NOTE: THIS AND ALL FUTURE SCREENINGS WILL BE AT THE BEACON ARTS VILLAGE, THE OLD TOWN HALL, ONE, THE QUADRANT, HOYLAKE CH47 2EE

DOORS OPEN 6.30pm. BAR AND FOOD AVAILABLE FROM 6.30 – 11.30 pm. FILM STARTS 7.30pm.

Year: 2008
Country: USA
Directed by: Tarsem Singh

Cast:
Lee Pace (Roy Walker / Black Bandit)
Catinca Untaru (Alexandria / Bandit’s daughter)
Justine Waddell (Nurse Evelyn / Sister Evelyn)
Daniel Caltagirone (Sinclair / Governor Odious)
Marcus Wesley (Ice delivery man / Otta Benga)
Jeetu Verma (Orange picker / Indian)
Kim Uylenbroek (Doctor / Alexander the Great)
Leo Bill (Orderly / Charles Darwin)
Emil Hostina (Alexandria’s father / Blue Bandit)
Julian Bleach (Mystic / Orange picker)
Ronald France (Otto / the “old man”)

Tarsem Singh’s Opus Magnum is a breathtaking CGI-free visual feast, revealed through the imagination of a child (an astonishing performance by first time actress, five-year-old Catinca Untaru).

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured movie stuntman (Lee Pace) begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm (Untaru), a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality blurs as the road trip tale advances, with hospital staff featuring in imagined roles, a similar device to that used in The Wizard of Oz (see 29 March).

Singh largely financed the film – shot over four years in more than 20 countries – with his own funds, determined to make the film according to his own vision, paying cast and crew on an equal basis rather than in more typical Hollywood fashion.

It is the gentle intimacy of the interactions in the hospital between actor Pace and Untaru that dazzle as much as the epic photography and scenes of the girl’s imagination, which play out as a mind-blowing sequence of increasingly bravura set action pieces. Director Singh, known for big budget advertising and music videos, confidently delivers a very personal project that knows no boundaries, and it is all the better for it. A rare gem.

117 mins. Cert 15