CHOOSE THRILLER CHOOSE HORROR CHOOSE ROMCOM
THE FIRST TIME DANNYBOYLE THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IT MIGHT MEAN TO BE A FILMMAKER WAS IN A BOLTON PORNO CINEMA IN THE EARLY’70S. Aged 16, he could pass for 18. Which meant he was the one to get the tickets, then dash round the corner to find his mate, who didn’t look anywhere near old enough to see A Clockwork Orange.
“The width,” he extols of those Kubrickian images. “I understood that a filmmaker wanted us to feel how a film was made. What’s it called? That vanishing point, one-point perspective, where the film disappears into infinity.”
He would borrow the technique for Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later and Sunshine.
Since that heady day, with undimmed enthusiasm, he has tackled off the ground, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Professor Higgins. But one thing is consistent throughout his filmography: nothing is ever quite what it appears to be. This is the man who directed an episode of — about rave culture. All of his films fall under the magical aegis of Boyle’s Law: unpredictable, groovy, visually daring and often profound, an inspiring fusion of British instinct and American inspiration.
