Liam (2000)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes Synopsis
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	87:09 (Case: 91)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Stephen Frears
Studio Distributor	Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Ian Hart Clare Hackett Anne Reid Meagan Burns Anthony Borrows
Case	Click
RPI	$29.95	Music	John Murphy

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, mildly
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    When the Jewish owner of Dad's worksite closes the yard, Dad is unemployed and cannot find casual work. The family is forced to rely on the income brought into the house by Con and Theresa. This damages Dad's aforementioned pride as he slowly slips into a great depression, and his bitterness toward others who are more well-off or who are working steadily grows stronger, eventually finding the answer to his problems in the fascist movement.

    Liam is forced to deal with the prospect of his first communion and is busily trying to clear his mind of all his 'sins' and come to grips with the changes going on at home. Keeping his feelings and fears inside causes Liam's speech impediment to get increasingly worse, to the extent that he cannot even confess his 'sins' to the priest. Theresa works hard at the house of a wealthy Jewish family who treat her very nicely and who she likes working for - they give her presents and make her feel welcome. Liam loves his sister the most - they share the same room and are very alike as they do not speak very much. Mam deals with the changes to the family by trying to ignore them - she still wants them to keep paying their debts as she tries to keep the family together as best she can despite Dad's growing dissent.

    Liam is a well-made film that demands the audience take a vested interest in the story. Because the story is more-or-less presented from Liam's point of view, director Stephen Frears does not give the audience anything for free. You are forced to work a lot of things out for yourself, as a small child would. Like many films from this era and setting, it is very dark, dirty and grey with not much light at the end of the tunnel. It features one of the darkest and bleakest endings I have seen in a long time. It is a quality production with solid performances from Ian Hart (Dad), Clare Hackett (Mam) Megan Burns (Theresa) and Anne Reid (Mrs Abbernathy), but it does not leave much for those looking for some redemption after 90 minutes.

Video

    The video transfer of Liam is solid and does not contain too many flaws. At the beginning of this film, the transfer has some problems, but they get increasingly better as the film goes on.
    
    The feature is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.
    
    The main problem with this transfer is its lack of sharpness and shadow detail. As mentioned above, this film is very dark and is filled with scenes that are not well-lit which serves to give a very depressing and cramped outlook on life  Because of this, it was very important for the makers of this DVD to ensure that there is proper shadow detail so the viewers can at least see what is happening on screen. There are times on this disc where it is verging on impossible to see anything else besides a shadowy blur, with prime examples of this at 6:32, 10:46 and 34:54. Coupled with this is a massive amount of grain early in the film at 3:56, 4:09, 4:15 and 5:41. Together, these two problems put make the first act of the film very unclear and difficult to watch, but by the end of the film, neither of these problems occur very much at all.

    The colours in the transfer are very consistent throughout. While it is very dark for the most part, there are scenes that have bright and vibrant colours in them which shine brightly. At one point however, the picture suddenly goes very white and looks overexposed before a fade-to-black - this happens at 60:22. I am not sure if this was a problem with the film's negative being overexposed or whether it was a problem that occurred in the transfer to DVD.

    There are very few MPEG artefacts to be found here, with some posterization at 35:56 and some slight film-to-video artefacts in the form of aliasing at 53:58. There are negative film artefacts throughout in the form of dust and dirt in some of the darker scenes, but nothing too bad.

    There are no subtitles recorded on this disc which is a shame because it is a hard task understanding what some of these characters are saying - in particular at 11:27 when Dad is talking to the priest - but more on that in the next section.

    This disc is single layered.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    In general terms, this audio transfer not up to scratch. There is a constant 'hissing' or ambient noise through the speakers that really stands out when there is not much dialogue or action on screen. The best time to notice this is during a scene with Liam and Mrs Abbernathy beginning at 70:10. I find this problem particularly annoying as one of the great things about listening to a film on DVD is being able to hear a perfect silence or subtle noises in the background. This hissing was so loud that for the first half of the film I thought that the noise was from the wind outside my house. Unfortunately, I was wrong - it was just poorly transferred audio.
    
    There is only one audio track recorded on this DVD, and needless to say, it is the one I listened to. It is an English 2.0 Dolby Digital Surround track encoded at 192 kb/s.

    As I touched upon in the subtitle section of the video transfer, some of the dialogue in the film is very hard to understand; whilst some of this is because of the heavy accents the characters have, the dialogue could have been a lot sharper and clearer than it appears on this DVD. The best time to notice this is at 11:27. There are no problems with audio synchronisation in the transfer.
 
    The music is strong throughout the film with a piano-based score by John Murphy. The music never takes over or dominates a scene but adds its presence whenever it is called for. My main concern with this score is that it adds a bit of a 'Made for Television' feel to the film as it is very similar to the music for the 1980s Australian soap opera 'A Country Practice'.
 
    The surround speakers get quite a work-out on this disc considering that is a 2.0 soundtrack. Mainly used to add small effects and give a wider presence to the film, they are used effectively.
 
    The subwoofer is not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Does 'Synopsis' really count as an extra??!?

Menu

Cast & Crew Biographies

Production Notes

Synopsis

    It seems as if the technical aspects of the R4 and R1 disc are exactly the same.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Theatrical Trailer

• Production Notes

    Liam is a quality film, but in the end is another depression era 'poverty stricken family' drama. It is worth a look and is enjoyable, but there is not much here to make me go nuts.

    The video is solid.

    The audio is frustrating.

    The extras are almost non-existent.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall