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Family dramas

It’s family ties that bind together a superhero story, a horror tale and a rom-com. Yaroslav Walker’s review sheds light on what these ties unexpectedly reflect, as he reviews Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, Knock at the Cabin, and What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Father and daughter super heroes stand and look to the left.
Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd play Cassie Lang and her father Scott Lang - Ant-Man.
Marvel Studios

Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania is the latest release from the Marvel Empire (in whose shadow we all live). The Empire is very much faltering. The main (sensible) criticisms levelled at the Marvel franchise are formulaic films and over-complicated stories that require you to not only have watched all the relevant films in the series, but also now the various TV series pumped out by Disney Plus. Ant-Man doesn’t fix them. 

The plot sees Scott Lang enjoying a happy life: adored by a grateful public and with lots of time to spend with his partner Hope and his daughter Cassie. However, Cassie has grown up since ‘the snap’ and is now protesting injustice and getting arrested. Scott wonders how he can best re-connect with Cassie and make up for the five years he lost. This bonding is interrupted when all the heroes are sucked into the Quantum Realm by Kang who wishes to use the Ant-Man powers to retrieve a thing to escape the thing to do a bad thing… no sorry, it’s just ridiculous, I have no idea what is going on! 

I’m a nerd and a fan, but even I sat there and got depressed at how incomprehensible and inconsequential it all felt. A simple ‘hero must retrieve object to save loved-ones’ plot groans under the sheer amount of exposition and world-building and forced emotional plotting. The first fifteen minutes are a passable family drama, and then everything is just CGI and battles and quips – SO MANY QUIPS! 

Nothing is able to sit as a dramatic moment: immediately a joke, or a quip, or a gag has to be rammed down our throats.

The CGI is fine, but so great a surfeit gives the drama a weightlessness, making it impossible to invest in. The script…well…looking up Jeff Loveness’ previous writing credits was illuminating. He has written for pop-culture virus Rick & Morty and that influence is everywhere. Nothing is able to sit as a dramatic moment: immediately a joke, or a quip, or a gag has to be rammed down our throats, meaning weightless CGI is only compounded by a script that revels is cynicism rather than in character. This is the bloated Marvel writing formula: schoolboy humour must undercut every dramatic moment. 

Paul Rudd can do this in his sleep, and at times looks like he is. Evangeline Lily is meaningfully absent. Michael Douglas is enjoyable enough as a bumbling octogenarian ant-enthusiast. The real emotional weight of the film comes from Michelle Pfeiffer and Jonathan Majors. Pfeiffer’s Janet is a haunted and scarred heroine, lying to escape a past she cannot outrun. She brings genuine depth and tension to the film, especially in her scenes with Majors. He is masterful as Kang, bringing both a physical and emotional presence that is wonderfully intimidating. He takes the work seriously, giving us a Shakespearean villain who is neither hammy nor po-faced. I’m a little peeved that yet again Marvel is giving us a ‘conflicted villain’ (it would be nice to have a battle between good and evil, black and white, rather than just shades of grey) but Majors is so good he won me over. Overall, it’s a slog and not worth seeing unless one is a Marvel completist.  

2 stars. 

Knock at the Cabin

A close-up of a father holding his daughter close to his face.
Eric and Wen, played by Kristen Cui and Jonathan Groff.

Having sat through the literary assault of the Ant-Man script, I dreaded Knock at the Cabin. I have a soft-spot for M. Night Shyamalan, but his scripts are clanger-city. They’re exercises in verbiage (irony noted) that one endures to enjoy a good spook. I was pleasantly surprised, and silently grateful to co-writers Steve Desmon and Michael Sherman for reining in the worst of the ‘M.Night-isms’.  

It is an efficient chiller. Eric and Andrew have brought their adoptive daughter Wen to a secluded cabin for a holiday. This turns into a hostage situation when four seeming strangers with odd weapons take them hostage and demand the family sacrifice one of their own to stop the coming apocalypse. As the drama unfolds we learn the four home-invaders are just ordinary people who have put their faith in visions that have led them to this action. As time runs out and people die the family is left to weigh the dreadful moral problem before them. 

