16 Years of Alcohol

Plot synopsis:
The opening scene shows Frankie being beaten by a small group of men, and the rest of the film is shown as a flashback leading up to that point. The film is split into three sections: Frankie's troubled childhood, his violent adolescence as a ska-loving skinhead who commands a small gang, and a period of change, in which Frankie tries to believe in hope and love.
Frankie starts a relationship with Helen (Laura Fraser), a young woman who studies art and works in a record store. When the differences between them became too obvious, Helen breaks up with Frankie, and he joins Alcoholics Anonymous (or a similar program) and a theatre group along with Mary (Susan Lynch), a good-hearted alcoholic. This allows Frankie to exorcise some of his demons, and he loses his desire to fight. An incident in a pub leads Frankie to believe that Mary is cheating on him with the theatre group's director. This reignites doubts created by his parents a long time ago. Feeling deceived, Frankie rejects Mary without a valid reason. When he's preparing to drink a glass of scotch, he begins to muse how the past has destroyed his life up to this point and he decides to stay sober and call Mary to apologise. The events merge with the beginning of the film, and Frankie's former comrades chase and beat him up. Whether Frankie dies or not is left open to the viewer.

Tags: violence

Review:
He skirts cliché while playing with it, trying to show the violence endemic in that society and making many references to other films ('Clockwork Orange', westerns, 'Trainspotting', Martin Scorsese, etc.).
The cinematography is gorgeous and I was glad for the snippet of Skids on the soundtrack, though 'Love is the Drug' gets the best treatment in a scene that is both scary and hilarious.The film is dedicated to Jobson's brother, who did not escape the life of alcohol and violence and was murdered a couple of years ago.
Maybe it's just a damned good film.'16 Years of Alcohol' won Richard Jobson the award for Directorial Debut at the British Independent Film Awards.
Co-founder of The Skids-turned-film critic Richard Jobson puts his ambition where his mouth is in a striking directorial debut.Superficial comparisons to Trainspotting are inevitable (set in Edinburgh, starring Kevin McKidd and featuring Ewen Bremner in a tale of struggle against addiction) but the gentle mood, flourishes of Expressionist style, John Rhodes' luminous photography and a haunting piano score plant this firmly in art-house territory.After witnessing his father's philandering, Frankie Mac (McKidd) grows into the hard-drinking leader of a gang of skinheads (with Jobson trowling on the visual references to A Clockwork Orange) until the love of a good woman gives him a way out.
But redemption proves a big step and his aggressive paranoia ensures he's not out of woods yet.The work of Chungking Express director Wong Kar-Wai, who encouraged this project, is a major influence and a mixed blessing for Jobson; he occasionally over-eggs his point too literally (a moment in which Frankie appears to have come full circle is unnecessarily overplayed with flashbacks to remind you why it's poignant) and McKidd's melancholy voice-over sometimes intrudes.But these are small flaws in a passionate, poetic film about hope which makes a genuine attempt to find a unique cinematic voice and is powered by an awesome, committed and hugely credible performance from McKidd..
From Kevin McKidd's stunning performance to the exquisitely shot Edinburgh exteriors, this is one of the most beautiful and evocative films I've ever seen.
McKidd and Jobson have captured the teenage experience of those years perfectly and reproduce the entire register of repressed emotions and violent undercurrents with unswerving accuracy.Naturally, it's a film about redemption - of sorts - but the tantalising, bitter-sweet promise of love and hope that permeates this film is delivered with a genuine toughness that sets it apart from the usual Brit-flick.
"Sixteen Years of Alcohol" is the Edinburgh story of a guy with a philandering dad who starts to drink at twelve or so, turns into a violent, alcoholic punker, and finally seeks self-reform.
Frankie also gets into fights with his own mates and woos Helen (Laura Fraser), who clerks in a record shop.Eventually the hero, whose brooding voice-overs constantly intrude, loses Helen, though for a while she seems to have tamed him and turned him from Mars into Artemis, bearer of good news -- as she puts it in a game they play on a colonnade perched high up above the town.
