Phil Mercer

Monday, April 28, 2008

The Oxford Murders (Cert 15)

 

John Hurt and Elijah Wood star in this movie version of the novel by Guillermo Martinez and directed by Alex de la Iglesia.

Lets go back to 1993 when the american student Martin (Elijah Wood) arrives at Oxford University to do his thesis. He takes lodgings with Mrs Eagleton (Anna Massey) and her musician daughter (Julie Cox - never ending story III). It turns out Mrs Eagleton worked with Alan Turing on the cracking of the Enigma Code and also was a close friend of John Hurts Arthur Seldom, an eccentric authority on logical series.

So Wood is desperate to work with Hurt, but after a bit of an intellectual set-to at a lecture, it looks like that isn't ever going to happen. Until they bump in to each other at Mrs Eagleton's house only to discover that she has been murdered! Then we follow a race to discover a pattern of murders and series of symbols leads the way.

This is de la Iglesia's second film in English, he is very well known in Spain (He is Basque from Bilbao) for his odd sense of humour.

You can tell Martinez didn't really enjoy his time in Oxford, although the place does look honest, It is filmed in a very monotone way and apart from the love interests and the cast are not a pretty bunch. This, I think, is deliberate and a way to add a bit of grotesque, something to which we expect from European films.

Feels strange for such a british film to be made my a spanish director and be written by an Argentinian, but maybe that is how Oxford works!

1/5
The Oxford Murders - Official website

Labels: Film Movie

# posted by Phil @ 10:09 pm

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