The film delivers its tension well – Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography elevating mundane conversations to new heights of the uncanny with shallow-focus and tilted cameras. The performances are solid. It’s nice to see Rupert Grint on the big-screen again, and Jonathan Groff brings a compassionate vulnerability to the character of Eric. The standout has to be David Bautista as the de facto leader of the attackers. He plays off his imposing physical presence perfectly, creating a shy and nebbish personality, unfailingly polite and apologetic. It heightens the tension throughout the entire film and the viewer wonders when or even if this hulking mass will lose violent control. 

The film departs from its sources conclusion (2018’s The Cabin at the End of the World) to strike a more obviously tragic but also optimistic and possibly even Christian tone. It’s worth a watch on a rainy afternoon.  

3.5 stars. 

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

A couple stand and smile at a Pakistani wedding celebration.
Shazad Latif and Lily James play Kazim and Cath.

From a dud-script, to a better-than-expected script, to a great rom-com script. What’s Love Got to Do With It? is the first screenplay by Jemima Khan, and it is a terrific debut. Khan presents the tale of Zoe, who tries to boost her career as a documentary film maker by documenting the arranged-marriage of her Pakistani childhood friend Kaz. From the first meeting with the matchmaker to the big day itself Zoe learns about a culture and a practice that is completely alien to her own understanding… but perhaps she’ll learn something about it, and about herself. Is ‘assisted-marriage’ as it is now called ("Oh, like assisted-suicide" Zoe quips) a regressive practice? Is the world of Western dating a freeing alternative? Is there something to learn from allowing commitment to come first, and romance and love to build over time? What lengths will one go to in an effort to please their family? 

It’s just lovely. Really lovely. A laugh-out-loud script that reminded me of Richard Curtis via Gurinder Chadha, a story that takes you from A to B with very few surprises (if you want intrigue don’t see a rom-com) but plenty of smiles, perfectly pitched performances, and a refreshing take on the notions of romance and marriage. All of this is tied together with a sublime turn by Emma Thompson. She steals every scene as Zoe’s politically incorrect and gaffe-prone mother. Every time she was on screen I was somewhere between guffawing and wetting myself with laughter. I’ve seen it twice now and loved it both times, but what’s more important, my wife loved it almost more than I did. If I had one complaint, it is that in a noble effort to conform to the great rom-com formula, Khan doesn’t quite seem to have the courage in her convictions. There is a fascinating, heart-warming, and genuinely positive portrayal of assisted marriage throughout the film…but the laws of rom-coms are such that romance must win out. It’s only a small quibble, and it doesn’t ruin the film; but I was left slightly deflated that this exploration felt incomplete. Still…a small criticism. It’s wonderful. Go and see it!  

4.5 stars. 

The family dynamic  

Three very different films – horror, superhero, rom-com – with a common theme: family. Each film has the family dynamic as a driving force for the narrative. In Knock at the Cabin we have an ‘alternative family’ struggling not only with the trolley-problem on steroids, but also with doubt and constant suspicion. Is this real or a homophobic attack? Is our family chosen because people don’t believe we are a family? What does it mean to be a family that is entirely ‘chosen’? In Ant-Man the supposed emotional drive is Scott’s desperate wish to be part of his daughter’s life and make-up for lost time. There is a wonderful opportunity for tension and conflict when Kang (master of time as well as dimensions) offers to reward Scott by sending him back to before the snap to live out his daughter’s teenage years…squandered by sloppy storytelling, but a fascinating thought. In What’s Love Got to Do with It? Kaz is driven to seeking assisted marriage out of a sense of loyalty to his family, and the wish to begin a new one. 

Each film posits the family structure and the family relationship as fundamental to human life, and the base motivation for human action: fight to reunite family, marry to please family, let the world burn to preserve family. For Christianity this is not a simple issue. Christianity has inherited a great deal from its Jewish roots, and fecundity and family-life is viewed as a good. Family life is presupposed by St Paul when writing advice on how a bishop ought to behave, and the family is often called the ‘aboriginal church’: the simplest unit through which the Christian faith is taught and practised. 

And yet… Jesus refuses to see His mother and brothers and calls those listening to His teachings His mother and brothers; Jesus says that we will not have husbands and wives in the new heaven and new earth; Jesus also says to follow Him rather than bury our father; St Paul consistently argues that a single life devoted to God is to be preferred to marriage; the visions of Revelation suggest our time will be rather taken up with the worship of God (leaving little time to play catch or have a Sunday roast or argue over a game of Monopoly). 

