🎬 #138 Hunters.
Cinema is at its best when it’s at its most primal. When it reminds us, in a dramatic way, of our base needs that lie deep inside us. Something that we don’t get so much in our day to day lives, busy paying bills and washing dishes. This week’s two films remind us of just how primal we can be.
Happy choosing, happy viewing
Bry
FILM ONE: WIND RIVER
2017 Dir Taylor Sheridan
1 hr 47 mins
This is Taylor Sheridan’s first film as director - before this, he had written Sicario and Hell Or High Water. Having written and sold, the first three screenplays he’d ever turned his hand to. A pretty amazing feat if you ask me.
You’ll see a common theme in his work, vast open wilderness, and the human relationships that dapple them, as well as at least one cowboy hat. Often at odds with the environment they’re in, there’s usually someone totally adept at navigating the locale and then others who are learning or will never learn. They’re a fish out of water.
That’s the case here when an FBI agent is brought into investigate a murder and is teamed up with a local hunter. What follows is a tense, winding [excuse the pun] journey into a landscape that is hard to comprehend, if you’re not born there. Sheridan is at his best when portraying the machinations of groups and their desire for control and power. His plotting is brilliantly straight-forward, straight-shooting but that never means boring or predictable. Enjoy the Neo-western packed with primal locations and emotions - surrounded by ice and snow, not desert or rock.
TL;DR: Sheridan takes us deep into the wilderness to figure things out, with all the elements pitted against us.
*Available for a small rental fee on Amazon and Apple in the US, sadly not available in the UK, but a VPN will come in handy for that.
Fact: The film was shot near Park City Utah, where it would eventually have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
FILM TWO: YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE
2017 Dir Lynne Ramsay
1 hr 29 mins
As poetic as it is violent - this film has been described as a 21st Century Taxi Driver. Phoenix is intense and scary - a character who is part blunt instrument, part warm hearted human with all the frailties that comes with. The direction is as solid as Pheonix’s build. It’s as simple, beautiful and stark as the character’s dolling out of revenge. But there is a lyrical, human quality that runs beneath the hot bloodedness.
That’s what’s so captivating about the film, the duality of the character and the representation of him through the plot, through the contrast of beauty and violence.
We’re capable of great and evil deeds and this takes us deep into that primal truth.
TL;DR: Lynne and Phoenix craft a tale of primal revenge that’s delicate and brutal.
*Available for a small rental free on Apple and to stream on Prime in the US and for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the UK.
Fact: The third film that Phoenix has appeared in that’s been scored by Jonny Greenwood.