Tyran­nosaur

The most remark­able thing about Pad­dy Considine’s fea­ture debut is that it doesn’t feel like a debut at all. Con­si­dine may have made his name as an actor of rare phys­i­cal pres­ence in his col­lab­o­ra­tions with fel­low Mid­lan­der Shane Mead­ows (A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes), but it’s the restrained assur­ance he brings to Tyran­nosaur that stands out. And yet the fine­ly tuned inte­gra­tion of cam­era, sound and edit­ing belies the raw pow­er that car­ries this story.

Devel­oped from Considine’s BAF­TA and Sil­ver Lion-win­ning short Dog Alto­geth­er, Tyran­nosaur stars Peter Mul­lan on uncom­pro­mis­ing form as Joseph, a lone­ly alco­holic who con­tains an abyssal capac­i­ty for vio­lence. Strug­gling to sup­press his rage, the demons in Joseph’s nature lead him, para­dox­i­cal­ly, to a fall­en angel, Han­nah (Olivia Col­man), who appears to offer him a slim chance of redemption.

Joseph’s instinct is to lash out – to curse her God, her life and her char­i­ty – but he could have saved his breath. Because Tyran­nosaur isn’t inter­est­ed in any­thing as straight­for­ward as Joseph’s soul. Grad­u­al­ly, inex­orably and then hor­rif­i­cal­ly, the roles are reversed until Joseph the damned has become the sav­iour of them both.

Considine’s elo­quent, sav­age­ly poet­ic script is ground­ed in a cin­e­mat­ic idiom of bleached light, bleak estates and bro­ken lives. Tyran­nosaur is a fine piece of visu­al sto­ry­telling. He has an eye for inven­tive com­po­si­tion, and intu­itive­ly under­stands how to inte­grate that with the impec­ca­ble tech work pro­vid­ed by DP Erik Wil­son, edi­tor Pia Di Caula, pro­duc­tion design­er Simon Rogers and in par­tic­u­lar the sound depart­ment led by Ben Squires.

If Peter Mullan’s per­for­mance – all gran­ite-hewed men­ace and lines deliv­ered like a sledge­ham­mer crack­ing con­crete paving slabs – is of a piece with his usu­al fear­some inten­si­ty, Olivia Col­man, by con­trast, is a rev­e­la­tion. Cool­ly sub­vert­ing her smi­ley-eyed Peep Show per­sona, she brings a whol­ly unex­pect­ed edge of hys­ter­i­cal anguish and chill­ing pathos to Hannah.

But there’s some­thing else going on in Tyran­nosaur. It belongs to a tra­di­tion of pecu­liar­ly dark British dra­mas pro­duced by suc­cess­ful work­ing-class actors-turned-direc­tors, a tra­di­tion exem­pli­fied by Gary Oldman’s Nil by Mouth and Mullan’s own NEDS. There’s a kind of state­ment being made here – a self-con­scious shrug­ging-off of thes­pi­an suc­cess, and an overzeal­ous reasser­tion of work­ing-class iden­ti­ty. Tyran­nosaur is Considine’s way of prov­ing that he’s not ​‘gone Hol­ly­wood’ – that he’s still Pad­dy from the block.

It’s there in the roman­tic mythol­o­gis­ing of work­ing-class val­ues; the fun­da­men­tal hon­esty of these hard, trou­bled lives that is direct­ly con­trast­ed with the dis­hon­est and hid­den hypocrisies of the aspi­rant mid­dle-class­es. There’s a part of Tyran­nosaur that is hap­py to trade in clichés – the house­wife who sur­vives on a glass of wine, the unhap­py mar­riage, the cut­throat bit­ter­ness of dis­ap­point­ment. What sep­a­rates Han­nah from Joseph isn’t his capac­i­ty for vio­lence, but her’s for self-decep­tion, and this lat­ter is judged far more harsh­ly than the former.

Even so, this is a con­cep­tu­al issue in a film that suc­ceeds through raw emo­tion­al pow­er. Tyran­nosaur is a huge­ly con­fi­dent and accom­plished debut from Pad­dy Con­si­dine. Did he just become the new Shane Mead­ows? Weird.