to express her mourning by wearing white. She also takes Bowles to task when he visits for having the temerity to interfere with her punctuation. But he admires her spirit as they banter on the staircase and laughs when she mocks the idea of finding a husband with the spirit of George Washington when she wants someone as spectacular as Disraeli and as upright as Gladstone.

The stairs are also the scene of a conversation with Henry Emmons (Stefan Menaul), a young admirer of Emily's writing. But she refuses to come out of her room and turns down his invitation to go for a drive before her door closes over a recitation about a groom finding his bride that sounds like it has been taken from Dickinson's writing, but seems to be mere pastiche. However, it opens again (to the accompaniment of the Thomas Ford madrigal `Since I First Saw Your Face') to show Emily sitting bolt upright in the lamplight and staring unflinchingly into the lens. Her eyes close, however, and she imagines Emmons returning to march up the stairs in silent shadow. But her reverie is brief and the camera retreats and the door closes on her fading hopes of romance.

Dismissing Emmons a second time earns Emily a reprimand from Vinnie. But she remains unrepentant and consoles herself with the knowledge that God will be merciful to her and that she will be free if He doesn't exist. However, while her mind remains alert, her body begins to fail her and she starts suffering from epileptic fits. The lines of `We Never Know We Go - When We Are Going' run through her head as she recovers her composure on the bed. The doctor (Richard Wells) diagnosis Bright's Disease and regrets there is no known cure. She defiantly states `This World Is Not Conclusion' as Vinnie shows him out, but finds distraction in nursing her mother after she suffers a stroke. But she also takes exception to Austin consorting with Mabel Todd (Noemie Schellens), a married woman whom Emily overhears singing Schubert in the drawing-room and witnesses kissing her brother in the room abutting her own.

Vinnie tries to mediate between Emily and Austin, as they trade wounding insults. He storms out and Emily wonders how Vinnie can still love her when she had become so bitter. They laugh when Vinnie admits she wishes Mabel would go up in an exploding balloon. But Austin uses his next visit to read aloud an article by Bowles claiming that women writers are invariably lonely souls with nothing worthwhile to say. Susan chastises her husband for his cruelty (in a manner that implies she knows about his affair), but he refuses to pander to Emily's wounded sensitivity and Vinnie also cautions her against allowing her integrity to justify intolerance. She reminds Emily that, in setting such high standards, she needs to remember the human weaknesses to which even she is susceptible and the sisters embrace with a mixture of resignation and anxiety.

Fitting again to `Our Journey Had Advanced', Emily takes to her bed. The family keeps vigil until she dies and Vinnie lays flowers in her coffin to `My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close'. Over `Because I Could Not Stop for Death', a top shot looks down on the hearse and cemetery procession before a portrait morphs from Cynthia Nixon to Emma Bell and Emily Dickinson herself to `This Is My Letter to the World', as the credits roll to the sound of Charles Ives's `The Unanswered Question'.

Of the many questions arising from this sincere, if sometimes stilted speculation on the journey of a soul, the most pressing surely relates to why Davies felt the need to sneak Eric Idle and John Du Prez's Spamalot song, `I'm All Alone', on to the soundtrack. Perhaps it was to distract viewers from awful lines like Vryling's wisecrack, `To be shocked by a book you haven't read is like going to Sodom and Gomorrah and being offended that neither is from Philadelphia.' There are several similar moments, when it feels as though Davies is trying to rewrite Gone With the Wind in the style of Jane Austen. But, even though he is clearly not attempting to fashion a social comedy of manners, the more epigrammatical passages consistently compare unfavourably with Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship.

Despite plumping for the brand of thudding floorboard realism that William Oldroyd has also employed on his forthcoming British period picture, Lady Macbeth, Davies has created a series of stylised tableaux rather than a conventional linear biography. The American setting prompts comparisons with Davies's 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth. But this is closer in spirit to Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), with Dickinson's poetry replacing the popular songs that were crooned by the members of a Liverpudlian family tyrannised by its patriarch.

At any point in that poignant saga, a put-upon character could have echoed Emily's despairing inquiry, `Why has the world become so ugly?' And, indeed, it's this line that makes this deeply personal meditation so relevant for modern audiences. But the bold intensity of Dickinson's verse also does much to engage and it frequently has to compensate for some ripely ornate dialogue. Yet, while Davies often over-writes, he keeps his visual style simple. Working predominantly on Merijn Sep sets that allowed him to retain complete control over the look and feel of the film (although the exteriors were filmed in Amherst), Davies keeps Florian Hoffmeister's camera relatively still. However, its movements are as restrained as the lighting and Catherine Marchand's costume designs, even though the calibre of the acting is rather more mixed (especially where some of the minor male characters are concerned).

Every now and then, a hint of Miranda Hobbes slips into Cynthia Nixon's performance. Yet she masters a difficult part and holds the picture together in conjunction with the ever-excellent Jennifer Ehle. Catherine Bailey also impresses as the waspish bluestocking who lets the side down by becoming a wife. But the focus always returns to Davies himself, as his style is so distinctive that it dominates every frame, as it did in The Deep Blue Sea (2011) and Sunset Song (2016). His interpretation of Dickinson's personality and philosophy will spark much debate. However, he does her barbed sense of humour a distinct disservice with the hand-chiselled witticisms that strike as false a note as the captioned Civil War son et lumière show.

Pablo Larrain plays faster and looser with the conventions of the biographical sub-genre in Neruda. Whereas Davies relies on conjecture, Larrain invents an entirely fictitious character and places him at the heart of his `anti-biopic' of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet whose vocal opposition to President Gabriel González Videla forced him into hiding and then exile. As in his Pinochet trilogy of Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and No (2012), Larrain examines political corruption, injustice and the scars of memory with a challenging blend of offbeat wit and lacerating acuity. But, while he explored the ease with which groups can be swayed to accept the normalisation of tyranny and violence in The Club (2015), this noirish treatise on the making of `the People's Poet' has much in common with Larrain's sole excursion outside his homeland, when he analysed the making of a myth in Jackie (2016).

Waving to the gallery as flashbulbs pop, Pablo Neruda (Luis Gnecco) enjoys his status and celebrity as the worlds most famous Communist. He struts into an antechamber at the Senate and engages in bullish banter with the right-wing supporters of Gabriel González Videla (Alfredo Castro) and ignores the snipes that he is out for himself rather than the working people he claims to champion. Narrating proceedings, Oscar Peluchonneau (Gael García Bernal) concurs that many believe this railwayman's son with an aristocratic Argentinian artist wife, Delia del Carril (Mercedes Morán), is as much a hypocrite as the Bolsheviks fawning over him at a fancy dress party, as he recites `Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines' while dressed as Lawrence of Arabia (or is it Latin lover supreme, Rudolph Valentino?).

