Tyrannosaur

February 7th, 2012

Tyrannosaur is a hard-hitting, bleak story of one alcoholic widower tearing himself to pieces in the midlands. Following a sudden and bloody breakdown of sorts within the first thirty seconds of the film, Joseph (Peter Mullan) meets Hannah (Olivia Coleman), an apparently wholesome charity shop worker who at first appears as a kind of saviour to Joseph, until her own deep secrets surface and threaten to send him back to his old violent ways.

This is not a film that pulls any punches. The oppressive atmosphere is relentless and often it feels as though there is simply no way out. Even the one more jovial scene (a funeral) serves as a kind of self aware siren song; its attempt to lull you into a sense of security serves only to build a great foreboding due to the abject horror that surrounds it. The claustrophobic atmosphere, coupled with characters that turn on a knife-edge make for so many uncomfortable moments that, for better or for worse, this film is likely to stay with you.

Mullan’s Joseph is a cornered animal. A wounded, snapping creature too used to violence but longing for a pat on the head he probably doesn’t deserve. There’s so much conflict here and Mullan manages to make himself all at once detestable and relatable. A perfect counterpoint to this, and by far the most impressive performance, is Olivia Coleman as Hannah. Hannah is always on the brink, she’s a cluster of nerves and where Joseph’s anger is a thrashing beast on a chain, hers is a prison cell filling with water. The performances are frankly outstanding, each character has to be so many things to make this work and each one is executed with a kind of glaring subtlety that just combines to make Tyrannosaur as affecting as it is.

Paddy Considine shows great skill as a writer and director and the whole film is scratched through with an impressively bleak and disconcerting hyper-realism. It looks like most of the film was shot in available light, meaning expressionless skies, desaturated colours and lots and lots of horrible, horrible details. The music is the only incongruous thing about Tyrannosaur and only infrequently. For the most part it’s a haunting and niggling ambience that underpins the tone of the film, occasionally however, a vocal track will come in and just pull you out of it a bit. It’s not a huge issue, but enough to be noticeable. What’s really striking though are the scenes that are completely devoid of music; there are quite a few of these and they’re expertly chosen because they in no way try to sanitise the issues present in the script.

Tyrannosaur is undeniably a good film but it’s hard to recommend to a lot of audiences. It is intelligent, gripping and uncompromising and those interested in hard-hitting drama and gritty realism might find a new holy grail here. But anyone looking for a date movie or a film about dinosaurs will be in for more than they bargained for.

Words > Thom Haley

Tags: Blu Ray, dvd, Eddie Marsan, film, Olivia Coleman, Paddy Considine, Peter Mullan, Studio Canal, Tyrannosaur