Something to watch tonight: Monday 14 July

The Man in the Hat (Warbeck, 2020)

Monday would nor­mally be a new releases column here at Funerals & Snakes but this week – and for the next three – I’m filling in for Simon Morris on RNZ National’s At the Movies.

Seeing as they are pay­ing real money, I feel like they should get first dibs on my opin­ions1 so I’ll excerpt the reviews after they are pos­ted online on Wednesday. The delay is regret­ted but it’s worse for the broad­cast audi­ence. Since At the Movies is now online-only on Wednesdays, radio listen­ers have to wait until next Sunday after­noon. That’s a full 11 days after Superman (for example) landed in cinemas.

But while I’m think­ing about At the Movies, I want to draw your atten­tion to a pro­gramme I made in August 2021. A sur­prise hit of the recent French Film Festival, Stephen Warbeck’s The Man in the Hat was about to get a wide release in loc­al cinemas but the arrival of some com­munity Covid cases meant New Zealand went into Level 4 lock­down and pub­lic gath­er­ings were once again for­bid­den. I’d already recor­ded an inter­view with Warbeck for the show2 but the release of the film itself was wrecked.

I’d already pre­viewed it for the fest­iv­al sea­son and said this:

There is surely no odder film in the fest­iv­al this year than The Man in the Hat, not least because it is basic­ally an almost silent Irish film (IMDB says UK but it is so Irish) set in France. Perennial screen vil­lain Ciarán Hinds proves to be very light on his feet as the actu­al Man in the Hat, on a road trip through Southern France in search of a lost love whose pho­to­graph he car­ries on the pas­sen­ger seat of his little Fiat 500.

Witnessing what he thinks is a mafia gang dis­pos­ing of a body, he high tails it out of town fol­lowed by the quin­tet, a chase that is rendered some­what inef­fect­ive by the unre­li­ab­il­ity of their 2CV. The lead­er of the gang is played by Stephen Dillane (also a Game of Thrones alum­nus) and, con­fus­ingly, he also often wears a hat.

The Man in the Hat is a road movie with com­ic set pieces inspired by the great Jacques Tati and on a cold winter’s night at the pic­tures it will warm the cockles of your heart.

The Man in the Hat was Warbeck’s debut as a dir­ect­or but he is best known as a com­poser, win­ning an Oscar for his score for Shakespeare in Love in 1998. The editor-in-chief is a big fan of that music, using it in shows for her cos­tume stu­dents and after I told Warbeck that, he took the time to write a per­son­al email thank­ing her for her sup­port and recount­ing a story about how it came to be.

So, he’s a dia­mond geez­er and every­one should watch his film.

Where to watch The Man in the Hat

Aotearoa: Streaming on Beamafilm3 or digit­al rent­al from AroVision

Australia: Streaming on Beamafilm

Canada: Digital rental

Ireland: Digital rental

India: Not cur­rently available

USA: Streaming on Prime Video or Kanopy4

UK: Streaming on Prime Video