Peluchonneau mocks Neruda for trading on his past glories and derides Communists as work-shy charlatans who would rather burn churches than bring about meaningful reform. But, with his `J'accuse' speech of 6 January 1948, Neruda places himself at the forefront of the opposition to Videla and he is warned by Senate president Arturo Alessandri (Jaime Vadell) that his next book will contain prison poems unless he ceases to slander the regime. Neruda regrets writing a verse in support of Videla during the election campaign and curses being fooled by the glib words of a populist. However, he also refuses to bow to intimidation and promises Alessandri that the only way the Party will be eradicated is if the government executes every single member.

Alessandri insists there will be no need for such extremism. Days later, however, Neruda is threatened with impeachment and decides to go into hiding rather than hand himself in to create a public outcry. He strolls in the Santiago sunshine after posing for a propaganda photograph with Del Carril, while his comrades in the impoverished neighbourhoods where he rarely ventures are being rounded up by soldiers and bundled into trucks destined for the Pisagua detention centre. But Neruda is also under surveillance by Peluchonneau (a cop who is described as `half moron, half-idiot' and is purely a figment of Neruda's imagination), who declares that he is a trained monkey acting on behalf of Videla's boss (ie Harry S. Truman, the President of the United States) in seeking out and destroying the Red Menace. He promises Videla that he will humiliate Neruda and break the spell he has over the common folk, who believe everything his honeyed voice tells them.

Stopped at the border with Argentina for having two names (Neruda is the `nom de guerre of Ricardo Reyes Basoalto), Neruda and Del Carril are smuggled into a safe house by Víctor Pey (Pablo Derqui). Yet, while he is glad to have reached sanctuary, Neruda wishes he could be closer to both the people and his adversaries, so that neither can forget him. He also misses the chase and leaves a pulp thriller entitled The Woman at the Zoo for Peluchonneau to find when he searches his home and it amuses him that (despite being the son of a famous detective) the prefect is too plodding to appreciate the clues he is scattering.

Meanwhile, Neruda has started to get cabin fever and Del Carril and Pey have to calm him down when he rants in the garden late at night about Peluchonneau raiding the homes of his friends and associates. He demands to know whether Pey is sufficiently loyal, as no one has searched his house. But Pey insists that nobody knows he lives here and Del Carril reminds her husband that people are taking enormous risks to help him and that he needs to be grateful and circumspect.

As posters go up around the city proclaiming Neruda to be a traitor, Álvaro Jara (Michael Silva) becomes his new minder so that Pey can deal with the manuscript for El Canto General and the delivery of a letter to Pablo Picasso (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba). While Pey posts the 30 envelopes containing the poems, Peluchonneau is refused an audience with Videla and Del Carril is denied sex Neruda, who poses as a priest to stride the streets and seek solace in a brothel. But Videla knows another woman who can besmirch Neruda's reputation and Peluchonneau is sent to meet Maryka Hagenaar off the train and coach her in how to win over the press with her story of how the poet abandoned her and her ailing daughter to commit bigamy.

Yet, as Captain Augusto Pinochet oversees the arrival of new inmates at Pisagua and Picasso reads his letter to a gathering of sympathisers, Maryka infuriates Peluchonneau by going on the radio to declare that, even though he owes her money, Neruda is a decent man. Indeed, he reaffirms his popularity when he slips out to a bordello near his hiding place and joins in with the reviled transvestite singer on a sentimental ballad that makes everyone toast him for the sacrifices he is making on their behalf. Consequently, they hide him when Peluchonneau (whose mother was a prostitute) raids the joint and detains the singer for questioning. However, he refuses to betray Neruda, as he had insisted that they were artist equals and he sneers that Videla will never win the affection of the masses because he has no respect for their worth.

Angry with Jara for lecturing him on his nocturnal ramblings, Neruda channels his emotions into `The Enemies' (with its repeated refrain of `I demand punishment') and this rallying cry is read aloud at gatherings of workers across the country. Among those to be inspired is a lifelong Communist named Silvia, who approaches Neruda for an autograph and a kiss while he is dining with Del Carril. Silvia is affronted when Del Carril asks her to be discreet and she accuses Neruda of being pampered and protected by a state that makes a great show of hunting him down while making no effort to capture him in order to avoid an international incident. He tries to reassure her that they will be equal come the revolution, but Silvia has her doubts that they will ever be on the same rung of the social ladder.

Del Carril realises that Silvia's words have stung and she urges Neruda to speak with the voice of a poet as he reads her `Let the Woodcutter Awaken'. But they are interrupted by Pey, who has made arrangements for Neruda to go alone to Valparaiso to leave Chile on a fishing boat. Refusing to cry, Del Carril bids him bon voyage, as Peluchonneau recites Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu while stalking Pey, as he posts the envelopes containing Neruda's latest poems so that no one person can be caught with the entire manuscript. Under interrogation, Pey tries to throw the cop off the track by insisting that Neruda is still in the capital. But Peluchonneau smugly congratulates himself for getting the better of the exiled Spaniard and sets off at once for Valparaiso.

Embarrassed by his tummy as he is measured for a white suit to wear on the voyage, Neruda struggles with the composition of `The Man From Pisagua' and goes for a walk. A young girl in rags approaches him for money, but the best he can do is embrace her and give him his new jacket. When Peluchonneau stops the child, he finds another crime novel in the pocket and wonders why Neruda is taunting him with such trivialities when their duel is so serious. His arrival prevents Neruda from boarding the boat and he returns to Santiago to celebrate being reunited with Del Carril by honking his horn outside Videla's official residence in the middle of the night.

However, Neruda is brought down to earth when Jara refuses to accompany him on an escape bid though the south, as he believes he is seeking to become a hero for his own sake rather than for the common good. He regrets that Neruda shows so little humility and urges him to use his power for the people and not to cement his reputation for posterity. Del Carril also worries about his over-inflated ego and they bicker over who is the more important artist. But, when the time comes for him to leave as bearded ornithologist Antonio Ruiz Lagorreta, they embrace warmly and he hopes that they avoid drifting apart in his absence.

Moments after Neruda departs for Aracaunia, Peluchonneau finds his hideout and shows Del Carril the arrest warrant. She smiles and reveals that he is merely a fiction that Neruda dreamt up to keep himself amused during the long hours of boredom. He bridles at the idea and swears that he will track Neruda down. But she shakes her head at his swaggering inability to realise that he is not the main protagonist of the story, even though he travels the length of the country on a motorbike to try and prevent Neruda from taking a boat across a small stretch of water to freedom. Despite running out of fuel, Peluchonneau refuses to give up and hopes to persuade the local landlord to help him find Neruda, who is hiding out with one of the peasants on his estate. But the landlord has no time for the state and, as he provides Neruda with an escort to guide him through the Andes, Peluchonneau curses that `the millionaire is always smarter than the law of the nation'.

As they trek through the snow on horseback, Neruda cannot resist howling in the wilderness. But Peluchonneau hears the cry and informs his trackers that he intends ambushing the poet. However, they are loyal to the landlord and they knock the cop out with a rifle butt and abandon him to his fate. Refusing to quit, Peluchonneau staggers on in the conviction that Neruda regards him as a worthy adversary. Yet, while he imagines Neruda seeking him out through the trees, Peluchonneau collapses and blood seeps on to the snow as he dies.

