8 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Thursday 30 January 2020

ARTS

Charismatic voice: Sturgill Simpson

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney

Sturgill Simpson — nominally a country

musician, but too footloose for generic

labelling — is touring a rock-and-roll

beast of an album,Sound & Fury. It’s the

kind of record that requires the Tennes-

seean and his sidemen to be roaring

around Europe in a fleet of tooled-up

muscle cars fromMad Max: Fury Road, a

crew of desperados cutting a swath

across the continent with pyrotechnic

explosions and apocalyptic axe heroics.

The reality, of course, is different.

Touring buses, budget airlines, hotels:

these are the lot of the modern touring

musician. And venue restrictions, too.

From the start of his set, Simpson had a

wary eye on the Forum’s curfew, even

though it lay more than two hours away.

An audience lacking fire-breathing,

bare-chested maniacs was condemned

as “docile”, and — the goading went up a

notch — not as lively as the Germans a

few nights ago.

Simpson relishes breaking rules. His

2014 albumMetamodern Sounds in Coun-

try Musicwas named like a work of

French cultural theory: not the done

thing in Nashville. 2016’s Grammy-

winningA Sailor’s Guide to Earthwas a

country-soul epic about fatherhood:

Nashville syrup was withheld.Sound &

Furywas inspired by showbiz ennui and

readingMacbeth. Its songs crank up the

riffs, unleash the drums and come with

a Netflix anime film depicting mind-

boggling feats of cartoon destruction.

(Simpson got a taste for anime while sta-

tioned in Japan with the US Navy.)

The film cost $1.2m. Even for a suc-

cessful act like Simpson, that kind of

outlay represents a swaggering act of

hell-yeah self-assertion. Some compen-

satory scrimping appears to have taken

place with his live show. He was accom-

panied by his regular backing band:

drummerMiles Miller, bassist Chuck

Bartels and keyboardist Bobby Emmett.

The lighting was static, just a row of

red lights. There were no visuals from

the anime.

Instead of following a setlist, Simpson

and his band picked songs according to

their mood and that of the audience — a

delicate process of intuition and com-

promise that didn’t always come off.

Positioned relatively deep on the stage,

the foursome created a literal gap with

the rest of the venue. The risk of discon-

nection was apparent as early as the sec-

ond track, a clumpy cover of Eric Clap-

ton’s Derek and the Dominos song “Bell

Bottom Blues”.

“The drunker you get, the better we

play,” Simpson announced. That’s fine

logic for a bar band tearing it up in a

sweaty dive off Highway 666, but trick-

ier to apply in a concert hall of 2,300.

When the chemistry flared, however, he

showed his quality.Sound & Fury’s “Sing

Along” was fast disco-rock, all ZZ Top

riffs and maximum velocity, while

“Fastest Horse in Town” was a hard-

hitting wall-of-sound rocker in the tra-

dition of Led Zeppelin.

Simpson played guitar with intensity

and barked out lyrics in a charismatic

chest voice. The loudest songs went

down best, but he and his band also

found their groove in less obviously

forceful moments, such as the pairing of

two ballads towards the end of the set,

“Oh Sarah” and “Breakers Roar”.

By then the audience was thinning

out, perhaps having expected a more

high-octane ride. Those prepared to

look beyond idealised expectations

found a different set of rewards.

sturgillsimpson.com

Going where the mood takes him

PO P

Sturgill Simpson

Forum, London

aaaee

A

nyone who has spent time

by the coast has learnt their

lesson — never trust the

seagulls. Alfred Hitchcock

knew as much, making

them the ringleaders ofThe Birds. So too

The Lighthouse, a wilfully ridiculous —

and ridiculously enjoyable — slice of

nautical hokum set in the 1890s on a

meagre island off New England. The

stars are Robert Pattinson and Willem

Dafoe, but only, you suspect, with the

consent of the birds that noisily haunt

the tower of the title, peering in the win-

dows and, in due course, decisively

intervening in the plot.

