I promised a post on In Bruges, which Kris and I very much enjoyed, but I’ve been wracking my brain about what exactly grabbed me about it. The plot’s too Tarantino: two hitmen sent to cool their heels in Bruges, and they do the sightseeing thing, while one (Ray, played by Colin Farrell) suffers both a crushing (funny) ennui with all things Bruges and the lingering ethical after-effects of their last gig. Farrell is not just better than I’ve seen him, and not just finally good (since I don’t think I’ve ever really thought much of his performances), he’s pretty damn good–holds his own in the constant precise shadings and even more constant tonal shifts of writer-director McDonagh’s dialogue. Ralph Fiennes shows up two-thirds of the way through and rips it up, gloriously unblinkingly BenKingsleyinSexyBeastish as the ridiculous vicious boss Harry.
Ostensibly the film uses this black-comic set-up as cover for a plot/theme about violence, kids, … stuff McDonagh’s exploited before in his play “The Pillowman.” But as a morality play, the thing’s quite thin–clearly, the pleasures of viciousness don’t just outweigh a moral vision, they stomp the shit out of it. But there’s one scene that seems an anchor, Ray and Ken (the excellent Brendan Gleason) wandering through an art gallery, staring at a Bosch, trying to make sense of it. Exactly. Oh, sure, there’s a reading that emphasizes (Christian) punishment for sins… but the painting’s joy–and it is a kind of sick, rich, seductive joy–is the juxtaposition of brutality and beauty. Fuck innocence; for all the talk of kids, McDonagh is exploiting our own (silly) dreams of innocence and kids. He’s interested less in a moral point than an aesthetic challenge, finding the point where horror and humor and (yes) beauty all collide together. And in that way, the film is not just enjoyable to those of us easily taken in by black vicious comedy, nor those of us simply taken with the feck-yooo lyricism of his language; I think the film’s sat in the back of my head for a few days because, like his best plays, like Bosch, they are spectacles which invite contemplation and resist reductive interpretation. It ain’t a great movie, but it’s a smart, fun, deceptively challenging movie.
Barbet Schroeder’s documentary Terror’s Advocate really deserves another post, but I was struck somewhat dumb by the film’s tone. It recounts the life and trials of advocate Jacques Verges (Ver SHJEZZ, since I can’t do the accent grave here), who began defending FLN bombers in Algeria, circled into various African and then Palestinian causes, and wound up the go-to guy for Carlos the Jackal and the dense underbelly of terrorism circling around Europe through the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Oh, and the Khmer Rouge. Verges throughout talks casually, with a little smile, with utter confidence…. at times seeming smug, at other times seeming kind of likable. Meanwhile, we’re seeing an astonishing array of interviews with major players, not just lawyers and journalists and the odd historian but terrorists themselves.
Or is it “terrorists?” The film opens with a line of written prose, stating that the director’s point of view about the subject of the film is not the same as the speakers’. It’s the one place where we’re given any strong cue about a point of view. I found the film fascinating as the opening sense of a political, anti-colonial struggle diffused into a broader terrorist movement, motivated less by politics than (or as often by) money, anti-authoritarian aggression, a smug sense of exceptionalism… It’s a sub-history of the vicious birth of modern terror, but it sidesteps the narrative of the jihadist origin, and points out an alternative evolutionary track… and it does so without any kind of moral certainty. I’m wonderstruck that you could make such a documentary with a strong point of view about terrorism yet that point of view is neither “Terrorism=political resistance” nor “Terrorism=vicious evil.” And it’s… well, as I said, kind of fascinating. No victims interviewed, hardly any police or authorities. Mostly the agents of destruction, speaking for themselves. I felt appalled at my own engagement, unsure how I should be responding. Pretty damn impressive high-wire act.
It seems crucial to add: Verges is a horror, like Idi Amin (the subject of another excellent Schroeder doc), or in a different and more intimate way Claus von Bulow (from a great fictionalized version of that story, also by Schroeder). What fascinates me is NOT me loving Verges, the lovable rapscallion. What’s fascinating is that the film isn’t underlining or even trying to sell him or terrorism as horror; neither is it really trying to explain the rationale, let alone defend it.
Perhaps it’s taking a page from Verges, whose defenses of various horrible individuals often rested on his “rupture” of the state’s narrative. If France wants to put Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon, away, then Verges will defend him by challenging the false sense of the Enlightened state, will use as a counter-narrative the brutal French violence in Algeria. So Schroeder’s film runs its own counter-ops, resisting the dominant/conventional narratives of terrorism or moral approbation, and instead building up a damning indictment almost entirely through the words, actions, histories from the point of view of the “accused.”
Again, it’s a really engaging film. J. Hoberman likened it to an “international thriller,” and that’s a smart read. I’m really curious what people think about this one.
i quite enjoyed in bruges despite actively expecting to be annoyed by it. it’s a slight film, but very pleasurable. good writing, good acting, good cinematography, good music, and not as pleased with itself as films of this kind usually are, or as flashy. in fact, not pleased with itself at all.
ralph fiennes is great! the comparison to kingsley in sexy beast is off, i think. it’s a lighter character (not scary at all) and the film itself is pretty light. the pleasures recede during plot necessary patches; the film is at its best during throwaway scenes, as, for example, when farell and gleeson discuss global race war with a dwarf.