Neruda kneels to pay his respects and, as we see the landlord bury Peluchonneau in an unmarked grave in the woods, Neruda joins Picasso in Paris, where he holds court in bistros and cavorts with naked women. But he continues to think about the man who pursued him and Peluchonneau feels alive when the poet speaks his name, as he will now be remembered along with the political poems that consoled the imprisoned and inspired the oppressed and ensured that the name of Pablo Neruda will forever be synonymous with Chile, struggle and emancipation.

Deftly showing how the everyday existence of a balding little fat man matters less in the grand scheme than the verses that inspired a nation to resist, Larrain and screenwriter Guillermo Calderón revel in taking a Nerudian liberty with the invention of Oscar Peluchonneau to reflect Pablo Neruda's life, times and legacy. The physical contrast between Gael García Bernal and Luis Gnecco is mischievously droll, but their characters are very much cut from the same cloth, even though one is a champagne Stalinist and the other is a dogged jobsworth whose ego is every bit as monstrous as his creator's. In many ways, Peluchonneau exists to justify Neruda's need to flee and continue to rabble-rouse from a safe distance. But, as is hinted several times during the story, Neruda leads a charmed existence and it's less a fear of Videla's reprisals that prompts him to seek a way out than a reluctance to be confined by the status and responsbility that threaten to cramp his hedonist lifestyle. Consequently, Neruda never appears to be as heroic as his writing and those with long cinematic memories may find Gnecco's buffoonishly self-serving interpretation to be markedly less sympathetic than Philippe Noirest's in Michael Radford's delightful Il Postino (1994). But one only has to compare the effect Neruda's work has on his wife and the busted drag queen to realise his importance to those on the margins. Indeed, Larrain frequently cuts away from the privilege and bohemian comfort enjoyed by Neruda and Del Carril to show the grim realities facing those in the slum neighbourhoods and desert gulags that the upper echelon Communists support with words from a distance rather than deeds on the ground.

Echoing Paolo Sorrentino's approach in his satirical survey of the career of Giulio Andreotti in Il Divo (2008) and Alejandro Jodorowsky's evocation of wartime Chile in Endless Beauty (2016), such touches are typical of Larrain, who is currently one of the finest directors in world cinema. Such is his confidence that he even allows himself a little Wellesian bluster in the opening senatorial confrontation and some pastiched Hitchcockian back projection during the chase scenes. But, while he might overdo the voiceover and string out the denouement, he coaxes superb performances out of the excellent García Bernal and Gnecco at the head of an estimable ensemble, while Sergio Armstrong's dextrous photography is matched by Estefania Larrain's production design and the snatches of Ives, Greig and Penderecki that dot Federico Jusid's Bernard Herrmann-inflected score.

While Davies and Larrain confirm themselves as meticulous craftsman, Raoul Peck provides an inspired insight into the mind of writer and activist James Baldwin in I Am Not Your Negro. Born in Haiti, Peck started making shorts in 1982 and first came to attention when his debut feature, The Man By the Shore (1993), screened at Cannes. Until now, he has been best known for Lumumba (2000), which chronicled the power grab that followed the Congo securing independence from Belgium in 1960, and Sometimes in April (2005), which centred on the Rwandan Genocide. But, having reflected on the aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake in Fatal Assistance (2013) and Murder in Pacot (2014), Peck turns his attention to the ongoing struggle for racial equality in the United States in this Oscar-nominated meld of interview, archive footage and film clips that is linked by extracts read by Samuel L. Jackson from the unfinished manuscript for Remember This House, which reflects upon the sacrifices made by Baldwin's murdered Civil Rights friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

This remarkable documentary opens with a startling clip from The Dick Cavett Show in 1968, in which the genial, liberal-leaning host asks James Baldwin if he had become more hopeful about the status of `the Negro' in American society since the passing of the Civil Rights Act four years earlier. Allowing himself a wry smile, Baldwin laments the use of such pejorative language before averring that the situation for black people is pretty dire across the entire planet. A blast of Buddy Guy's furious protest song, `Damn Right, I've Got the Blues', over a montage of still images depicting black protesters being brutalised by the police suggests that things have scarcely improved five decades on.

In a letter to agent Jay Acton proposing Remember This House in 1979, Baldwin states that he wishes to celebrate the achievements of his friends, Medger, Malcolm and Martin, while also castigating those who betrayed their ideals and the martyrdom. Clips follow of the 26 year-old King backing the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and Leander Perez of the White Citizens Council denouncing the enrolment of nine black students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. As troops are called in to keep order, Baldwin recalls seeing newspaper pictures of 15 year-old Dorothy Counts being spat on as she walked to school in Charlotte, North Carolina and realising that he could no longer fight the cause from Paris.

Caricatured images from contemporary advertisements and illustrations show over Big Bill Broonzy's `Black, Brown and White', as Baldwin admits to missing little about America during his exile. But he felt he needed to reconnect with his family and the folks from the Harlem neighbourhood of his youth. He eulogises about the way black faces light up when they smile and the unique sense of style that he first became aware of when he was about seven and he saw a black woman in a store who seemed as beautiful to him as Joan Crawford had been in Harry Beaumont's Dance, Fools, Dance (1931). White teacher Orilla `Bill' Miller had an even greater impact, as she encouraged the 10 year-old Baldwin to read and express himself. She also took him to plays and films like Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933), which made him wonder why white people detested blacks and why he couldn't bring himself to hate whites (even though they made no secret of their loathing of his beloved teacher).

Baldwin resented the fact that the only people who looked like him in movies were loathed stereotypes like Willie `Sleep`n'Eat' Best in Frank R. Strayer's The Monster Walks (1932) and Stepin Fetchit in W. Forest Crunch's Richard's Answer (1945). He also refused to see the title character in Harry A. Pollard's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927) as a hero because he opted not to take vengeance in his own hands, unlike John Wayne in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939). But Baldwin couldn't identify with white men whose sense of entitlement to claim the land as their own made them his enemy. No wonder he recalled with such dread seeing black janitor Clinton Rosemond (who resembled his father) being intimidated by the police in Mervyn LeRoy's They Won't Forget (1937), as he knew that films were a reflection of the country in which he lived. Speaking to the Cambridge Union in 1965, he recalls the shock he felt when, around the age of seven, he saw himself in the Indians being killed by Gary Cooper. To Baldwin's mind, therefore, Hollywood was part of a conspiracy to ensure a legend was made out of a massacre in depicting the expansion of the frontier as an epic adventure rather than a crime.

Being a witness to such felonies as the murder of Medger, Malcolm and Martin proved tougher than Baldwin had anticipated, however, and he confides in a letter to Acton that he was not looking forward to interviewing their widows and children. He recalls his first encounter with Malcolm, when he unnerved Baldwin by staring at him from the front row during a lecture, and curses the white misconceptions of this noble man that resulted in his assassination. By contrast, he first met Medger when he asked him to participate in the investigation into the murder of a young black man.

