Table Of ContentContents
Front Matter .....................................................3
Title Page .....................................................3
Publisher Information ...................................4
Lust for Life ......................................................5
Introduction .................................................5
Adaptation .................................................10
A Tale of Several Genres ..............................40
Performance versus Technology .....................78
Regional and National Identity .................116
Moral Choices ..........................................148
Religion ....................................................182
Conclusion ...............................................209
End Matter....................................................220
Bibliography .............................................220
Filmography .............................................225
Also Available ...........................................231
DANNY BOYLE
LUST FOR LIFE
Mark Browning
Publisher Information
First published in 2011 by
Chaplin Books
1 Eliza Place
Gosport PO12 4UN
Tel: 023 9252 9020
www.chaplinbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © Mark Browning
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright
holder for which application should be addressed in the first
instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the
author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage
of any nature suffered as a result of reliance on the reproduction of
any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in
its contents.
Design by Helen Taylor
Introduction
‘I want people to leave the cinema feeling that something’s
been confirmed for them about life’
(Danny Boyle)1
The genesis for this book was the moment Danny Boyle came
bouncing, in his words ‘in the manner of Tigger,’ onto the stage
to collect his Oscar for Best Director in 2009. Slumdog Millionaire
had been in competition with David Fincher’s The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button in a number of categories, and proceeded to win
every single one. On the one hand, Fincher’s movie had a $150
million budget, state-of-the-art special effects, and a cast headed by
Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett; on the other, Boyle’s movie had only
$20 million behind it, no special effects to speak of, dialogue that
was partly in Hindi and a cast of minor actors and non-professionals.
In fact, before Fox Searchlight picked up the film for a theatrical
release, it was destined to go straight to DVD. Could Fincher, a
perfectionist famous for demanding extended re-shoots and with a
highly technical approach to filmmaking, have even been capable of
making Slumdog Millionaire? It would be hard to imagine a greater
juxtaposition of styles and it made me think about Boyle’s career
and how he had reached that point.
Boyle was born on 20 October 1956 into a working-class
family (his mother a hairdresser and dinner lady; his father a farm
labourer) and was imbued with a strong work ethic from an early
age, underlined by an all-encompassing sense of Catholic sin and
redemption. He had a place at a seminary in Upholland in Wigan
until persuaded by a priest, Father Conway, that perhaps this was
not his true vocation, and instead went to Bangor University to
study English and Drama.
His career began in the theatre, as an usher for the Joint Stock
Theatre Company, known for their cutting-edge productions, and
[1] Page 2009 p.3.
eventually as a director. In 1982 was appointed artistic director at
the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, where he was responsible for a
number of small-scale productions including Howard Brenton’s
‘The Genius’ and Edward Bond’s ‘Saved’, the latter winning a Time
Out award. In 1985, he graduated to the main stage, directing
several further successful projects, including ‘The Last Days of Don
Juan’ for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
When he moved into television, he went first to the BBC in
Northern Ireland to produce the powerful drama Elephant (Alan
Clarke, 1989) about the sectarian killings, before moving back to
the mainland to direct an historical drama about a religious sect,
Mr Wroe’s Virgins (1993), and two early episodes of Inspector Morse,
one on Masonic ritual and one on rave culture. While his work
on Morse shows little obvious cinematic flair, his direction of these
episodes did help to create, in collaboration with actor John Thaw,
one of Britain’s best-loved TV detectives. It was this experience at
the BBC that taught Boyle the basics of media production, working
with modest budgets but within an organisation committed to high
quality drama and with a reputation for social realism.
Boyle began his filmmaking career in 1994 with Shallow Grave,
the first of three films made with producer Andrew Macdonald
and writer John Hodge (Trainspotting was to follow in 1996 and
A Life Less Ordinary in 1997). The first two of these, produced in
collaboration with Channel Four Films, helped revive the British
film industry, although the portrayal of drug-taking in Trainspotting
provoked criticism and Boyle became characterised as a director
interested only in gritty, working-class pictures. A Life Less Ordinary
was an attempt to break away from this and to connect more directly
with an American market. This brought its own problems: Boyle
found that larger budgets and crews entailed creative compromises,
something that was also to affect the follow-up film, The Beach,
released in 2000. Both films were met coolly by critics and neither
met the commercial expectations of Twentieth Century-Fox, now
Boyle’s financial backer.
In 2001, Boyle took a step back from feature films, returning to
the small screen to direct two small-scale, gritty dramas for the BBC:
Strumpet and Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise. The break
gave him the chance to re-group creatively and to experiment with
lightweight digital cameras in collaboration with cinematographer
Anthony Dod Mantle, an experience which directly contributed
to the success of his next feature, the horror film 28 Days Later.
Released in 2002, and backed by Fox Searchlight, Twentieth
Century’s distribution arm dealing with more experimental and
innovative filmmaking, it was a commercial and critical success.
