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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.35:1
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
  • None
  Extras
  • Cast/crew biographies
  • Featurette
  • Behind the scenes footage - B-Roll (on-set video) footage

The War Zone

Film Four/AV Channel . R4 . COLOR . 95 mins . R . PAL

  Feature
Contract

British actor Tim Roth has carved out a highly respected career for himself over the past couple of decades, with his move to the US leading to the roles that most moviegoers know him for, in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. While very good in those high-profile films, though, Roth has proved to be an immensely versatile actor in many lesser-known movies, and it’s not at all surprising that he would consider making the leap to film directing, joining the ranks of other new-breed actor-directors like Sean Penn and Gary Oldman.

The film that Roth chose to debut with, though, was surprising in the extreme. Based on Alexander Stuart’s novel of the same name, The War Zone tackles a topic that many will doubtless find distasteful, even within the confines of fictional drama. Incest (and the resulting child abuse) is hardly the stuff box-office dreams are made of - and indeed, as Roth has said, the subject is all too frequently dramatised poorly, writers and directors preaching to the audience without attempting to fully explore the circumstances surrounding it. Financed by the movie division of Britain’s innovative Channel Four, The War Zone takes a different approach, and is all the more confronting and thought provoking for that fact.

In the film’s opening act, we meet a family who appear to be nothing less than normal - happy most of the time, but with the inevitable rivalry and temper that is an intrinsic part of most families sometimes coming to the surface. This family have just moved from a suburban life in London to the beautiful but comparatively simple and remote Devon. Dad (Ray Winstone, who made a big impact recently in Gary Oldman's Nil By Mouth) is ready to adjust to their new life, while pregnant Mum (Tilda Swinton, best known to Australian audiences for her lead role in Orlando) isn’t quite as sure the move is permanent. Their 15 year-old son Tom, though, is already homesick; feeling alienated, bored and dislocated, he takes to observing the day-to-day machinations of his family. And then Tom chances to see an encounter between his openly promiscuous sister Jessie (Lara Belmont) and his father, though his suspicions are firmly denied by his sister. In the midst of the lonely Devon landscape, this family has already begun to unravel…

It would be unfair to give away too much of the plot of The War Zone; much of the film’s power comes from the relentless but unexpected way the story unfolds, and those seeing the film should not go in with preconceived ideas. Suffice to say that this is an extremely disturbing, sad and very, very confronting movie, and more than earns its R rating (in the US the film was substantially edited before release, but the version on this DVD is uncensored).

Proving to be yet another actor-turned director who is completely in tune with his cast and the script that they’re playing to, Tom Roth directs The War Zone with the sure hand of someone who’s spent a lifetime learning how to make movies - that this is his debut is nothing less than astonishing - every scene, every second in the film rings completely true, and there’s not a hint of melodrama to pull viewers away from the story and remind them they’re watching a work of fiction; the film is all the more powerful for that. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, shooting in anamorphic Panavision and using every inch of the wide frame to full advantage, captures the images in The War Zone with a remarkable visual style, the almost muted colour palette lending a genuine sense of time and place, with absence of light often saying more than anything the viewer can clearly see.

The acting is spot-on across the board, Ray Winstone’s performance both daring and accomplished. But it’s the two young lead actors, Freddie Cunliffe and Lara Belmont, who turn in the truly eye-opening performances. Both are brilliant, Belmont in particular turning in a brave, devastatingly believable performance for which enough superlatives cannot be found. The remarkable thing is that Cunliffe and Belmont both make their film debuts in The War Zone - and neither of them are professional actors, with Cunliffe landing the part by accident when he accompanied a friend to an audition, and Belmont spotted by the casting director while shopping at a market. As far as acting debuts go, these are two of the best you’ll ever see.