Baldwin was not a Muslim or a Christian and steered clear of both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (as he felt it imposed class distinctions) and the Black Panthers, as he didn't want African-American kids to believe that all white men were devils. He didn't play an active role in confronting bigotry on the streets or in organising marches. Instead, he remained at large in order to write articles like `Letter From a Region in My Mind', which conveyed his impressions of the struggle as a witness with a duty to ensure the truth was widely disseminated. As a consequence, he came on to the radar of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who used a 1966 memorandum to deputy Alan Rosen to highlight the fact that he was `an homosexual' who was capable of committing acts that could undermine the security of the state.

Three years earlier, the police under Eugene `Bull' O'Connor had used force to control a non-violent protest in Birmingham, Alabama and Baldwin had been a guest of Dr Kenneth Clark on a TV programme entitled The Negro and the American Promise, in which Malcolm had accused Martin of being a latterday Uncle Tom for not fighting back. Yet, Baldwin believes that his friends had ceased to be poles apart and had come to share a common vision by the time Malcolm was shot. He mourns the fact that they died before change came (all under the age of 40), although footage of the riots Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 questions the extent to which things had become any different for black people in the intervening half century.

During his segment on the show, Baldwin had grieved for `the death of the heart' and branded the cruel white majority `moral monsters' for their inability to understand the pain caused by slavery, segregation and racial supremacy and their refusal to accept him as a human being. On the Florida Forum programme in 1963, he damned John and Robert Kennedy for being as apathetic and ignorant about the realities of the black experience as any other whites, as they made no effort to explore the other side of the segregated divide. Yet Baldwin felt uncomfortable during this period with being `the Great Black Hope of the Great White Father' and a non-racist in comparison to the supposedly bigoted Malcolm.

Another potent spokesperson of the day was playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose hit play A Raisin in the Sun, was brought to the screen in 1961 by white director Daniel Petrie and black actor Sidney Poitier. Baldwin cursed her dying of cancer at the age of 34, recalls with pride their meeting with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and how she had shamed him for dismissing the suggestion that America could be transformed if his brother escorted a black child to an integrated school. She also hoped that the photograph of policemen standing on the neck of a Birmingham woman was not a true reflection of the civilisation they were shaping.

His admiration for her was matched by his esteem for Medger and he remembers their last meeting before he flew to Puerto Rico to work on a play. He heard he had been gunned down in his car port in front of his wife and children on the car radio on a beautiful day. Bob Dylan sang a tribute in `Only a Pawn in Their Game' in DA Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (1967), but Baldwin lost a friend who had sustained him in a battle he found exhausting, if only because he was so often dismissed as an eccentric, while white patriots like John Wayne were dubbed heroes for spouting wild theories no one dared to challenge.

According to Baldwin, white America had no idea what to do with its black population and suspects many wished they could implement their own Final Solution. The problem was that blacks were nowhere near as docile as the whites supposed and Baldwin reveals that growing up on the streets of New York taught him a toughness that was replicated in very different environments across the country. Over photos of Tamir Rice, Darius Simmons, Trayvon Martin, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Christopher McCray, Cameron Tillman and Amir Brooks (who all died young in the early 21st century), Baldwin remembers the bodies of kids of his own generation piling up because they dared to assert their right to exist and challenge the basis tenets of the white world's power structure. But the problem is not just one of race, as people of the same blood are unwilling to stand beside each other for fear of reprisal.

Echoing this contention, a clip from John M. Stahl's Imitation of Life (1934) shows light-skinned Fredi Washington hiding behind her book because she fears mother Louise Beavers will betray her racial origins to her classmates. Indeed, Baldwin claims (over old photos of black and white slaves in New Orleans) that few of the ancestors of America's assimilated populations came to the New World willingly. But the whites have remained terrified of their private selves and have invented `the Negro problem' to `safeguard their purity' and, as a consequence, they have become `criminals and monsters'. Scenes with Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark from Joseph L. Mankiewicz's No Way Out (1950) and with Tony Curtis in Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958) strengthen Baldwin's argument that America suffers from a bottomless emotional poverty and a terror of human interaction that generates a paralysis that prevents any departure from a hideous status quo.

As Curtis and Poitier fight while chained at the wrist, Baldwin derides the premise of the screenplay, as it misunderstands the basic nature of their antipathy. because the black man's hatred is rooted in rage and the white man's in fear. He also points out that black audiences yelled at Poitier in disbelief for leaping off the train when Curtis fails to clamber aboard, as they wanted him to free himself and not reassure the white boy that he had no reason to feel loathed and afraid. Over a commercial in which a black man sings inside a banana skin, Baldwin notes that Hollywood is scared of the fact that Poitier and Harry Belafonte are sex symbols and goes out of its way to neutralise their appeal in pictures like Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), although he suspects that this is the last time the studios can get away with an interracial romance without letting the lovers kiss.

Poitier did more than merely reassure in Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night (1967), however, as he actively confronts Rod Steiger's bigoted sheriff. Yet, during their climactic train scene, the smiles exchanged were the closest cinema could come at the time to a fadeout kiss between two men - although this was more a reflection of reconciliation than sexual attraction. But heterosexual relationships between blacks and whites were equally frowned upon and, over a dance clip from Horace Ové's Pressure (1976), Baldwin recalls having to keep his distance from a white female friend whenever they went out together.

According to Baldwin, people can't stand too much reality and many whites would have been deeply disturbed by The Secrets of Selling the Negro Market (1954), a short that was sponsored by the publishers of Ebony magazine to encourage companies to advertise their wares in the African-American media. Yet, while Bobby Kennedy insisted that things were improving at such a pace that a time would soon come when a black man could become president of the United States, Baldwin told his 1965 Cambridge audience that his pronouncement was greeted with derision in Harlem, as blacks had been in the country for 400 years and were less than impressed with being told in a patronising manner that they might be allowed a crack at the top job if they behaved themselves. Nevertheless, Peck ends this segment with slow-motion footage of Barack and Michelle Obama waving to the crowds on his Inauguration Day with one black and one white bodyguard walking behind them and Bill Broonzy's `Just a Dream (On My Mind)' playing on the soundtrack.

Speaking in Cambridge, Baldwin states that the national economy has long relied on the exploitation of black labour. Yet this has convinced the whites that a ninth of the population is inferior to them. In his eyes, however, his ancestors had a crucial stake in the forging of the nation and that it should be entitled to an equal share in its prosperity. Peck cuts from the standing ovation Baldwin received from the students to a montage of stills of the famous faces that were present at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963. That evening, Baldwin was joined on television by Marlon Brando, Joseph Mankiewicz, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, with the latter declaring that the success of the campaign depends on the whites who have tried to hide away from the issues facing up to the realities being perpertrated in their name and doing something about it. But Baldwin later wrote that what was needed was for white citizens to grow up and for pampered, priviliged individuals like John Wayne to wake up to the truth.