Humanity is outnumbered. Head-

count: two. Pattinson is junior keeper

Ephraim Winslow, arriving for a fixed-

term obligation. Regarding him with

scabrous amusement is his superior,

Thomas Wake (Dafoe), a diabolical

Birdseye whose beyond-salty manner is

of a piece with the surroundings.

Framed by director Robert Eggers in

antiqued black and white, the light-

house juts out of a murk-grey seascape.

The wind is picking up.

Duties — mostly centred on swabbing

— are performed by Winslow to Wake’s

loud dissatisfaction. At evening meals,

the older man insists on bonhomie.

“Now’s the time to gab and chatter,”

he leers, demanding his colleague join

him in a toast, drink against regulations

but soon obligatory. (Safer than the

water, better at blotting out time than

food.) Rules bleed into superstition. Cue

the gulls.

Stranger yet, only Wake — and on this

he is adamant — can tend the actual lan-

tern, ascending alone to the top of the

lighthouse each night until, for all that

he is already sick of the sight of him,

Winslow is moved to peeping. What

does he expect to see? Certainly notthat.

Around now you might find yourself

asking, what exactly isThe Lighthouse

anyway? A horror film? The best answer

may be that it isn’t not. Eggers’s last

movie wasThe Witch, a folk-occult tale

set among 17th-century Puritans. Here

too, he likes our palms clammy. As

alone, the film has the purity of Buster

Keaton, Winslow reduced to a stick fig-

ure, executing chores in a horizontal

gale on a sodden rock in an ocean that

hates him. That squawk you hear is the

seagulls, laughing.

This far into his career, nothing in a

Clint Eastwood film is there by accident.

So it proves in his 38th film as a director,

Richard Jewell. If the name is familiar,

memory will lead you back to the 1996

Atlanta Olympics, where, in the middle

of the games, a pipe bomb exploded in

the city’s Centennial Park, killing one

and injuring more than 100 others. The

toll would have been far worse without

the courage of Jewell — played by Paul

Walter Hauser — a local security guard

who found the device and helped clear

the park.

Which, the film makes clear, shortly

ruins his life. After a glitterstorm of pub-

lic gratitude, the FBI appoints Jewell

chief suspect, accused of planting the

bomb himself to confect his heroism. At

a glance, it fits — a socially uncertain

rent-a-cop yearning to serve in the real

police, with an eye-popping cache of

guns in his bedroom.

Eastwood being Eastwood, much

emphasis is placed on the FBI focusing

inquiries on white males (no mention

is made of Timothy McVeigh’s Okla-

homa City bombing just a year earlier).

Don’t worry, Jewell’s mother Bobi

(Kathy Bates) tells him: “You’re still the

good guy.”

But good guys need bad guys, on

which Eastwood has never stinted.

Minor villains include the prissy college

president who first points the finger at

Jewell (these book-learning types).

Worse are the federal government and

media. The former is represented by

FBI agent Tom Shaw ( Jon Hamm), a

chiselled careerist and screenwriter’s

composite. His partner-in-crime is

Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde), the real

reporter who named Jewell as under

investigation, presented here as Lois

Lane’s evil twin. The adjectives with

which the film has Jewell’s lawyer

Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell)

denounce her tell their own story:

“Ignorant, arrogant —ambitious!”

But by this point Eastwood has

already shown Scruggs — who died in

2001 — trading sex for stories, a scene

with no apparent basis in fact, a creative

decision that overshadows the vivid

performance of Hauser and Eastwood’s

knack of mounting high drama in strip

malls and bungalows. Nothing is acci-

dental in a Clint Eastwood film — such is

the shame ofRichard Jewell.