In seeking to heal their familial wounds Scott and Cassie nearly destroy the multiverse; and please don’t believe that it’s their love that saves it…Michael Douglas and his giant ants save the multiverse.

For the Christian, family life is not and cannot be the highest good, for to make anything other than God one’s ultimate good is dangerous folly. In seeking to heal their familial wounds Scott and Cassie nearly destroy the multiverse; and please don’t believe that it’s their love that saves it…Michael Douglas and his giant ants save the multiverse. On a smaller scale, Kaz nearly destines himself to a life of misery in an effort to please his family. M. Night departs from his literary source to give a hopeful ending: rather than sticking as a family in the face of an apocalypse they could avert, Groff’s Eric chooses to sacrifice himself. Like all good things, family ties and family loyalties and family loves can be just as destructive as they are life-giving. 

The truth about the family that Christianity teaches is that the family is a wonderful and holy gift from God insofar as it reflects the goodness of God. Marriage is good and holy because it reflects and symbolises the love that Jesus has for His Church. Procreation is good because it fulfils God’s command for humanity to be fruitful. Family life is good because it is a space in which Christian love is able to flourish.  

As soon as we forget that family life is a reflection of God, family life becomes a burden – and this is so easy to do. We can fetishise family life, demonise or diminish those who do not have a family, ignore those who are happily single; and all of this is wrong and hurtful and damaging. The epitome of the family in the Christian worldview is one where the completely self-giving love, which we see perfectly in Jesus Christ, is allowed to grow and flourish. Oddly enough, this is why Knock at the Cabin has the most Christian depiction of family life. In spite of it being a gay couple with an adopted child (not an uncontroversial idea in the modern Church) it is the one family that demonstrates the principle of sacrificing one’s self for the good of the other. That is what family is – a place where we learn to be willing to die for those we love, and even for those we have never met, and so modelling the Jesus who dies for the sins of the world. 

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Transformer: how Jurgen Klopp gave belief to a team and city

Neil Atkinson talks about his new biography of the redemptive Liverpool manager.
A stern looking football manager stares hard, with a stand of supporters behind him.

“But also I am shyer than everything would suggest.” It’s genuinely a surprise to hear this early on in my conversation with Neil Atkinson about his new book, Transformer: Klopp, the Revolution of a Club and Culture. Anyone who has heard him speak on The Anfield Wrap podcast, or many of his other media appearances, might soon get this impression that this is a man who thrives off the company of others, something that comes through in the book, too.  

Atkinson is so keen to stress the notion that football is meant to be shared with others, that any thought of him being shy really does jar. As if to make my point, when I begin by asking him why he wrote Transformer, he begins the story back in the ’21-22 season, the one he’s “almost got the most fondness for” from Jürgen Klopp’s time as Liverpool manager.  

The reason? “The redemption after the season under Covid and the idea of everyone being back together.” 

Redemption may end up being the word that best summarises Klopp’s career. An average-at-best footballer himself, he began his managerial career at Mainz 05 where he secures near-miraculous promotion to the Bundesliga in 2004, shortly followed by relegation again. He then moves to Borussia Dortmund, beating presumptive champions Bayern Munich to a Bundesliga title, before the team implodes, prompting Klopp’s resignation in 2015. Later that year, he joins Liverpool, a sleeping giant of European football that finds itself at a remarkably low ebb in its history having narrowly missed out on a long-awaited premier league title in the 2013-14 season. He leaves a much-transformed Liverpool nine years later, having been crowned English champions, European champions, and world champions in the intervening years.  

Klopp also seems to relish redemption stories in his squad, too. Jordon Henderson is nearly sold by Liverpool before Klopp arrives; Klopp makes him captain and he lifts nearly every trophy possible. Klopp signs Andy Robertson from relegated Hull FC; along with Trent Alexander-Arnold, they drastically re-invent the attacking fullback role in modern football. Chelsea reject Mo Salah who then joins Liverpool in 2017; under Klopp he becomes one of the best players in the world, and will go down in history as a genuine Liverpool legend.  

Klopp loves a redemption story because he loves people, values them, and believes in them. He loves to see people redeemed; at their best. 

