Life imitates art
in
Son of Rambow
, perhaps the most
well-received film at the festival and certainly the most
crowd-pleasing. This tale of two young British boys making a
movie was made by two Brits who are young at heart:
the artistic team Hammer & Tongs (aka Garth
Jennings and Nick Goldsmith) who are responsible for
some of the most inventive music videos of the last decade.
If you can remember the anthropomorphized milk carton
from Blur's
Coffee & TV
, or the elongated
muppet musicians of Supergrass's
Pumping on
Your Stereo
, you'll appreciate just how
well-suited these two are to make a film about
childhood imagination, and how lucky they were to find child
actors as marvelously inventive as they are.
Young Will
Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is the kind of kid without very many
friends. Born into a strict Plymouth Brethren family, he
isn't allowed to listen to the radio or even
watch TV. The latter mandate gets Will exiled to the
hallway when his class puts on a nature documentary, and
it's there that he meets charming troublemaker
Lee Carter (Will Poulter), who promptly shanghais Will
into making a stunt-laden, homegrown Rambo sequel that
they will direct together. Since it's the eighties,
and they're still in elementary school, neither
boy has many resources besides his imagination, but
the film is a love letter to art made under duress. Even
the letter "w" added to the title of their
film (
Son of Rambow
) to avoid copyright infringement
ends up giving it a personality all its own.
Anyone
who's ever spent time on a film set will appreciate
the affectionate ways this film parodies the
experience, but that knowledge isn't vital to
enjoying
Son of Rambow
. The two boys'
excitement is contagious, and their unlimited imagination is
so well-realized by the Hammer & Tongs crew that
every frame bursts with loving detail. There's
a memorable scene where the sheltered Will watches
Rambo: First Blood
for the first time and his
mind reels from the amazing sights on display. It's
hard not to feel the same way watching this.