Marielle Heller’s dramaA Beautiful

Day in the Neighborhoodcould double

as a Rorschach test, scrutinising your

response to the real-life Fred Rogers

(Tom Hanks), beloved staple of Ameri-

can children’s television. An impossibly

gentle man in tomato-red knitwear, his

life’s work isMister Rogers’ Neighbor-

hood, a show whose ethos of small kind-

nesses and no judgment carries into

every aspect of his life off-screen. A

potentially key detail — he works closely

with puppets, treated as both colleagues

and friends.

For every ticket holder instantly

charmed, another will assume they’re

watching the new David Lynch. Another

complication will be the cultural chasm

in which American audiences will see an

actual relic of their childhoods, while

elsewhere — not least in Britain, where

former giants of children’s TV have a

grisly reputation — the whole premise

might be taken for fiction. Still, even in

his own country, Rogers made enough

eyes narrow for the film to take shape, at

first, as a detective story.

The bloodhound is Lloyd Vogel (Mat-

thew Rhys), essentially the anti-Fred, a

studiedly cynical New York magazine

writer with a primal wound for a family

history. Vexed at being assigned a celeb-

rity profile, Lloyd starts work instead on

the piece he would rather had been

commissioned — an investigation into

the truth behind Mister Rogers.

By the time he reaches the set of

the show, we have beaten him to it —

the movie beginning with a pastiche of

its opening sequence that sets a meta

tone and suggests a certain omnipo-

tence in Fred. Now, Rogers introduces

his visitor: “Everyone, this is Lloyd

Vogel — he’s a wonderful writer.” From

anybody else, the line would imply a

canny understanding of journalists.

Vogel goes for the throat anyway, only to

see his loaded questions bounce off his

target. Returning home, despondency

reigns: “He’s just about the nicest per-

son I’ve ever met.”

The pair continue their acquaintance.

The more emotionally available Rogers

is, the worse Lloyd looks, as if having a

bad reaction to a flu jab. As his exposé

deflates, we are left with something else

to chew on. What if the real issue is not

whether Mister Rogers is endlessly kind

and empathetic — buthow? The further

matter ofwhyis the film’s weak spot,

although a clue lies in the pause after

Lloyd’s rawest provocation, involving

not just the Rogers family — but cruel

remarks about the puppets. For a

moment where others would retaliate,

Hanks holds his tongue. His eyes say:

I choose not to.

If the self-aware opening leaves

you braced for bad outcomes (industrial

tweeness, sub-Charlie Kaufman rabbit

holes), the minor miracle is that the

film feels at once adventurous and

classically simple. And of all things,

lovely — as disarmingly, implausibly so

as Mister Rogers.

Hokum, horror

and seagulls

Impossibly

gentle: Tom

Hanks as Mister

Rogers in ‘A

Beautiful Day

in the

Neighborhood’

The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers

AAAAE

Richard Jewell

Clint Eastwood

AAEEE

A Beautiful Day in the

Neighborhood

Marielle Heller

AAAAE

FILM

Danny

Leigh

conversation turns to previous keepers

and an axe gleams in the corner, the

nods toThe Shiningare forceful enough

for neck strain.

But even more than Kubrick, Eggers

nudges into knowing comedy. Dafoe

is the figurehead, cranking up the

barnacle-o-meter until Pattinson finally

snaps: “You sound like a parody!” The

longer the film goes on, the weirder it

getsandthe more it resembles a sitcom

—The Odd Couplein sou’westers, a droll

symphony of bodily functions, bubbling

friction and all manner of desires that

dare not speak their name.

The results say plenty about the male

psyche. (The least of it a vicious squab-

ble about Wake’s cooking: “Yer fond of

me lobster ain’t ye?” asks a near-tearful

Dafoe.) Elsewhere, when Pattinson is

From left,

Sam Rockwell,

Kathy Bates and

Paul Walter

Hauser in

‘Richard Jewell’

Odd couple:

Willem Dafoe

and Robert

Pattinson in

‘The Lighthouse’

JANUARY 30 2020 Section:Features Time: 29/1/2020 - 18: 10 User: david.cheal Page Name: ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition: LON, 8 , 1