Baldwin was dining in London with his sister when the news came that Malcolm had been gunned down at a rally in February 1965. His death did much to bolster support for a more radical approach and, speaking in July 1967, Black Panther H. Rap Brown stated bluntly that violence was as American as cherry pie. Following riots in Oakland, California, Baldwin guested with Dick Cavett and avowed that Malcolm might still be alive if black people lobbying for freedom were treated in the same way as Irish, Poles or Jews making the same demand.

Such chillingly persuasive words contrast starkly with the message contained in the 1960 US Savings Bond short, The Land We Love, which celebrates the fun white folks can have beneath Liberty's torch. But Peck intercuts footage of the August 1965 riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles to show how hollow the commentary sounds. Baldwin complains, with complete justification, that democracy means nothing if its promises only apply to the priviliged few and not everyone. He opines that television perpetuates social myths and stereotypes and lulls people into accepting that they are sharing in the good life when the daily experience of the majority is brutal and ugly. Moreover, cornball quiz and talk shows reduce the ability to face reality and amend it.

Back on the Cavett Show, the host brings out Yale philosophy professor Paul Weiss to join Baldwin and singer Elly Stone. He disagrees with much of what Baldwin has said and asks why he always has to view matters in terms of colour when he has much more in common with white authors than black men who have no time for books. But Baldwin counters that he left the USA in 1948 because he feared for his life in everyday situations because cops and bosses didn't want him there. He could have gone to Hong Kong or Timbuktu, but he went to Paris and it gave him the chance to write without having to look over his shoulder. As the audience applauds, Peck shows images of black men being harassed by the police before Baldwin reveals that he believes the Christian church is as segregated as the rest of society. When Weiss tries to protest, Baldwin declares that the country's institutions are all set up to keep the black population in its place and allow the white to use whatever repressive force they deem necessary to protect their own interests.

Over another clip from Uncle Tom's Cabin, Baldwin accuses every Western nation of peddling a humanist lie that falsifies their history and deprives them of moral authority. As happy white folks frolic on a `Once a Year Day' in George Abbott and Stanley Donen's The Pajama Game (1957), Baldwin muses that they have become so used to enjoying the benefits of life that they no longer dare ask who has to suffer for their pleasure and, as a consequence, they have no idea how mutinous the underclass has become. As Peck shows recent footage of cops employing rough tactics, Baldwin suggests that a society that depends so heavily on coercion is close to collapsing and a clip from Robert Siodmak's Custer of the West (1967) and a photograph of the battlefield at Wounded Knee in 1890 illustrate the contention that force never works the way the ruling class thinks it does, as the amount of duress required betrays the strength of the adversary and the fear and panic of the oppressor.

While Baldwin was living in Palm Springs and working on a biopic of Malcolm X with Billy Dee Williams, he learned that Martin has been shot in the head. Other than weeping tears of helpless fury, he remembers little about the remainder of the day. At the funeral, however, he steeled himself because he suspected if he started to cry he would not be able to stop. Sammy Davis held his arm when he felt his emotions rising and he reminded himself that `the story of the Negro in America is the story of America'. Yet, while the American way of life has failed to make people happier or better, Baldwin remains optimistic that something can still be done to make a transition without bloodshed, even though too many people with the power to make the key decisions would rather protect their profits and bolster their security.

Over an extract of a teenage gunman going on the rampage in Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), Baldwin laments that America is not the land of the free and is only sporadically the home of the brave. He finds it astonishing that the black population has not succumbed to raging paranoia, although he is equally surprised when people accuse him of being bitter. As we see footage of Rodney King being beaten in March 1991, as Baldwin says that there are two levels of experience that can be summed up on one side by Ray Charles and on the other by Gary Cooper (seen in Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon, 1957) and Doris Day (David Butler's Lullaby of Broadway, 1951), whom Baldwin dubs `two of the most grotesque appeals to innocence the world has ever seen'. As Day ponders her new beau in Daniel Mann's Lover Come Back (1961), Peck match cuts to a female lynch victim dangling from a tree and Baldwin declares that it's impossible to keep black people in ghettos without the jailer becoming monstrous and the penned in gaining a superior knowledge of their opponent.

As Baldwin wisely states, not everything that has been faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it has been faced and this is his challenge for America. `History is not the past,' he continues, `it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history. If we pretend otherwise we literally are criminals.' He dismisses the notion that the world has ever been white and brands `white' a metaphor for power and the Chase Manhattan Bank. In closing, he tells Cavett that he is an optimist and that the future of the country depends on the whites working out why they needed the blacks in the first place and why they chose to treat him so appallingly for four centuries. Once they have the correct answer, the United States can finally move on.

In some ways, this is a frustrating film, as it keeps throwing up topics that need exploring in greater detail. There's only patchy biographical detail on Baldwin and his achievements as a man of letters. We also learn little about Medger Evers and how his approach to the cause differed from those of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Indeed, Peck presumes a good deal of foreknowledge and, in the process, exposes the ignorance of many ashamed viewers. But, while images like the one of Malcolm laughing with Muhammad Ali makes one wish for more Baldwiniain insights into the Nation of Islam (and the Black Panthers), they also highlight the need for a major documentary series on the black experience in America that could combine the talents of Peck and such provocative US-based film-makers Eva DuVernay, Ezra Edelman, Spike Lee, Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye and John Singleton.

Nevertheless, this is a magnificent documentary. At one point, Baldwin says, `to look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep'. An entire nation should hang its head in shame because not only does the same situation persist in 2017, but it's also likely to deteriorate in the foreseeable future. The real crime, however, is that the malaise dates back to before the Founding Fathers drew up the Constitution after wrenching independence from the British, as the very people responsible for instituting the heinous mistreatment of the black populace once fled Europe to escape their own forms of prejudice and persecution. Yet, instead of learning from their experience and enshrining tolerance at the heart of their system, they opted to lash out at the easiest target and ease their own pain by inflicting more on the subjugated slaves.

The fury of Kendrick Lamar's closing credit rap, `The Blacker the Berry', is entirely justifiable, therefore. But, while Baldwin could state, `my countrymen were my enemy', Peck is more interested in Baldwin's hope than his despair and, together with editor Alexandra Strauss, he has found archive material and movie clips that deftly complement the case made with such poetic passion in the expertly chosen and delivered texts. In short, this deserves to stand alongside its fellow Oscar nominees, Ava DuVernay's 13th and Ezra Edelman's O.J.: Made in America, as it's a work of life-changing political art and, frankly, it's a privilege to look, listen and learn.

