I’ve become something of a regular customer with Mathew Cullen’s vibrant and ambitious director’s cut film version of the celebrated British cult novel London Fields. Over multiple viewings, I’ve been able to pull something new and interesting from the experience, especially on a visual level; London Fields is jam-packed with verbal and pictorial information that never stops chugging along.
This is the movie that opened at the end of 2018 amidst abundant controversy, with Cullen passionately battling it out with the distributors over final cut, even after the original producers recognized his film as the final and official cut of London Fields.
What was released in theaters for the general public was a compromised version, which fared poorly with critics and audiences, while Cullen’s version sits in limbo. All of this is to say – the situation was a mess, and the unfortunate side effect is that Cullen’s director’s cut is hard to track down and is essentially being suppressed.
Given that original novelist Martin Amis co-adapted his own book with Roberta Hanley for the big-screen, I can’t imagine that he’d work to sabotage a filmic version of something he initially created, so I’d have to assume that the busy plot of the film follows the exploits of the book to a certain authentic degree.
The narrative, in classic neo-noir fashion, concerns a sweaty and distressed writer (Billy Bob Thornton, perfectly cast) who is trying to make sense of his own reality and the story he’s in the midst of writing.
It also helps when ultra-eye candy actress Amber Heard is the femme fatale (in more ways than one…); ever since Pineapple Express she’s remained a most alluring screen presence, and it’s clear that Cullen knew what he had on the other end of his viewfinder when he was setting up his mise-en-scene.
Throw in a totally bonkers if slightly grating performance by Jim Sturgess and familiar faces like Jason Isaacs, Theo James, Jamie Alexander, Cara Delevinge, and an un-credited (and most definitely hilarious) Johnny Depp, and you’ve got a starry cast that really brought the juice.
After playing in extremely limited theatrical engagement in Los Angeles last year, the film’s distributor’s have fought to have any sort of physical media release of the director’s cut of London Fields from hitting store shelves. Which is a shame, because if people would only have the chance to experience the film and come to their own conclusions, many will find it to be a wild and woolly romp through an alternate version of society where fact and fiction collide with surreal and stylish results.
The dialogue is over the top and purposefully rosy, with the all-star roster of actors clearly having fun delivering their lines, while the great-looking production possesses a stunning sense of visual craft, with textural compositions that are strikingly bold and frequently eye-blazing; this has all the hallmarks of a late-night classic, best viewed with some friends and with drink or two in hand, always at the ready for something sexy and fun.
Cullen, who is the founder of the multi-platform storytelling company Mirada, has a deep and successful background in commercials and music videos, and got his chance to play with a massive piece of storytelling for his feature debut; I’ll be curious to see what he does next, especially if he gets the chance to make a film and not become entangled in production nightmares.
He certainly understands how to put the visual and audio experiences of the pie together, as Toydrum’s musical score is brazen and fully alive at all times, and the sometimes surreal juxtapositions of archival footage mixed in with glossy cinematic artifice keeps the viewer disoriented and wondering what might happen next. Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro (Desperado, Jackie Brown, Pans Labyrinth) really earned his paycheck on this movie – every shot is luscious and worthy of being framed. Even simple set-ups take on an other-worldly quality, and make sure you stick around for the end credits as they are beautifully handled, as well as the opening bits of societal mayhem that help to inform the world you’re entering.
London Fields also has some of the most evocative production design in recent memory, which was handled by Jeremy Reed and a fleet of art directors who have given each set and space a singular sense of environment; the world is collapsing all around the characters in the story, and everything looks like it’s crumbling or nearing the brink of collapse, with humanity shining in for quick breaths of fresh air every now and again.
I’m unsure of how much this film cost to make, but I can guarantee you that it looks twice as expensive as it actually was to create. The films credits list a staggering number of producers and production companies who were involved in getting this project to the big-screen.