One shot hints that Frankie's employed in a workshop or factory, but specific detail is lacking: the film is deliberately short on connected narrative, going for passion and poetry over mundane realism.There's truth in the 'Village Voice's' thumbnail description of "Sixteen Years of Alcohol" as a series of "static tableaux," and it's also true that McKidd's better than "the dubious romanticism and hard-man clichés of his role." Parts of the movie fall flat, but what makes it worth watching is an intense clarity about the people and the sharply lit scenes they're in.
There is the power and sincerity of the simple small film in "Sixteen Years of Alcohol," but also a lack of narrative focus and sense of a whole world one finds in England's Sixties "angry young man" films beginning with "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning." Jobson isn't trying for "kitchen sink" realism at all, but for something poetic and expressionistic; and the stark, strikingly lit photography helps him approach that goal and make this a watchable film.What's less appealing is the simplistic fatalism of the plot structure.
The "dubious romanticism" shows up in the way a life is ultimately seen as circular (as is the film's "ring" framing device) and doomed, rather than -- what would be equally justified by the story -- moderately hopeful.
There is some light in the character of Helen, an art school graduate whose love might inspire hoodlum Frankie to give up his drunken brawling loud-mouthed ways, but ultimately the story of the slow and painful attempts of an alcoholic to reform himself will be too easily forgotten.
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs As a young boy,Frankie (Kevin McKidd) idolises his father,until he discovers him to be a philandering p*sshead.Years later,he's formed a violence gang with three of his mates,terrorizing pubs and record shops with equal disdain.But then he finds love and finds his faith in life being redeemed and decides to turn his back on his old ways and start a new life.But then,he finds turning away from what you know is not very easy at all.The film is shot in a style and presentation that I wasn't expecting it to be.The style of the story unravelled in a way I wasn't expecting either.But,if these are the provisos for enduring such an excellent film as 16 Years of Alcohol,I'll happily accept them.Everything about the film just comes together brilliantly and perfectly.The script is fantastic,carried by lead star McKidd with a sobering,haunting presence and delivery making astute observations about life and especially the relevance of 'hope.'The film plays some clever homage to ones that have gone before it,such as,most prominently,A Clockwork Orange and Enter the Dragon.Frankie's story is extremely engaging,as we follow him down his path from a happy,idealistic young boy to a disillusioned young man who can't identify love to anything and can only see the hard,grainy reality of life and accordingly decides to follow suite,onto an older and more mature man,hardened by the realities of life but more adhered to them and functioned to deal with them more knowingly,only for it all to tragically come crashing down around him for one silly mis-understanding.If a film like Trainspotting could have made it as big as it did,with a far superior script it's hard to see why this couldn't.But maybe this should be kept apart from a mainstream audience and kept firmly stuck in it's art-house roots so that it can be appreciated by those who truly can.It really is a fantastic experience,the best film I've seen in ages and one I'd whole-heartedly recommend you to see.*****.
It's difficult to catalog them in any way, because a good "alcoholics movie" is one which swiftly flows along certain psychological retinues and steadily builds up to a mammoth of self deprivation.
It all gravitates around love and the end is helplessly tragic, but "Sixteen Years of Alcohol" isn't that bad.
Like all those films which fit into this part of the movie-specter, "Sixteen..." has good and bad parts.
The movie felt as though it was torn right from the Kubrick classic, only filmed through a new director's eyes.
A more suited title would have been "16 Years of Violence," or, even better, "A Clockwork Banana".Just do yourself a favor and avoid this movie.
And did I mention the singing?This isn't the worst film I've ever seen, but certainly the one I've felt least compelled to sit through.
I felt like it was shoving the storyline down my throat as if I couldn't pick up the subtleties I needed a voice over to spell them all out for me constantly.Having a father who IS still an alcoholic, I didn't really feel it was a film about alcoholism as such.