Irish horror has been on something of a roll in recent times, with David Keating's Wake Wood (2011), Jon Wright's Grabbers (2012), Ivan Kavanagh's The Canal (2014) and Lorcan Finnegan's Without Name (2106) all being reasonably well received. But Liam Gavin's A Dark Song seems to have exerted a firmer than usual grip on the critical imagination, as it approaches the theme of invocation with an almost documentary rigour. A far cry from the diabolical dabblings of Christopher Lee in Terence Fisher's cult Dennis Wheatley adaptation, The Devil Rides Out (1968), Gavin's first-time outing has a forensic fear factor that makes it more of a shame that the effects budget couldn't stretch to something more genuinely awe-inspiring in the final reel.

Three years after seven year-old son Nathan Vos was murdered, Catholic mother Catherine Walker finds an abandoned house in North Wales suitable to host the lengthy ritual that would enable her to speak with her child again. Bluff Midlander Steve Oram is nettled that he is only fourth on her list of occultists and asks to be taken back to the railway station when Walker reveals that she is willing to undergo the ordeal for love. But the truth persuades him to return to the house and start making preparations for the gruelling gnostic rite that could just as easily fail as summon real angels and demons.

Having been abstinent for several weeks and resisted the efforts of younger sister Susan Loughnane to talk her out of taking such a drastic step, Walker assures Oram that she is committed to the trial. So, after buying in supplies to last up to eight months, she declares herself ready for him to place a protective salt circle around the building and seal them inside. Walker also promises that Oram is allowed to make a request when they succeed in making contact with her guardian angel. But she has to consent to obeying orders without hesitation and doing the household chores so that he can conserve his energies for the Sacred Magic of Abramelin.

Placing a photograph of her son under her pillow and keeping his favourite toy close at hand, Walker steels herself for the test that lies ahead, which is not made any easier by the fact that the abrasive Oram is a recovering alcoholic, who admits to having had failures in the past. Moreover, he is a stern taskmaster and not only wakes her on the first morning by throwing a bowl of water over her, but also force feeds her with toadstools to ensure she purges from the inside. But she trusts his expertise as he explains about the triangles and squares chalked on floors around the house, as well as the circuit of circular chambers that she must pass through in order to initiate the rite.

The first six days are arduous, but Walker remains resolute, even when an unseen hand disarranges her room and the sound of a dog barking at night is followed by a blackbird crashing into the kitchen window. Oram assures her that the process is underway and their sessions intensify. But he loses his temper with her when she refuses to forgive Vos's killers and he has to improvise a blood sacrifice to keep them on track. Bridling initially, Walker drinks the contents of the glass (twice) and goes to her room to tear the photograph of herself and Vos in two. She also notices that his action figure is missing and she is spooked when it mysteriously reappears on top of the washing-machine during the spin cycle.

Yet, as strange things start to happen with increased frequency, Walker feels more at ease with Oram and laughs when he tells her about his recurring dream of owning a moped. But she is outraged when he dupes her into stripping so he can masturbate and, even though she finds a symbolic flower on the landing carpet and is showered with gold flakes, she twice loses her temper when she feels they are making no progress. Stung at having his methods challenged, Oram accuses Walker of withholding her real reason for undergoing the ritual. He is furious when she admits to seeking vengeance and he has to hold her down in the bath in order to rebirth her before they can go on.

However, she is livid with him for risking her life and lurches at him in the kitchen, with the result that a kitchen knife becomes embedded in his side. As she patches him up, he promises her vengeance and reveals that he wants nothing more than the knowledge the experience will impart and the opportunity to disappear into a place of peace and tranquility. But there is little time for him to recover from his wound, as Walker is taunted in the night by a demon impersonating her son's voice. She is alert enough not to succumb to the temptation of opening the door to him, but realises how much she needs Oram to guide her through the potential perilous rite.

His condition begins to deteriorate, however, and she comforts him when he cries for his lost sister. But Oram dies in the night and, when she realises that she cannot make head not tail of his books, Walker decides to leave the house. When the car refuses to start, she strides along a winding road under lowering skies to the nearest property and howls in anguish when she finds it empty. Returning home, she shuts the door and washes the vomit that has covered Vos's photograph. But she is powerless to prevent an unseen entity from dragging Oram's body away and has to barricade herself in her room after she comes face to face with a number of silent ghouls.

Following another nocturnal conversation with her son, Walker ventures on to the landing and finds his toy. However, she meets an old woman (Sheila Moloney) walking with a child and, before she knows it, Walker is lying bloodied on the floor in a room full of otherworldly creatures. She feels hands clawing at her arm and she tries to run away. But she is stopped in her tracks by a bright light at the top of a staircase and, investigating, she finds her guardian angel (Martina Nunvarova) waiting for her. Kneeling against her sword, the angel smiles when Walker asks for the power to forgive and the film ends with Walker pushing Oram's plastic-wrapped corpse into a lake before driving home (seemingly missing a finger) with the sense of serenity she has long been seeking.

There's no escaping the fact that the mediocre angel effect has a deleterious impact on the denouement. But the last 20 minutes are something of a muddle, with Walker blundering around with seeming impunity after Oram's demise before she is subjected to a baffling ordeal prior to her wish being granted. But much of the early action is intriguing, as the sadistic Oram and the secretive Walker try to gain the upper hand while waiting for the magic to begin. Their banter is often brusque and laced with a flinty wit that makes the building tension all the more credible. Moreover, Gavin keeps Cathal Watters's camera prowling around the rooms that production designer Conor Dennison has decked out with atmospheric sigil markings.

At this juncture, Ray Harman's pulsing percussive score is also used sparingly and effectively. But Gavin becomes increasingly reliant on it as the crux of the action approaches, when it might have been more unsettling to let the closing scenes play out to ambient noise. Nevertheless, even though Gavin doesn't always succeed in suggesting the passage of time, he makes a solid impression with his control of pace and suspense, as he keeps the audience guessing about whether Oram has stage-managed everything or whether deprivation has caused Walker to experience hallucinatory vision. Most crucially, however, Gavin is admirably served by Walker and the ever-watchable Oram, who treat the religious themes and the complex rubrics with a gravity that gives this laudably human chamber chiller its conviction and power.

Cartoonist José Escobar Saliente created the characters of Zipi y Zape in 1947 and the scampish siblings remain Spain's most popular and most translated comic-book characters. They first appeared on the big screen in Enrique Guevara's Las aventuras de Zipi y Zape (1982) and make an overdue return in Oskar Santos's Zip and Zap and the Marble Gang, which fetches up in UK cinemas in time for the Easter holidays (albeit four years after it was initially released). Hailing from Barcelona, Escobar was jailed following the Civil War for his anti-Francoist cartoons and there's more than a hint of political subtext in this briskly staged romp that should appeal to fans of Matilda Wormwood and Harry Potter, although grown-ups reared on Enid Blyton might recognise the format and spot the dashes of spirited Catalan subversion. Unhappy at being forced to spend the summer at the remote Hope Re-Education Centre after stealing a school exam, brothers Zip (Raúl Rivas) and Zap (Daniel Cerezo) vow to make the best of the experience as they travel by bus with the portly Filo (Fran García). However, monocular camp director Falconetti (Javier Gutiérrez) intends making their lives a misery and greets them beneath the statue of founder Sebastián Esperanza (Álex Angulo) with a reminder that play is forbidden in the pursuit of maturity. He sends them to the refectory under the jaundiced gaze of his chief oppo, Heidi (Christian Mulas), and his ferocious dog, Shark. But, while the newcomers make the acquaintance of the diminutive Micro (Marcos Ruiz), they also fall foul of bully Piojo (Aníbal Tártalo), who starts a fight that results in Zap to be sent to the Meditation Room.

