Don't get me wrong: this is an awesome movie.
However, that man who's always looking into the camera - almost into my eye - freaks me out.
What's his character name?
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Well the actor's name is Joe Melia. His character doesn't have a name, but IMDb lists him as "The Photographer".
shareI think he's supposed to freak you out. I see him as our present day consciousness, when we know now that WW1 was an unbelievable travesty. Nobody around him does, just him. And he's carelessly smug about it, just like we are in many ways from our safe vantage point of the future. He's more or less saying "Come along you poor doomed historical people, come and play out your tragedy".
Ah! Now we see the violence endemic in the system!
Joe Melia is a great actor and is perfect in this role as our eyes and ears as we watch the War begin and progress.
The Long Walk stops every year, just once.
Ah! Now we see the violence endemic in the system!
By now you know that the actor's name is Joe Melia and that he serves in several capacities in the film. In particular, he represents, in simultaneously humorous and gloomy satiric form, how the print press of the time helped to foment, agitate, misrepresent, propagandize, and hyperbolize the run-up to that greatest of all twentieth-century tragedies, World War One.
He also represents the alleged intrigues among the once-famous British Field Marshals Douglas Haig, William Robertson, and John French. In this role, he delivers deliciously humorous satiric commentary as he sings the song "Comrades, Comrades" while he serves champagne to Haig and French.
Finally, in somewhat anomalous fashion, he appears as the conductor of a small band that plays just before Sylvia Pankhurst mounts the speakers' platform to denounce the war and to tell the audience that Germany has offered peace. After her speech, he is shown in what seems to be German garb, perhaps German prison garb. If anyone has any information about this last item, I'd like to hear it.
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I see him as our present day consciousness, when we know now that WW1 was an unbelievable travesty. Nobody around him does, just him.
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No, I disagree with you there. The woman peace campaigner who made a speech from her podium knew that it was an unnecessary travesty and tried to convince people of that fact but they were so blinded by misguided patriotism and belief in the idiots in charge that they refused to believe her.
It may help to think of him as equivalent to the Chorus in Greek tragedy, who spoke to the audience directly and commented on the action. This device was revived by Berthold Brecht, whose influence is manifest in this movie.
shareI would call him..."Captain Obvious"...LOL.
Actually, this staging device is old one and worked well in ancient times to propagandise the audience about the theme of the show. Nowadays, such tricks are just ridicualous and shouldn't work on the more sophisticated audience members. People should figure the theme out themsleves. Or the play or film is a flop. Also in cinema, it's called 'breaking the fourth wall' or directly connecting to the film watcher by relating directly to them. It's a bit of a taboo in film, but some people have used it successfully and it became their trademark film performance gimic. Many do it as an 'aside' comment or gesture.
(Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Mel Brooks and more.)
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