It also marked Boyle’s ability to move between a variety of genres
with equal success, a tendency continued with Millions in 2004 and
Sunshine in 2007. Millions failed to find its audience on general
release, partly due to its ambition and partly due to the sad fact that
an intelligent children’s film is something of a generic rarity. The
science fiction of Sunshine was more successful but took a long time
to bring to the screen - the creation of a complete fictional universe
was an experience which Boyle found exhausting and probably not
one which he would want to repeat any time soon.
Still with Fox Searchlight, Boyle teamed up with writer Simon
Beaufoy, whose work he admired, particularly on The Full Monty
(dir. Peter Cattaneo 1997), to create Slumdog Millionaire in 2008.
Vikas Swarup’s 2006 novel Q&A had been a bestseller and Boyle
leapt at the challenge, intrigued not so much by a narrative based
on a TV show as the idea of filming a Bollywood-style love story in
India. The film was a huge success and led to eight Oscars in 2009,
including Boyle as Best Director.
After much industry and media speculation, Boyle followed this
up with 127 Hours in 2010, based on the true story of Aron Ralston,
a climber and thrill-seeker who was partly trapped under a boulder
for several days in the Utah mountains, and who had to face the
dilemma of dying a slow death or cutting off his own arm.
There is little existing critical literature about Boyle’s work. Only
one of his films to date, Trainspotting, has received individual book-
length consideration. Martin Stollery (2001) and Murray Smith
(2008) both write interestingly about the film, but their studies are
fairly brief and do not use intertextuality as a critical tool. There
is growing interest in Boyle himself, with two books of interviews
published in 2011 (by Amy Raphael and Brent Dunham), but in a
sense these act as something of a distraction from the raw material of
the films themselves. Before this book, the only attempt to open out
the field of studies into Boyle’s work has been Edwin Page’s Ordinary
Heroes: the Films of Danny Boyle (2009). Page takes an auteurist
position and looks at the films for evidence of what he identifies at
the beginning as the director’s favoured themes and stylistic devices.
The difficulty with this approach is that it assumes these themes are
present in all his films and are readily transparent to every viewer,
whereas I would argue that meanings in any visual medium are by
no means undisputed or universal. It is important to remember
that Boyle is telling stories, not delivering themes, and that seeing
characters as ‘carriers’ of messages can lead to reductionist assertions
about ‘the ultimate message’ of a film, such as Page’s contention that
‘money does bring happiness’ is the message of Shallow Grave and
that Slumdog Millionaire is ‘part of the university of life for all who
watch it’.2 Page also overlooks an opportunity for more insightful
contextual analysis by trying to assign single meanings to particular
stylistic devices, so that voice-overs are categorised as being used to
denote main characters, multiple screens to show more than one
setting, and shots through glass and water to ‘add texture’. 3
Rather than seeking to impose a reading across all Boyle’s work,
this book looks at each film and considers what makes it effective,
through a close analysis of style, narrative structure and performance.
It views Boyle not as an auteur but as part of a collaborative team
that consists of actors, writers and cinematographers with whom
he has a close and trusting relationship. In watching Boyle’s films,
I was struck by their celebratory, life-affirming tone - the way he
seems always to opt for the positive over the negative - and how
he continues to make brave choices in terms of genre, narrative,
[2] Page 2009 p.29 and p.220.
[3] Page 2009 p.15.
character and directorial style, subverting the expectations of
the industry and of the viewing public. This book is written for
discerning film viewers who are familiar with, or curious about,
Boyle’s work: hopefully, it should make readers reconsider films they
think they already know and seek out some they might have missed.
Chapter One: Adaptation
‘It is written’
(one of four options from the opening gameshow-
style credits in Slumdog Millionaire)
Writing on Danny Boyle has routinely overlooked one important
fact - that a number of his best-known films are adaptations.
Trainspotting, The Beach and Slumdog Millionaire are all based on
novels, and 127 Hours is taken from Aron Ralston’s book about his
own experiences, Between a Rock and a Hard Place (2004). Even
Boyle’s early TV work including episodes for Inspector Morse (ITV
1990 and 1992) and the drama Mr Wroe’s Virgins (BBC 1993) had
a pre-existing literary framework. The Morse episodes ‘Masonic
Mysteries’ and ‘Cherubim and Seraphim’ were scripted by Julian
Mitchell but based on characters created in Colin Dexter’s novels;
and Mr Wroe’s Virgins was scripted by Jane Rogers from her own
book. As well as favouring established literary sources for his films,
Boyle prefers to work - where possible - with the original writers
who, by implication, know the material best. For his first four
features Boyle worked with John Hodges, who produced original
scripts for Shallow Grave and A Life Less Ordinary and adaptations
of Trainspotting and The Beach, then with Alex Garland on 28 Days
Later and Sunshine, and more recently with Simon Beaufoy on
Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. The film Millions was a one-
off project with writer Frank Cottrell Boyce. Beaufoy, though not a
novelist, had proven his ability, with films like The Full Monty (dir.
Peter Cattaneo 1997), to craft involving, human-centred dramas
with which audiences can connect.
Commentary in the mainstream media about film adaptation is
often dominated by a strain of adaptation theory known as fidelity
criticism, which - as Brian McFarlane explains - assumes that an
author’s intention is transparent and that the further a film version