He finds his way back there after cheeking a teacher, but he takes a shine to Falconetti's niece, Matilda (Claudia Vega), while on a cross-country run with stuttering PE teacher, GriGrillo (Javier Cifrián). Unfortunately, Zip also develops a crush on her and can hardly concentrate when his brother explains that he has found some marbles behind a metal grille in the Meditation Room. However, he agrees that they should take one each and call themselves the Marble Gang and - with their motto `B for Bictory' - dedicate themselves to disobeying Falconetti's rules against fun and play.

A series of pranks follows and Falconetti takes particular exception to an eye patch being appended to the Esperanza statue. In trying to remove it, however, Heidi snaps off a stone book that contains a treasure map that Falconetti hopes will lead him to a fabled cache of diamonds. But the Marble Gang members are more concerned by a mysterious note from someone claiming to know their identity. They demand a meeting in the cemetery after dark and the boys are surprised to find Matilde waiting for them. She loathes her uncle and wants to join their resistance campaign. But they vote to keep her out until she doctors the food of the teaching staff and Zap's objections are overruled.

While sneaking around the kitchens one night, the friends see Heidi emptying toys into a chute. Naturally, they return to investigate and manage to drop Micro and Zip into a pit that seems to contain a snarling beast. While Filo fetches a rope to rescue them from a pile of soft toys, Zap and Matilde follow Heidi to Esperanza's tomb, where he is engaged in a search for a hammer, a steering wheel, a slingshot and a rubber duck that Falconetti has identified as being crucial to locating the treasure. Matilde kisses Zap as they pick their way back to the courtyard and Zap is dismayed to learn about her pash from Micro after they are chased along a maze of corridors by Shark, who nearly bites Filo after he grabs the rope with his teeth and gets pulled up the kitchen chute.

Determined to see the map, the pals break into Falconetti's office. In a desk drawer, Zap finds the marbles they had left at the scene of each prank, while Micro uses his photographic memory (which he demonstrates with a whistlestop itinerary of the room) to make a mental copy of the map, which he later commits to paper. As they prepare to leave, however, somebody accidentally starts a conveniently threaded projector, which plays a newsreel showing that Esperanza was a kindly man who had wanted to educate children through play. Initially, his scheme had been such a success that he had been able to buy some fabulous diamonds. But his plan had been thwarted by the young Falconetti and his father (Joseba Apaolaza), who had complained about his frivolous methods and forced the authorities to close the centre down.

Baffled by the location of the chessboard that appears to be the starting place on the map, the gang set about searching the school. But Zip is so crushed when he sees Zap give Matilde the flower he has been pressing as a bookmark that he seeks bitter revenge by betraying the enterprise to Falconetti. However, when Zap, Filo, Micro and Matilde are confined in the Meditation Room, it dawns on Zip that the black-and-white floor tiles are laid out in a chequered pattern and he insults security guard PeloCohete (Alberto López) to get himself slammed in solitary with them to start the adventure.

They find the first clue in the wording of a plaque and smash a wall mirror to find the steering wheel attached to a clockwork mechanism that opens a large door when a marble is placed at its centre. Slipping through before Falconetti and his henchmen can stop them, they proceed along a passageway into the kitchen (with the villains hot on their heels after a loud Micro belch gives their position away). On finding the hammer, they realise that they have to hit the scales with just the right force to project a marble into a hole in the centre of a clock. He misses with his first shot and Heidi unleashes Shark to corner them. But he gets trapped in the closing door as the gang moves on to the next task and Falconetti refuses to pause to let Heidi free the dog as they scuttle on in pursuit.

With only two marbles left, the kids reach an iron gate and Zap surmises that he has to use the catapult to fire a marble into the mouth of a frog in a wall plaque. His aim is true, but Heidi grabs the catapult through the bars and Falconetti takes a marble from his pocket as the gang disappear through a sliding door. His first shot misses and Heidi plummets through a trapdoor. However, the marble bounces back to him and Falconetti scores a hit second time round and charges on with Piejo.

Meanwhile, Micro has spotted the rubber duck above a tightrope spanning a chasm. Having become tipsy on liqueur chocolates, he volunteers to cross and the others are mightily relieved when he loses his grip and bounces back on an invisible trampoline. Indeed, Micro looks to be having such fun that everyone but Zip jumps down to join him for a quick boing before they march on. While Falconetti and Piejo conquer their fear of heights, the fivesome reach another wall and discover a hole in a brick that accommodates the steering wheel. A swift turn causes a panel to shift and they find themselves in a chamber filled with toys. But they are still searching for the diamonds when Falconetti catches up with them and locks them in the vault with Piejo for company in his fury at not being able to track down the treasure.

As they try to solve the mystery, Zip realises that the hammer, steering wheel, catapult and duck fit the letters spelling out TOYS on a whirring machine. No sooner are the items in place than a small model of Esperanza begins to gyrate and, as music fills the air and the other pupils rush into the courtyard, the founder's statue begins to dance. Falconetti orders his charges back inside, but GriGrillo punches him and has him sent to the Meditation Room as the paving beneath the statue parts to allow a giant orb to rise from underground. A chute rolls out and the Marble Gang slide to freedom and a heroes' welcome. They celebrate the overthrow of Falconetti by doing a hand-stack over the last marble, which they toss into the air.

What they don't realise is that the diamonds have been hidden inside the marbles. But, as they have learned about friendship, teamwork and how to stop worrying and believe in themselves, nobody seems overly bothered about missing out on a small fortune. And that's how it should be in a kidpic and Santos and his co-writers deserve credit for slipping in a worthwhile message without getting sanctimonious or sentimental about it. Their storyline may not be particularly novel, while the characterisation is perfunctory at best. But they keep the action rolling along and Santos gets plenty of Double Decker enthusiasm out of his young cast. He is also well served by Javier Gutierrez, as the pantomimic nemesis. But the real stars of the show are production designer Juan Pedro De Gaspar and effects supervisor Mariano García, who devised the steampunk contraptions that make the treasure hunt so enjoyable.

It's impossible to watch the nightly news without having one's conscience pricked by the countless refugees and migrants who have been caught on camera in holding camps and detention centres across Europe and North Africa. Each nameless individual has a troubled history and hopes for a better future. So, German documentarist Moritz Siebert and his Danish collaborator Estephan Wagner set out to remind viewers of the human realities that rarely make the headlines in Those Who Jump. Borrowing the idea behind Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi's 5 Broken Cameras (2011), Siebert and Wagner provide Malian exile Abou Bakar Sidibé with a camcorder and ask him to film his everyday experience on the slopes of Mount Gurugu in Morocco, which abuts the Spanish enclave of Melilla that is seen by many as a gateway to a new life.

