London Road, a film about the community of Ipswich
I can only imagine the pitch to the makers of this film and the stage play it was based on going a little something like this:
“Hey, you know those horrific Ipswich prostitute murders back in 2006 that reduced the town to a nervous paranoid wreck?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, we want to make a musical about it.”
“Sure!”
All joking aside, I can see why there would be outrage turning such bleak events into a musical. However, if musicals like Les Misérables and Sweeney Todd proved anything, it’s that the medium can still portray terrible events with all the emotional impact of the happenings themselves. So does this film manage to treat these harrowing times with the required respect and dignity as well as manage to be an enjoyable musical?
Directed by Rufus Norris and written by Alecky Blythe, who also wrote the stage play upon which the film is based, London Road documents the events that unfolded in the quiet rural town of Ipswich in 2006, where the bodies of five prostitutes were discovered, and instead of focusing on the killings themselves, the film follows the community caught in the epicentre of these events and how they come together during the darkest times.
What makes the film unique (besides its premise) is that the lyrics of each musical number are based on interviews conducted with the residents of London Road, using their own words set to a musical score. The result may initially sound clunky, but becomes surprisingly infectious. For example, a conversation between two young teenage girls is turned into a tense and punchy number, and a newscaster repeatedly trying to read a report becomes a motif for one of the film’s more memorable songs. That being said, if there was one complaint I had with the film, it would be the choice to portray this story through the form of a musical, as such a story could have easily been told as a drama without the need for musical numbers. While I thought the songs were inventive and well-executed, I thought that it felt rather gimmicky, but never to the extent that it felt tasteless.
One of the film’s main successes is in its cinematography. For most of the film, colour desaturation is used to convey the bleak tone and events, and the use of high and low angle close ups expertly convey the feeling of paranoia, particularly during the song ‘It Could Be Him’. Later on, after Steve Wright’s arrest, the subsequent celebrations and flower show bring colour back into the film both metaphorically and literally in an uplifting finale.
What makes it all work, though, is that all of it is handled with sensitivity – barely any of it is glamorised, thanks in part to the aforementioned style of cinematography and the general atmosphere throughout, but it also manages to be occasionally very funny, with some moments making the audience in my screening roar with laughter. In this sense, the film manages to walk a fine line between comedy and hard-hitting drama. This is helped by great performances from Olivia Colman, Anita Dobson, Tom Hardy and the rest of the cast, who manage to really convey the sense of paranoia and anxiety that were felt by the residents of Ipswich at the time of the murders.
In short, London Road manages to deliver an intriguing and moving narrative with excellent cinematography, and although the choice to portray the events as a musical is questionable, the musical numbers were very well-executed, there was a fitting balance between drama and laughs, and the tragic events were handled with the appropriate sensitivity.
Final verdict: 4/5
Review by Edward Sweet, student at Suffolk One