McKidd was too old for the teen, they should have got three different characters or avoided the teen stage and concentrated more on the adult McKidd.On a good note, I felt the little boy actor was really good at the start of the film!!.
Richard Jobson not entirely content to write direct and even fund some of this film adds to his credits by reading excerpts of his own semi- autobiographical writing which combined with some pretty editing manages to gloss over what is a dull depressing tale which he must be mistaking for genuine art-house.
Everyone else is okay.Budget constraints meant that all scenes are shot in daylight though most are obviously meant to be at night, though if you know serious alcoholics they mainly operate in the day so for me it adds a touch of realism.The funniest part of this film is a waitress who fails to age a single day in the 20 odd years that elapse between her appearances - a more extreme version of the problem McKidd has who goes from 18 to 30 without changing more than his clothes.
How do I begin to review a film that will soon be recognized as the `worst film of all time' by the `worst director of all time?' A film that could develop a cult following because it's `so bad it's good?'An analytical approach criticizing the film seems both pointless and part of band-wagon syndrome--let's bash freely without worry of backlash because every other human on earth is doing it, and the people who like the film like it for those flaws we'd cite.The film's universal poor quality goes without saying-- 'Sixteen Years of Alcohol' is not without competition for title of worst film so it has to sink pretty low to acquire the title and keep a hold of it, but I believe this film could go the distance.
IMDb doesn't allow enough words to cite all the films failures, and it be much easier to site the elements 'Sixteen Years of Alcohol' does right.
Despite my low expectations, 'Sixteen Years of Alcohol' failed to entertain me even on a `make fun of the bad movie' level.
But that's partly why this movie made such an impact on me - yes, yes, it was a bit over the top and it was probably a mistake to allow Richard Jobson to be writer and director (just as it's usually a mistake to allow someone to star in the movie they directed - except for Clint Eastwood who is astonishingly good at using all of himself in his movies).However, and it's a big big however, this was real.
I was expecting an insightful and intriguing journey into alcoholism, instead I got a rather boring and uninspiring story about a rowdy Scot.The leading character isn't given much psychological depth, unless you are willing to classify cheesy teen-like poetry as psychology.It was a shame, because the core of the story could have been good, with a better effort to depict the inner feelings of a man who had to live with alcohol and violence since his youth.Sadly, the general idea seems to be more like "I'm the way I am because that's the way I am".
Resorting to the overused cliché of the "poète maudit" reeks of a quick fix, a cheap way to make a dull movie seem smart, artsy and meaningful.But "16 years of alcohol" isn't much smart, artsy or meaningful...
Just like the initial attempt happened rather out of the blue.The movie borrows heavily from classics such as A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting, but it ultimately fails to recapture their greatness, not even for a few seconds.Jobson put too much emphasis on the artistic side of the story, and neglected the rest, giving us a movie which is pleasant to the eye but insipid to the brain..
At times it felt like a full length student movie with little in the way of plot development but some interesting themes.
The film was held together well by Andewr McKidd who occupies most scenes with some good supporting cast and a cameo from director Richard Jobson.
Excellent film about the problem of alcoholism; a problem keenly felt in the director's native Scotland.There is an autobiographical veracity about the whole thing, plus an intimate knowledge and use of Edinburgh locations, and songs by the magnificent Glasweigan band the Blue Nile.
It might be nitpicking, but I think these people have a point; it does kind of undermine the verisimilitude that Jobson is aiming for.Overall, though, a fine film from that hard-boiled, all-round renaissance man, Richard Jobson.
After reading glowing reviews (the Director was a film reviewer with Sky for years so must have a lot of mates in the press ready to do him a favour by writing favorable reviews) I expected solid acting, atmosphere, suspense, strong characterization, an intriguing plot development and poetic moments.
Unfortunately, instead of spending some time building atmosphere, creating characters we might care about, or building suspense - the director opts to begin driving you crazy with self indulgent heavy handed twaddle voice-over's.
The lead characters are so unsympathetic and are so badly acted - the audience doesn't care what happens to them, desperate Actors do desperate things...like this movie!.
The soundtrack is the only thing that lifted me and kept me in the cinema but even that failed to support the dramatic narrative other connecting a period of time to the action.For some reason the movie got increasingly flawed and to be quite honest annoying.
I still watched the whole damn thing!I guess I liked the attempt at gritty realism in the film but even that was destroyed when they were often inter-cut with weird and abstract, sometimes pointless scenes.
As others have pointed out this movie is a load of pretentious drivel for the mindless or masochists.We all know after seeing trainspotting and acid house that Scotland is one of the most depressing places in the first world.
But unlike trainspotting and acid house without a good dose of humour or gritty realism movies like this do not work.
And even more importantly without a decent script a movie will not work and there is nothing new, inspiring or thought provoking about the script for this movie.The fact that this movie won a couple of Bafta's shows how bad the British film industry is at the moment.
There was the endless, boring repetitive narration, slow motion, freeze frame, flashbacks and merged images etc - none of which made a dull film any better.It is called "16 years of alcohol", but there was little drinking or drunkeness and no depiction of withdrawal with the film jumping about all over the place with no coherent sense.
The story was badly written and extremely pretentious and the direction was equally poor and it is a shame that people have put up further money for more films by Mr Jobson, previously know for being in a rubbish group and on TV making as much sense as this film does.I found it a major struggle to see this to the end but in the hope of it getting better I carried on to the bitter but it really was a waste of time and I would have been better off not bothering..
see this movie...wonderful casting and direction...powerful story.
The acting , Kevin McKidd's portrayal of Frankie is remarkably wooden for an actor that once showed such promise, how far he has fallen in such a short period of time.
I suppose he suffered from poor direction, often the problem with a new and inexperienced director and producer afraid to keep his feet on the ground, pretentious aspirations have run riot, an attempt to make a "worthy" film, has unfortunately steered this ship on to the rocks of self indulgence.
A brilliant debut film from Richard Jobson.
Whilst the story of the film revolves around alcohol fuelled violence with some harrowing moments , Jobson still manages to create some moments of genuine light hearted comedy so that the film makes you laugh and cry .
Sure, the overtly "poetic" voice-over narration wasn't pulled off quite as well as when Malick does it (but then again, who else does?) and considering this film was shot on digital video it couldn't hope to capture Wong Kar-Wai's lush visuals (although, that said, it is easily one of the best looking digital productions I have ever seen, looking almost completely film-like most of the time, and in 2.35 aspect ratio at that), but it really overall held up amazingly well.
The director obviously put his heart and soul, every idea he had, into this film, and it shows in a good way, even if the results are sometimes slightly clunky.
Not only is the music good, but the way it is used adds to the overall feeling that you are watching one person's meticulous creation, that the film is something extremely personal, and not only that, but that the director knows exactly what he wants to achieve.
To me there were problems with the film - the voiceover is too self-consciously poetic and some of the music is very irritating - but the acting and the direction are involving enough to make them unimportant.
Shot on high definition for a budget of £450,000, the film looked better than any other British movie I saw in Edinburgh, which is a real feat.
I was pleasantly surprised by the actors,quite natural acting helped probably by a story that is very familiar to some of them:)Overall this film is well worth it and would expand your horizon of good European movies.A well deserved 7/10..
He has no model of love from a philandering alcoholic father so he struggles with love too.In short this is about being a child of alcohol and becoming one yourself, because the only thing you can remember from childhood is your parents covered in cobwebs clutching their own drinks.I can see why this movie isn't rated as high as it should be.
"Sixteen Years of Alcohol" is a beautiful parable about a Scottish man who grew up into human society's trap of alcoholism and violence.