Produced by the team that has backed Joshua Oppenheimer's recent exposés of the Indonesian genocide, this takes a while to get going, as Sidibé becomes accustomed to framing the action unfolding before him. But, from the moment he declares, `I feel I exist when I film,' this becomes an increasingly personal and harrowing account of the desperate souls who risk their lives to scale the wall sealing off Melilia from the rest of the continent.

Born in Kidal in Mali, Sidibé had graduated in English and was working as a teacher when he decided to make a fresh start in Europe. Having made several failed attempts to negotiate the network of three razor wire fences keeping interlopers out of Melilla, he had been on Mount Gurugu for over a year when Siebert and Wagner offered him the camera and a sum of money to dissuade him from selling it to buy food. Despite taking a while to master shooting techniques, Sidibé was eager to record his daily experiences and enlisted the help of his friend Baba to ensure he appeared in his own film. He is bashful about washing naked in front of the camera, but seems to recognise symbolic nature of his ablutions and this keen intelligence informs the video diary that Siebert and Wagner checked every four months to ensure the project remained on track.

Opting to focus on his mates sleeping rough on the mountain rather than risking the ire of strangers, Sidibé deftly captures the primitive conditions in which they live and uses long shots to contrast the camp with Medilla and the glistening Mediterranean beyond. When not on recces to monitor security patrols or playing football, Sidibé listens to music with Baba, Ousmane and Simbo, who speculate on rumours that their skin colour will start to bleach after being washed by white women on arriving in Europe. Sidibé urges them to keep it clean and claims that there are many evils spirits on the mountain at night. However, they are protected by the stray dogs who have given up their cosy Moroccan existence share their vagabond travails.

Each attempt to climb the wall beyond the fences is carefully planned and Siebert and Wagner include CCTV footage of an escape bid that is blocked by the massed ranks of Spanish police. One of Sidibé's friends sustains a head wound that needs to be patched by a doctor, while another has to have his ankle strapped. The implication is that violence is used against the fugitives, but no one seems to complain to the camera, as it is all part of the game in which they are involved. Sidibé reveals that his brother made it to safety and admits to being more than a little envious. As his pals play a board game, he follows others as they fill up water bottles or search through fly-strewn dumpsters on the outskirts of town for food or useful items.

Sidibé confides that he is always afraid and that his biggest fear is of reaching Europe and discovering that it's not El Dorado. But the recurring problem he faces is keeping out of the clutches of the police, who use helicopters to seek them out and torch their belongings after forcing them to flee. The camera jolts in Sidibé's hand, as he rushes across the scrubland to avoid capture and film the scurrying silhouettes on the horizon as the cops close in. On returning to the encampment, they find that their food supplies have been destroyed, along with their bedding and makeshift shelters. But, while some pray, others clear away the debris and one sings a song about helping his family by making it to Europe.

After a few months, Sidibé begins to enjoy creating striking images and he films Melilla at night to record its twinkling lights in the pitch darkness. He even copies the style of television football coverage when a team from Mali plays Ivory Coast on a parched piece of waste ground. But, instead of commentating on the game, Sidibé reveals that national groupings live separately on the mountain and plan their own assaults on the fence. However, all agree that quislings should be executed without compunction if they pass information to the Moroccan police. He notes how people leave high-powered posts in their homeland in order to take menial jobs that pay a better wage and suggests that nobody reaches Europe without incurring physical and psychological scars. But everyone learns resilience, as Sultana reveals when he vows that Mali will bounce back from a 1-0 defeat.

Reality kicks back in when some of Sidibé's friends decide to give up and return to Mali. He is spurred on by calls from his brother in Valencia, but he admits to having nightmares in which he finds himself the only one left on the wrong side of the wall. Listening to LeAnn Rimes singing `I Will Always Love You', the little cabal watch the lights come up in Melilla and it takes on a magical glow that surpasses the beauty of a golden moon streaked by grey clouds. But there is nothing pleasant about a brutal sequence in which one of the group uses salt or flour to make a circle with a heart in the middle and drizzles the blood of a freshly slaughtered hen over the white powder to make some sort of grim sacrifice.

On a lighter note, a baby donkey gambols between the trees at the side of the camp. But the frustration felt by many at being cooped in is expressed by a rapper in an Eden Hazard Chelsea away shirt, who testifies to the perils they face in crossing continents. Sidibé says himself that he has a right to pursue happiness and that nothing will deter him, even though he knows from his sibling that Spain is facing a recession and that racism and exploitation are daily problems. Yet there are rumblings about the inept leadership of the Malian camp chief and Sidibe's pals begin working on a strategy to convince him to take a different approach to their escape bids.

As CCTV footage once again shows the migrants clambering over the wall and being greeted by uniformed reception committees, Sidibé films himself calling the parents of his friend Mustapha, who has been killed during the attempt. He has to leave a message and reassures the family that they all respected him and hope that his soul will find peace. In the distance, Melilla looks further away than ever, as three friends ponder their unenviable fate. When the informant who betrayed them to the police is captured, Sidibé forces him to confess on camera and he apologises for being weak. But, when he tries to wish them all well, some of the group get angry with him and he runs away before they can exact retribution.

Tired of trusting the ageing hierarchy, Sidibé, Baba and Sultana meet in secret away from the camp and agree to do things their own way. They create hooks for climbing up the nets now being used at the wall and put studs into the souls of their shoes to give them a better grip. Yet, while they focus on their work and the prospect of their overdue `boza' success, one of the gang still manages to tease Sidibé that he has become a proper film-maker as he attempts a close-up.

Once again, the column is picked up on CCTV, as it snakes across no man's land in the darkness. But, this time, the cops fail to arrive in time, and Sidibé's cohorts make it into Melilla and celebrate ostentatiously on the streets of the promised land. It has taken them months of hardship, but there seems to be no stopping them now.

Dedicated to Mustapha Togota and the many others who have lost their lives trying to cross the European border, this is a stark snapshot of the sacrifices that thousands make to provide for loved ones they suspect they might never see again. The unimaginable becomes terrifyingly tangible as Sidibé learns to master the camera. But there are also moments of joyous camaraderie here, as these hardened migrants allow their softer side to show. Many will blench at the rather gratuitous animal sacrifice, but its omission would have been a cultural betrayal.

One has to question, however, the extent to which Siebert and Wagner are the `directors ' of this film. They might have come up with the concept and helped Sidibé during their periodic visits to Mount Gurugu. But, as they are hardly calling the shots on the ground, it might be more appropriate to call them producer-editors. Nevertheless, they should be applauded for latching on to such an intelligent and impassioned amanuensis and for giving him the space to work in his own way. Moreover, they also deserve credit for putting a human face on the migrant crisis that has brought out the basest instincts of those who would send them back from whence they came.