#616: BOYLE, Danny: Shallow Grave (1994)
BOYLE, Danny (United Kingdom)
Other Boyle films in the Collection:
#1204: Trainspotting (1996)
The Film
Like the Coens' Blood Simple (1984) {Spine #834}, Boyle's directorial debut is a stunning success.
Commentary
Video diary
Shallow Grave [1994]
Spine #616
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
The diabolical thriller Shallow Grave was the first film from director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald, and screenwriter John Hodge (the smashing team behind Trainspotting). In it, three self-involved Edinburg roommates — played by Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor, in his first starring role — take in a brooding boarder, and when he dies of an overdose, leaving a suitcase full of money, the trio embark on a series of very bad decisions, with extraordinarily grim consequences for all. Macabre but with a streak of offbeat humor, this stylistically influential tale of guilt and derangement is a full-throttle bit of Hitchcockian nastiness.
93 minutes
Color
Color
2.0 Surround
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2012
Director/Writers
Danny Boyle was 38 when he directed Shallow Grave.
Written by John Hodge.
Other Boyle films in the Collection:
#1204: Trainspotting (1996)
The Film
Like the Coens' Blood Simple (1984) {Spine #834}, Boyle's directorial debut is a stunning success.
Faced with a tiny budget (£1 million), he spent a good deal of it on the apartment set and used Hodge's amazing script to sculpt a delicious black comedy.
Of the three leads, only Kerry Fox (Juliet) was a known entity and draw for the investors. Ewan McGregor (Alex) and Christopher Eccleston (David) were just beginning their careers in film.
The pulse-pounding techno track which opens the film (by Leftfield) is accompanied by a sped-up visual of the street outside the apartment // cut to the winding staircase leading up to the apartment's front door.
It seems almost impossible that Tom Tykwer was not influenced by this a few years later for the opening of Run Lola Run (1998), which also features a similar staircase and very similar music!
The terrific soundtrack also features the wonderful Nina Simone version of My Baby Just Cares for Me. [Initially, the producers were unable to afford it, but it made the final cut after additional funding was acquired after the Cannes premiere ...]
**
An example of how Hodge's script injects episodes of levity into the dark subject matter occurs when Juliet is buying a plane ticket to Rio:
SALESMAN (Tony Curran)
(Hunched over his computer screen)
October 15th, direct flight, London Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro, British Airways, you are looking at seven hundred and sixty-five pounds. Seven six five.
JULIET
That sounds fine.
SALESMAN
Air Portugal, on the other hand, via Lisbon, same day, five hundred and sixty-five. Five six five. It's up to you. Catering important?
JULIET
What?
SALESMAN
Air France. Glasgow. Direct, but then you're looking at the wrong end of nine hundred and twelve pounds. That's nine one two. It's up to you.
JULIET
Well, the first one's fine. Heathrow direct.
SALESMAN
It's up to you. Air Patagonia. New outfit: via Caracas and Bogota. No catering. Four hundred and eleven pounds. Four one one. Good value, but refueling at Bogota is variable.
JULIET (getting annoyed)
The first one was fine.
SALESMAN
Well, it's up to you. Seven six five. How will you be paying?
"In the early 1990s, mainstream British cinema seemed to be sinking into a comfortable mulch of Austenry and Dickensiana — tastefully made, well-acted, impeccably mounted period literary adaptations, guaranteed to upset nobody. The energy of the eighties that had given rise to such diverse hits as The Long Good Friday (Spine #26), Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, The Company of Wolves, and My Beautiful Laundrette (Spine #767) had dissipated. Mike Leigh and Ken Loach were still in top form, but their politically aware, social-realist work was never intended for a mass audience. It took a trio of feature film first-timers — director Boyle, screenwriter Hodge, and producer Andrew Macdonald — to shake things up, with a movie that, in Boyle's words, dispensed with 'the moral baggage that British films carry around all the time.'"
Commentary
- By director Boyle.
- By screenwriter Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald.
Both commenataries are excellent — informative, funny and honest.
Interview
Piece featuring actors Eccleston, Fox, and McGregor.
Digging Your Own Grave
A 1993 documentary by director Kevin Macdonald on the making of the film.
Digging Your Own Grave
A 1993 documentary by director Kevin Macdonald on the making of the film.
Video diary
By Andrew and Kevin Macdonald from the 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival, where they shopped around the script for Shallow Grave.
Trailer
Trailer
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