An edit from Contemporary British and Irish Directors:
Born in Glasgow in 1948, Gillies MacKinnon is one of Scotland's premier directors, proving his worth over the last two decades by tackling a wide variety of projects for both television and film. He debuted with the television drama The Grass Arena (1991) and claimed industry attention in his handling of a superb Albert Finney performance in The Playboys (1992).
Hollywood immediately took note of MacKinnon but, as with his countryman Michael Caton-Jones, seemed nonplussed by the nature of his talent which lends itself more to the detailed observation of characters and social formations than broad action. His sole Hollywood project, A Simple Twist of Fate (1994), is a watchable transposition of George Eliot's 'Silas Marner' to contemporary USA. It features the MacKinnon hallmarks of fine, nuanced performances (from Steve Martin and Gabriel Byrne) and a careful engagement of the viewer's sympathies in the encounter between a recluse, the daughter he adopts, and the politician who contests his own paternity claim on the child years later.
MacKinnon returned to Scotland for Small Faces (1996), a small but perfectly formed urban rites-of-passage tale that, undeservedly, was somewhat lost in the wake of the bolder cinematic claims of Danny Boyle's contemporaneous Trainspotting (1996).
Excellence of a more mature vintage graced the Irish underworld tale Trojan Eddie (1996) in which MacKinnon coaxed the usual good performances from Stephen Rea and Richard Harris. The director's next two projects, both made under the aegis of BBC Films were critically acclaimed adaptations of well-regarded novels. Regeneration (1997), adapted from Pat Barker's compassionate and intelligent novel, deals with the neuroses inflicted on the traumatised victims of trench warfare
The strong sense of place notable in Small Faces and The Playboys once again played a factor in the accomplishment of MacKinnon's next film, although the Morocco of Hideous Kinky is filtered through the awed perspective of two English schoolgirls. Based on the early-1970s adventures recounted in Esther Freud's book, the film charts the inverted relationship of Kate Winslet's Julia and her young daughters Bea and Lucy, who are dragged across North Africa in the wake of their mother's post-divorce mission of self-discovery.
His most popular and accessible work to date, the television film Last of the Blonde Bombshells (2000), was a Golden Globe award-winning success starring Judi Dench as the leader of an all-female swing band whose reformation rekindles memories of World War One. Pure (2002) was an independent, innovative film told through the eyes of a child who must deal with survival in an ever changing society.
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16-03-2004, 12:49 AM
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