🎬 #101 You Couldn't Make It Up.
Happy New Year. I wish you all the best for the next 365 days and beyond.
Peter Berg carved himself a unique niche that climaxed in two films released in the same year - 2016. If you wanted a film inspired by a real life tale of everyday people under incredible circumstances then Berg was your man to render it on the big screen. He can effortlessly blend documentary fact and drama in a way that has become his signature. He wraps us up in two storys that we already know the resolution to, in a stripped back, unpretentious way. No mean feat.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: DEEPWATER HORIZON
2016 Dir Peter Berg
[1hr 46 mins]
What I found most compelling about Deepwater Horizon was how immediate the danger felt. How real the stakes were, as the character’s reacted truthfully to this disaster, marooning them on a burning platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
Berg has spoken about how he likes to arrive with minimal 'preparation’ in the sense that he likes the actors to do their work and then he reacts to them. There’s no preset blocking - he wants the actors to lead the camera. He likes it that way and thats one of the reasons why the film works as a vivid document of the event. He’s reacting to human reaction and interaction, he’s not trying to constrain or wrangle it into a very formal frame.
His cast also embody the kind of down to earth workmen and company men that you can really believe. John Malkovich in particular plays an excellent, callous BP executive who pushes beyond safety protocols in pursuit of profit. Wahlberg too does what he was born to do - be an elevated everyman. He bristles with the qualities of someone who knows this world and is comfortable in it. If Mark Wahlberg didn’t become Mark Wahlberg he could be on an oil rig, or in a police uniform in Boston.
TL;DR Berg’s command of what it must have felt like to be in the middle of this disaster is captivating and inspiring.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US and in the UK.
Fact: The film was mostly shot on an 85% scale set of the oil rig, one of the largest practical sets ever built.
FILM TWO: PATRIOTS DAY
2016 Dir Peter Berg
[2hr 16 mins]
Berg and Walhberg went straight from making Deepwater Horizon into Patriots Day - with no downtime in between. The film is a vivid account of the Boston bombing that is perhaps Berg’s most audacious blend of documentary and narrative yet.
In fact, the two are so closely intertwined that at various points in the film he uses actual footage and photography from the actual event and aftermath. As if two films occupied the same reel, inter-spliced - a dramatised version and a strict documentary coming together for maximum impact.
Similarly to Deepwater Horizon, there is a dramatic sense of real danger. Particularly during a shoot out later in the film. In fact, if it didn’t actually happen you might think it a ridiculous fabrication. But Berg’s on the ground approach makes you believe every second, forcing us to flinch, as if we’ve been dropped right into it, shrapnel flying around in unpredictable directions.
Both of these films embody Berg’s tact with handling real disasters that devastated so many real lives and yet he never oversteps the mark. Neither film feels like he’s using anyone or taking advantage. And both films wrap up the dramas of those days into a distinct emotional narrative with feelings as real as the gun fire and flames.
TL;DR Berg’s portrait of the terror attack will terrorise with its visceral realism.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon, Apple, Google and YouTube in the US and in the UK.
Fact: The first film scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that wasn’t directed by David Fincher.