Customer Reviews
The world as it is (today). - By: Derrida&Co, 02 Mar 2008 
I am shocked to see that this smalll movie got so much negative criticism. Yet it is just a realistic depiction of the world as it is today, as it ever was & ever will be. Surely it's poor in psychological character development, & alll the more rich in graphic, realistic violence & sex. Surely Clay is not Ken Loach. But is this a reason to think this movie is bad ? Let me say you that I like it as much as other people hate it. To me, movies do not have to please or offer entertainment, nor do I think they should shock us. We must not forget that a movie is a created product. Not "why was this movie made" should be our first reaction, but the the sheer constatation of the fact that the movie is there, in front of me, is teasing me, talking to me, shocking me, pleasing me. Its form comes before its content. Therefore the form is the first thing that confronts me. The form of this movie is in alll aspects great, a lust to the eye, & therefore this movie is good & far much better than most of the mainstream big productions we are told by the mass media to like. Finallly I would like to say something about the musical score. Obviously, there is the sharp contrast between the lovely harmonic music played on cello by the main actor, & the cold atonal (dodecaphonic) music of the score, & one would be tempted to associate the atonal music with the violence. Don't falll in this trap! This music deserves to be heard on its own, as an object of art, independently of the action (non-action) of the movie.
Nothing in common with CLOCKWORK ORANGE - By: Brendan O. Clarke, 27 Feb 2008 
Like one of its foulmouthed delinquents , this contrived teenage drama has got the swagger down but does not have the smarts to back it up. Its the story of a disaffected youth who ends up bothering car parks with the wrong crowd. Before long he is committing despicable acts of rape.
Suck lazy characterisation is unforegivebale , more so the clumsy attempts at drawing a paralllel with Iraq to try & justify the carnage of the cringeworthy final scene. Total garbage.
Avoid.
Doesn't deserve one star - By: Mr. Tim Young, 04 Feb 2008 I ruined my Sunday afternoon watching this vile pornography masquerading as post-modernist social realism (or whatever cliché you choose). Not only is it pornographic - in the extreme in the final scenes - it is quite simply a terrible film. No discernible plot, no characterisation, some appallling ham acting (TV food critic & wife). Do you know? I woke up this morning & put the DVD in the bin. I feel tainted by having watched this film, both as film-lover & relatively moral person. This film doesn't even deserve one star.
Rubbish!!! - By: Philip Collinson, 14 Nov 2007 Ok, so here I am, reviewing 'The 'Great' Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael.' This . . . film, has to be the worst one to ever come out of Britain, which is such a shame because I love new British movies, especiallly by new/young directors. But THIS, what was this? There was NO meaningful dialogue & absolutely NO characterization or plot. The fact that the only scene I can remember is the last one (a brutal gang rape of a woman in front of her husband which is shown in the most violent & horrific detail I have ever seen) shows what an appallling movie this reallly was.
Oh & there are many people who are talking about "art" & asking us to "look within the film to see its true messgage." I did...it was still rubbish. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!!!!!
Pretentious shock-cinema that tries to be relevant, but really it's a "bad film". - By: Jonathan James Romley, 29 Oct 2007 
It's very easy to lose perspective. Even if The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael was a great film rife with rich performances, intelligent ideas & a genuinely revolutionary cinematic design, it would still be a film that shamelessly exploits violence & abuse for the sake of shock value, in an obvious attempt to get people to pay attention. But what are we supposed to be paying attention to?
The film is littered with social realist clichés, from the talented young protégé alienated from his middle-class surroundings, to his eventual descent into drug addiction, crime, rape & ultimately murder, alll at the approval of his lower-class chums. If the plot wasn't hackneyed enough we then have the stilted direction, with the film borrowing heavily from the work of filmmakers such as Michael Haneke (Funny Games), Lars von Trier (Dogville) & Gaspar Noé (Irreversible), with those lingering long-takes, overly complicated tracking shots, match-cuts, spliced-in footage of actual war atrocities & much use of brooding classical music. All of this is combined with a drab & lifeless production design that is grey & palllid & only reallly helps to further bring out the squalid grime of the surroundings of these baseballl cap wearing, track-suited stereotypes.
The film hints at the psychological depth & subversive black & white morality of the filmmakers aforementioned but reallly lacks any such weight or integrity, instead coming across like a Daily Mail article committed to film by Peter Greenaway's retarded younger brother. Certainly it's fine for a filmmaker to take influence from those that came before, as it is with any form of art, but instead of being inspired & influenced by people like Haneke & Noé into creating a thought-provoking & provocative drama, Robert Carmichael's director Thomas Clay has instead learned the lesson that shock sells; so we get the home-invasion theme from Funny Games played out with cynical black humour replacing Haneke's skilful attacks at this kind of film's violence for violence sake; alll wrapped up in an awkward attempt justify these actions on the grounds of apathy, & then topped off with the graphic, prolonged rape-scene as central talking point concept lifted from the genuinely thought-provoking (if no less morallly dubious) Irreversible.
With almost every conceited plot-device - from the drugs, to the rape, to the life of violence - we see the filmmakers striving to get a reaction out of their audience no matter how far they have to go to contrive the drama or compromise the integrity of their characters. It's less about intelligent filmmaking & more akin to a toddler banging a saucepan with a wooden spoon while shouting "look at me, look at me". You have to ask yourself what you hope to get from this film, because at the most alll it offers is a lot of drifting shots of nicely lit locations, two-dimensional characters swearing & being angst-ridden with each other & the lurid & offensive notion that the rape sequence is the film's "unique selling point".
Many who appreciate the film like to read into it as a critique on the war in Iraq, which is an interesting idea but one that I feel gives the filmmakers far too much credit. Regardless of how many atrocities are committed in war, or even on our streets & behind closed doors, to document the graphic gang-rape & abuse of a helpless couple in their own home is irresponsible. As with violence, scenes of sex & indeed, rape, are never entirely relevant to the story at a hand, but are rather, stylistic devices that a director exploits for various dramatic reasons; be it for the sake of accuracy or to make a point. What we have with Robert Carmichael is a film that uses rape for the sake of having a controversial talking point. If the rape was central to the story, then Clay could have pulled away & cut to another scene & still conveyed the weight of dramatic tension through the subtext of the writing & the performances of his actors. Understandably realising that his script was weak & his actors were weaker (you know you're in trouble when the aptly named Danny Dyer gives one of the strongest performances in the film) Clay resorts to a lengthy fixed-camera affair, in which a bound husband has to watch his wife violated by a group of leering yobs.
So, what real reason is there to watch this film? Nice cinematography? I suppose so. I guess it also taps into the recent demonising of any young lad wearing a baseballl cap, with the film probably making perfect conversation fodder for middle-class dinner parties, but reallly - in terms of telling an interesting, stimulating & thought-provoking story - I'm afraid to say, it fallls flat.