 

“Liverpool is also uniquely placed – in the way that, I would argue for instance, Baltimore wasn’t – to be able to be a part of global storytelling, but on a uniquely local basis.” 

It’s fitting, then, that Transformer is a book steeped in friendship. In offering his own retelling of Klopp’s nine years as Liverpool manager, the shyer-than-you-might-think Neil Atkinson does so in conversation with the people and places he knows and loves best, and invites you, the reader, to swap in your own. “I’m going to name people and places and they won’t be the same people and places as your people, but that’s fine to substitute; you’ll sort this out. I trust you.”  

This was, it turns out, a conscious choice on his part. “I think that too often now in lots of storytelling, the idea of removing specifics is a real shame … I love The Wire. The Wire could only happen in Baltimore and there’s tons of reasons why, but there’s lots of aspects of that could be made more universal, [for example,] literally the way they talk to each other. But there’s great slabs of The Wire where they’re talking about a Baltimore radio station, because that’s the way people speak [there].”  

To tell the story of Klopp’s time as Liverpool manager is also to tell the story of the city throughout this time. Bill Shankly once famously said: “I was made for Liverpool, and Liverpool was made for me.” At times it has felt as though no-one has come as close to this as Klopp has. For Atkinson, the city’s particular culture and place in society is part of what makes the football club such a compelling team to follow for many around the world. “Liverpool is also uniquely placed – in the way that, I would argue for instance, Baltimore wasn’t – to be able to be a part of global storytelling, but on a uniquely local basis.” 

The language of ‘doubt’, ‘belief’, ‘hope’, and ‘community’ that permeate Klopp’s vocabulary seem to be shaped by the faith and hope he carries with him. 

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This, in turn, is why Klopp’s story is the city’s story. “All of that, I think, is part of why putting that [locality] central really, really matters. And I think it’s never mattered more, ironically, than while Liverpool have gone through a bit of a global explosion under Jürgen Klopp. Many people are bought in because of what they see happening locally withing Liverpool.”  

The story of the city and its people also goes some way to explaining the connection Klopp managed to cultivate with the fans. In his first press conference as Liverpool manager, one throwaway line took on a life of its own and became the motto of Klopp’s tenure: “You have to change from a doubter to a believer.”  

When I ask Atkinson why this phrase resonated so much with fans, again the city itself looms large. “I think it’s a city that likes the idea of belief. That’s just there. That’s literally centuries old. I don’t think you just knock that out [out of the city].” But Atkinson is keen to stress the importance of the other part of the phrase: “I think the diagnosis of doubt is actually the reason why it catches … the doubt part’s more important than the believer part, in a way.” 

Prior to Klopp, headstrong managers like Brendan Rogers and Rafa Benitez had come close to clinching Liverpool’s first English title since 1990 but, by the time Klopp joins in 2015, a growing contingent of fans became unsure that they would ever see Liverpool lift another top-flight trophy again. Klopp’s awareness of and solidarity with the growing doubt of Liverpool fans, is part of what endears him to them so quickly and is what allows him to lead the fanbase into a position of belief once again. 

Despite being a man of deep religious belief himself, Klopp rarely discusses his faith publicly. “So rarely!” Atkinson agrees. “I looked for it, because it's something I like to write about and something I'm intrigued by myself. So, yeah, I looked for it, but there's never enough to hang something onto.” 

As Atkinson points out, this isn’t because Klopp is afraid to share his thoughts on non-footballing maters: “He very much let us know what his opinions were on the European Union, and also wants us to agree with him, it’s worth pointing out. He didn't just have opinions on the European Union. He wanted us to agree with them. He didn't just have opinions on the vaccine. He very much wanted us to agree with him. On faith and his relationship with it, he very rarely spoke about it and so at no point has he asked anyone to agree with him.” 

Again, the context of Liverpool the city begins to clarify the nature of Klopp’s belief. “And I think he sees it as something that's deeply personal. I think he sees it as something that quite possibly – I would argue, and we don’t know – transcends Church attendance. In the same way that, for instance, we have a sense of the mosque that [Mohammed] Salah and [Sadio] Mane have attended whilst they’ve been here, people in Liverpool talk; but we don't know what church Jürgen was going to. That suggests to me that quite possibly there wasn't one. Because at some point someone would have said ‘he goes to our church’ and that never really happens, unless it's something that is so, so unbelievably private. So, I think that there is something non-conformist and I think he does see it as a personal relationship, first and foremost.” 

