Shallow Grave
with Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor
Written by John Hodge
Directed by Danny Boyle
(Gramercy Pictures)
by Laura Kallio
It’s funny how money changes some people. Especially when it appears suddenly in the apartment of three not-so-virtuous roommates. That’s the premise of Shallow Grave, and the outcome is more often horrifying than humorous. Brutally so.
The film is set, almost entirely, in an Edinburgh flat shared by three professionals. They are Juliet (Kerry Fox), a doctor, an accountant named David (Christopher Eccleston), and a journalist, Alex, played by Ewan McGregor. Shallow Grave‘s action surrounds the three distinct characters, their motivations, desires, and how they play off one another.
None of them are particularly likeable. Each is plagued with more than the usual assortment of neurosis, and not one seems to possesses any sort of moral compass.
The real fun starts when a fourth flat-mate, Hugo (Keith Allen), enters the picture. A novelist, he claims, writing a book about the death of a priest. Within 24 hours of his arrival, however, Hugo is discovered dead from an apparent drug overdose. Under his bed, the remaining three find a suitcase bursting with cash.
Suddenly, the viewer is thrown into what appears to be a morality play. Keep the cash? Call the police? Or, do what the three flatmates decide, which won’t be revealed here. Suffice it to say, the lives of these three young people will be changed utterly.
Their course of action and reaction, designed to protect them, and line their wallets, inevitably entangles them in a horrifying web of greed, dismemberment, disillusion, delirium, and ultimately, death. We watch as three seemingly ordinary characters are overcome by the beast which potentially lurks within each of us. Their glib drawing room cynicism, which makes for a few good laughs in their normally uneventful lives, devolves into a morass of fearful and fearsome savagery when confronted with the danger and high stakes of ill-gotten gains.
Danny Boyle’s direction is really the star of this superb film. Shallow Grave‘s not-so-subtle shifts accelerate the film into a careening series of mind-bending hair-pin plot twists and turns. Because of these shocking surprises, the film relies heavily upon Boyle’s artful and well-crafted directorial technique. The character dialogue takes a back seat here to his film making sleight of hand. He never lets his viewers relax. We’re drawn in by our own reactions to the continual moral calamities faced by Juliet, David, and Alex. We’re disgusted at times by their actions and yet, as producer Andrew MacDonald had hoped, we find ourselves at times “laughing in the wrong places” and certainly, terrified in all the right ones.