Superbly directed and photographed, acted with insight and to perfection, and with a startling screenplay by the novel’s author, The War Zone is a reminder about just how good cinema can be when corporate and commercial concerns are removed from the filmmaking process. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

  Video
Contract

Authored in Melbourne by The AV Channel’s own in-house team, this region 4 version of The War Zone presents the movie in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but is not 16:9 enhanced (it appears that the UK version is also non-anamorphic, though we’ve been unable to confirm this with any certainty). Despite this, the telecine transfer here is of such a remarkably high standard that the lack of anamorphic enhancement won’t be of concern to anyone bar the still-small family of 16:9 screen owners. Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography is very subtle and refined, and its unique palette and tone is captured perfectly here, looking near-perfect for most of the film’s running time. There are some very occasional problems with aliasing and shimmer, the worst of which can be seen during the end credits of the film - ironically, the section of the disc encoded at the highest bitrate. These artefacts would have been present on the master tape obtained by The AV Channel, and are problems either with the telecine transfer itself or with subsequent down-conversion to DVD resolution. Either way, it’s “only the credits” - outside of that, the occasional artefacts are not at all distracting. While encoded on a single layered disc, the bitrate here is quite high, as you’d expect with a 95-minute film with a single audio stream. This is, by the way, a disc that really should be viewed in a completely darkened room for the cinematography to have its intended impact.

  Audio
Contract

Originally mixed in Dolby Digital 5.1, The War Zone is presented here with two-channel matrixed Dolby Surround audio. To date The AV Channel (and Siren before them) have seemed reluctant to use 5.1 audio, implying that they may not yet be equipped to encode 5.1 - but in the case of The War Zone, the film’s emphasis on dialogue over all else makes this less of a problem than you’d expect. The Dolby Surround audio here is crystal-clear and mastered without any audible flaws of any kind, and serves the movie extremely well. Simon Boswell’s subtle but highly effective score is reproduced with warmth but without distracting from the drama. There’s very little surround activity throughout the film, nor is any needed.

  Extras
Contract

Despite the use of a single layered disc, some interesting extras have made it onto the disc here. Curiously - and somewhat annoyingly - the extras menus start self-navigating if left alone for a while, providing what appears to be intended as a kind of “extras slideshow” or demo. The menus, by the way, are all straightforward but very stylish, which seems to be The AV Channel’s house policy.

Behind The Scenes: Running to six and a half minutes, this is best described as the British version of a promotional EPK-style featurette, though in this case there is actually some useful and interesting information to be found within - albeit with the use of a little too much footage from the film itself. Definitely worth a watch.

Shooting The Film: Eight and a half minutes of raw, unedited “B-roll” video footage, obviously intended for use as source material for TV programs doing stories on the movie. While many find b-roll material boring and a waste of disc space, this writer actually welcomes the inclusion of such footage on DVDs - it’s never less than fascinating to get a glimpse of the actual production process without being bothered by cheesy narration or gee-whiz editing. Movie obsessives and film students alike will find material of interest here, but those hoping for a documentary should not venture in. Presented full-frame, the video quality is exemplary. Most of this material was captured during location shooting.

Theatrical Trailer: A brave attempt to sell the film to audiences without either giving too much away or offending people, this trailer doesn’t quite manage to capture the film’s mood or intent. It’s presented full-frame, which gives the viewer an idea of just how terrible this movie would look on full-frame VHS.

About The Cast: Four very brief biographies for the principal cast. More detail and filmographies would, as always have been welcome.

About The Director: A paragraph about Tim Roth, who deserves substantially more.

  Overall  
Contract

The War Zone is an unassuming classic - a movie that meets a controversial subject head-on and presents the resulting story with true humanity and insight; it’s simultaneously one of the most moving and one of the most disturbing films you’ll have seen. A masterful directorial debut from Tim Roth, it even survives the utterly dreadful back-cover blurb, which is embarrassingly tacky (“The War Zone rips apart one of society’s last remaining taboos… See it once, talk about it forever”) - such an inspired piece of filmmaking deserves far better than such patronising shock-horror pulp, even if it is a difficult film to sum up and sell.

Still, The AV Channel has delivered a high-quality DVD of The War Zone that, while not perfect, presents a unique film exceptionally well. Very highly recommended.


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      And I quote...
    "It is, quite simply, a masterpiece."
    - Anthony Horan
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Rom:
          Pioneer 103(s)
    • MPEG Card:
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    • TV:
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    • Receiver:
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    • Speakers:
          Klipsch Tangent 500
    • Surrounds:
          Jamo
    • Audio Cables:
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    • Video Cables:
          Monster s-video
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