Despite this, the language of ‘doubt’, ‘belief’, ‘hope’, and ‘community’ that permeate Klopp’s vocabulary seem to be shaped by the faith and hope he carries with him. It’s also one of the things that made him such a compelling voice when he spoke out about some of the difficulties with following football. Whether it’s the overly congested nature of the footballing calendar and the issue of player welfare, the consistent presence of tragedy chanting at football matches, or the awful policing of Liverpool fans at the 2022 Champion’s League Final in Paris, Klopp always seemed able to articulate a better vision for how football, and even society, might operate.  

Football supporters are more than one thing.” They are neither angels nor demons; just normal people with a hobby and a passion, and a life beyond their football club. 

And so, as the conversation continues, we turn to talk about what it’s like being a match-going football fan. “Let's be clear,” Atkinson says, “there's never been some sort of unbelievably rosy moment to be a match-going football supporter … It's also worth saying that a lot of the people who still romanticize that period [i.e., football’s past] tend – but not always – tends to be white men, for whom that period was easier.” 

This isn’t to say that going to football matches is always easy. Atkinson talks about being kept in the ground by police after matches (a pretty common occurrence for away fans), and the small mercy of being allowed to go to the toilet (a less common occurrence). As Atkinson alludes to at the start of our conversation, football under Covid was grim. Despite now being a televised product, games without fans present are simply not as entertaining. And yet there remains an ongoing demonisation of football fans in some sections of public discourse.  

All this is perhaps why he is, somewhat despite himself, keen to see Transformer succeed. “I really want the book to be successful. And I'm quite surprised [by that] … But one of the reasons why I want the book to be successful is … [to show] that football supporters are more than one thing.” They are neither angels nor demons; just normal people with a hobby and a passion, and a life beyond their football club. 

“One of the things that’s made the most people laugh I ever heard at the match – it’s not some remarkable wit – but we were at [Manchester] United once and there was some fella .. and he was shouting terrible things that were like threats and all sorts of nonsense … and some other fella shouts back in a big scouse accent, ‘Shut up! You’re just an accountant from Altringham!’” If readers get nothing else from Transformer, let it be that most football fans are as banal as accountants from Altringham.  

“And that’s why I think the tragedy chanting is actually really quite deeply upsetting because the people that you’re looking at are just the same as you.” If the treatment of football fans – whether by other football fans, or by the police, or by football clubs, or by governments, or by politically-motivated quasi-national organizations – is to get better, this begins by recognizing over and over again, that they fans are just the same as you.  

We start to wrap up our conversation by talking about the future for Liverpool, of life without Klopp. “There was a thing that happened last season when I was working on the book,” Atkinson says, “I could feel the dust of nostalgia settle on people in real time, of the thing happening in front of them that they were nostalgic for. And I hated that.”  

It’s possible to read Transformer fundamentally as a polemic against nostalgia. It’s not just pointless for Atkinson, but actively damaging. “Nostalgia is, in general, a negative force. It’s a draining force. I genuinely do believe this. It’s a force that takes you out of the present into the past. That’s not necessarily bad, but it sends you into an idealized past, which the present will struggle to compete with.” Part of Klopp’s strength as a person and a manager was in recognizing this: “literally part of what Jürgen did when he was managing was go, ‘Stop being f***ing nostalgic. It’s happening now. You have the match now.’” 

Klopp was often such a compelling figure during his time at Liverpool because he was consistently, relentlessly optimistic, occasionally to a fault: “Klopp was a massive cultural force in this country, while being an optimistic, forward-looking, progressive person … but whilst he was that person, Britain went in the opposite direction.” 

And herein lies the task of carrying on Klopp’s legacy, both in Liverpool the football club, and Liverpool the city, and beyond. “Part of the challenge [facing society] is to have a message of enjoyment, of joy within it. Anyone who’s not doing that, is not facing that challenge, in any walk of life, is for me, therefore, not dealing with the core challenge … You’ve got to have the positive, progressive, ‘things will get better’ message.” And where does Jürgen draw his hope from, I wonder? 

 

Neil Atkinson's Transformer - Klopp, the Revolution of a Club and Culture will be published on 26th September, by Canongate Books. 

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