When I booked my tickets for the 2015 EIFF there was one film I was looking forward to seeing more than any other. Because, well, Peter Mullan.
Hector is a road movie with a deeply humane core. Heartwarming is an adjective much overused by film critics, but wholly appropriate on this occasion. Mullan is the eponymous central character, a man who walked out of his own life fifteen years before and has lived on the streets ever since. We see his existence, rough sleeping, the risk of violence, accepting kindnesses from strangers, hitching from place to place. For Xmas he returns to a shelter in London where he is a familiar figure, and through conversations there the trauma and tragedy in his past, and reasons for his homeless state, are gradually revealed.
Along the way he has, for the first time since his disappearance, made efforts to get back in contact with his siblings. Initially rebuffed by his sister (and her priggish husband, a wonderfully prickly Stephen Tompkinson), he meets up with brother Peter in London. (Peter is working as a council recycling operative, or, as Hector calls him, a "conscientious fucking bin man" - there are memorable lines and phrases sprinkled all through the film.) Hector returns to the road and the life he knows, but hope for the future has been restored.
From the off there is some wonderful cinematography, the opening sequence looking down on an M74 car park, following random motorists until Hector limps into shot. The script and performances provide a lot of laugh out loud moments and some genuinely emotional and touching scenes. It is a world few of us know much about other than in passing, a world of brief interactions with myriad others, and where contact with officialdom poses problems. The soundtrack features some beautiful songs from Emily Barker, written for the movie.
But at the heart of it all is Peter Mullan's Hector. A long way from the hard men he so frequently portrays, the character is both warm and distrustful, funny and grumpy, connected and distant. One of his finest performances and a brilliant study of the fragility of the lives we all lead. I walked out feeling elated and humbled, and knowing that this will be a movie that will always find a place in my top ten of all time.
Hector is scheduled to be out on general release towards the end of this year. You really should go.
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