#60
Post
by Persona » Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:24 pm
Finally caught this on Blu and I find my opinion caught between some of the opinions expressed here. There is enough that I admire about the film and Ramsay's approach to the subject matter that it's currently in my Top 5 films of the year (I haven't seen a lot, though) while still leaving me kind of cold.
First off, I am surprised by some of the accolades for the screenplay when this was at Cannes because it is such a bare-bones narrative with nothing particularly impressive about the dialogue or the story and nothing terribly original, either (and I'd have to watch again but I also don't know how much sense certain plot points make). It's very much a Taxi Driver core with Travis' rambling paranoia and psychotic delusions swapped out for Joe's PTSD. It's not just derivative on that front, though. Greenwood's score is a good one but at times the way it joined with the scenes, especially the opening sequence, felt like an indirect lift from Refn's Drive. And there are other Drive parallels throughout the film.
I found Ramsay's visual approach (especially with some of those close-up inserts) to be evocative at times and I admired the restraint and concision, which was almost novel for a film that's basically a pulp exploitation flick in genre but not aesthetic, but then on the flip-side of those qualities find the film not really effective as a thriller or a character study. The coy approach to extreme violence is perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie, and that's kind of sad because it doesn't give you a lot of thematic ground that isn't somewhat meta-textual.
Anyways, the 90 minutes surely breezed by and, yes, there are a few truly wonderful moments and scenes where you can see Ramsay's vision elevating the material she is working with (again, those inserts, a couple of the set-pieces, and that scene on the kitchen floor). I don't think Ramsay's found the perfect click yet between her aesthetic and a strong, nuanced narrative that works well with what she does, but I certainly hope it's not another 6 years before we get another feature film from her because I think she's capable of making something really, really good.