10 Rillington Place –Tim Roth is BAFTA bound as Reg Christie
“Treedown
gotobed is a great name for a culture vulture blog” is a statement rarely heard
in Kings Cross on a sunny afternoon. In
fact Ive never heard anyone say it. I regularly state it is widely read, but
few believe me. How do you convince strangers that you are a successful GP if
you are not. It’s a trick Tim Roth pulls off with regularity in his mesmeric performance
as Reg Christie in this hypnotically watchable BBC series. Set in grim and grimey
post-war London, the cul-de-sac on which Christie lives with his wife(Samantha
Morton) looks just like the one in The Ladykillers. That was Battlebridge Road
in N1, but there are so few scenes set outside the house and street, it is hard
to tell where Rillington Place is.
Three hours
is a lot of time to be on screen, and if there was one weakness in this tour de
force of a production, it was the sets of the house interior. The peeling
wallpaper, squalid dirt and rubbish infesting every corner, the sepia grey and
brown tones were all a bit overdone. Times were tough, but a scene in Episode 3
in which a local Bobby calls round and sits on the only piece of furniture in
the lounge, a chair surrounded by a few piles of clothes, rings slightly
hollow. It is symbolic of Christie’s dire state, he is starting to lose control
of a small world he has lorded over for so long. He has treated all comers to a
list of rules like he owned the place, but only now nearing stories end are we
told he is merely the oldest tenant, his landlord act just another fabrication
in a long list of lies, starting with the pretence of being a doctor and war
veteran, apparently gassed while in the trenches.
His defence
which works so well when poor Timothy Evans is convicted and hung for one of
Christie’s crimes – the murder of Evans’ wife and daughter – is what motive
would this gently spoken old veteran have? Evans can come up with no
explanation. Roth plays Christie as the blandest Northerner you could meet,
nearly always speaking just louder than a whisper , the vocabulary littered
with harmless phrases like “Ill be back in a tick”, while he vanishes into
another room to attempt an abortion on another lady he has fooled. You see the
psycho inside, but its only in private and all evidence is gone in a flash from
his demeanour. His murder of his wife is so cold blooded, the editing seemed to
deliberately shy away from the suffocating agony on Morton’s face. Suffice to
say, Roth is a favourite for a BAFTA next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment