A Most Violent Year

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR       B+         
USA  (125 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  J.C. Chandor 

There is always a path that is most right. 

—Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac)

A throwback to the 70’s, in particular the peculiarly darkened style of THE GODFATHER saga (1972 – 74), though the film takes place in New York City in 1981, a year the city reportedly saw one of the highest crime rates in its history, starring Oscar Isaac from Inside Llewyn Davis (2012) as Abel Morales, owner of a small city oil company.  What’s immediately apparent is the degree that Isaac channels Al Pacino’s performance of Michael Corleone from THE GODFATHER, where he continually tries to be that noble figure not only for his family, but his every move, even while being investigated and heavily scrutinized by the police, is made to garner “respect.”  While his business was inherited through marriage, where his beautiful wife Anna (Jessica Chastain) comes from mob money, Abel spends the entire movie trying to get out from under the shadow of her father’s criminal underworld reputation, trying to prove to anyone who will listen that he runs a legitimate business.  This becomes a running question throughout the film, as Chandor plays close to the vest when doling out plot information, keeping viewers on edge throughout even though it’s filmed in a mesmerizingly slow and hypnotic style.  Stylistically, this low-key film is in a world by itself where nothing else really compares, shot deliberately with a degree of unusually quiet elegance throughout by Selma (2014) cinematographer Bradford Young, making a bold directorial statement simply by charting new territory in a popular genre that has been explored to death.  Rather than accentuate the bloodshed, this film draws us into the strange and curious world of buying property and obtaining a loan, which is an art in itself when you’re trying to accumulate well over a million dollars, mostly from dirty guys that would just as soon rip your head off.  While Abel makes a down payment on a piece of land owned by Hassidic Jews overlooking the waterfront, he comes under intense pressure from all sides when it comes to making the final payment, as if he misses the deadline he could lose it all.  The threatening violence that pervades the mood throughout this film is also met with everyday, ordinary acts of theft, where Abel’s oil trucks are coming under attack, with his drivers are beat up at gunpoint and left on the street while their trucks are hijacked in order to steal every ounce of oil.  This is a dirty business reeking with a history of corruption, where his independent drivers may be challenging the solidarity of the Teamsters union, his competitors may be trying to muscle him out of the way, while Abel’s business practices are being thoroughly investigated by the District Attorney (David Oyelowo, also from Selma) who is bound and determined to uncover wrongdoing in an election year. 

Written by Chandor himself, the film is an existential nightmare where a well-intentioned individual is thwarted at every turn, bearing some similarities to the moral complexities of the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man (2009), where like the Old Testament character of Job, a man is challenged at every step of the way but still tries to find a meaningful significance to it all, to be a serious man, someone whose moral values remain intact and where God still has a place in his life.  While the religious context is nonexistent in this movie, replaced by a solidly entrenched, mob-driven capitalistic system that is ripe with corruption, Abel is extremely cognizant of his family’s stature in the New York community, where his every move is driven to elevate their place in society.  While his competitors are thugs that use mafia tactics, what’s intriguing about this story is that these are his friends and relatives, people that he socializes with and attends family gatherings, where cutthroat tactics is all they know.  While Abel tries not to take it personally, he’s not the one that is strong-armed at gunpoint and hauled out of their trucks like his drivers who have literally come under siege.  While common sense suggests they might arm themselves, this is not only illegal and could jeopardize the business, but it also leads to shootouts on public thoroughfares where innocent people are subject to being shot and killed.  Short of hiring armed guards, which the company cannot afford, it’s a tricky situation that plagues not only Abel but his drivers, especially Julian (Elyes Gabel), who very much like Abel is trying to build a life for himself, to make something out of nothing, both of them starting out as drivers, but Julian has the misfortune of being traumatized by the events, especially when he repeatedly gets targeted.  Ever since Steven Soderbergh’s underrated OUT OF SIGHT (1998), comedian Albert Brooks has made the remarkable transition to playing heavies, where he is brilliant underplaying the role of Andrew Walsh, a mafia lawyer, but he’s an essential component in any business transaction, as he’s the keeper of the flame, a company guy trusted by the underworld, the kind of person who has lived to see it all happen before his eyes, where nothing phases him any more, as he knows how things get done.  Andrew is genuinely sympathetic to Abel, as he’s a kid with good instincts, but he may be in over his head. 

Perhaps the real surprise in the film is the performance of Jessica Chastain as Anna, as no nonsense as any man, whose life behind the scenes is rarely even hinted at, but becomes more prominent as the film progresses, where Abel grows increasingly desperate, where his back is against it, yet his calibrated performance remains deliberate and measured throughout.  Anna is a whole other story, where the audience is fortunate to see Chastain in a more menacing role as a gangster’s moll, the femme fatale, a Lady Macbeth, a woman from the streets who knows her way around a crooked business even as her husband strives to be a decent man.  While she’s not easily intimidated, as evidenced by the way she mouths off to the District Attorney when they conduct a search of the home during her young child’s birthday party, seen passing out party favors to each kid at the door as they leave prematurely before reminding the counselor, “This was very disrespectful,” while flicking a cigarette in his face.  As the feds bring multiple indictments against him, Abel has all his money tied up in buying this invaluable piece of land, and when his legitimate lenders dry up, scared away by the feds, he has to make the rounds through the nefarious connections of his own family, hat in hand, asking for last minute loans.  Alessandro Nivola as Abel’s sinister rival Peter Forente is particularly creepy, a guy whose life is so defined by gangland murders that he basically has to spend his entire life behind a protected fortress.  Yet this is a guy he grew up with, who could easily be behind the hijackings, but Abel treats him as a serious man, where otherwise he’d be thrown out on his ear.   The crucial relationship between Chastain and Isaac is superbly developed, continually underplayed, with restrained fireworks and plenty of surprises in store, where this film continually takes unexpected turns in the road, yet never for a minute is anything less than compelling.  Chandor, the driving force behind Robert Redford’s wordless performance in All Is Lost (2013), continues to be a director of intrigue, refusing to follow anyone’s path but his own, growing up in New Jersey, a graduate of The College of Wooster, making starkly different kinds of films than any of his compatriots, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with his first feature MARGIN CALL (2011) following more than a dozen years of making commercials.  In this he resembles Swedish director Roy Andersson, who has directed over 400 commercials, but also Ridley and Tony Scott, Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, not to mention David Fincher.  The music by Alex Ebert is especially effective at the end, America for Me - YouTube (4:08), a dramatic rendition sounding much like Nina Simone.  

Locke

LOCKE         B+                    

USA  Great Britain  (85 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Steven Knight       Official site

Steven Knight may be a billionaire, as he’s the creator of the original British version of the TV quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (1998 – present) that became such an international success, with the Indian version featured in Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008), a show that has become a fixture on television around the world and continues to rake in millions.  He followed that with two excellent screenplays, as he wrote Stephen Frears’ DIRTY PRETTY THINGS (2002) and David Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES (2007), both known for the urgency expressed in the intelligently realistic scripts, while only recently has be directed movies, starting with REDEMPTION (2013) and this film released in the same year.  LOCKE is an experimental film that feels like a writing exercise, as it’s similar in tone to American J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost (2013), where a single man appears onscreen throughout the film, literally carrying the emotional heft of the picture.  While Robert Redford received outstanding reviews for a wordless performance while stranded alone at sea in Chandor’s film, Tom Hardy’s role as a man under siege by increasingly stressful car phone calls is more understated and reserved, though the circumstances of the narrative mysteries both veer out of control, testing the patience and ability to think under pressure for both men.  That one may be more successful than the other is incidental, as both are forced to deal with dire circumstances, where the journey is placing us in their predicament.  As difficult as it is to imagine a movie built around a single shot expressing the same vantage point throughout the film, seen almost entirely through the front windshield of the car where driver Hardy as Ivan Locke sits, this minimalist film is a radio play where Knight alters the tone through an incessant barrage of voices intruding into the driver’s constricted space, where the abrasive sound design of perhaps a hundred car phone calls tells the story, becoming a slowly building accumulation of inner turbulence.  Even as the road is mostly flat and straight, shot under cover of darkness throughout, Locke is initially seen stopped at a red light coming home from work, but he remains in pause mode even after the light changes, where the truck behind him sounds the horn, and as he turns, his decision sets the story in motion.

Shot in real time, we quickly learn that Locke has informed his kids that he’s going to miss an after-school soccer game, something he promised not to miss, apologizing to his two sons while also informing a construction crew supervisor named Donal (Andrew Scott) that he’d have to handle a major assignment alone, as Locke, the site foreman, could not be there.  Donal goes ballistics, as it’s the largest concrete pour in European history outside of government or military installations, where Locke, supposedly an expert in concrete, continually tries to calm him down, encouraging him that he would be there over the phone to advise him through it, where all he has to do is follow his instructions step by step.  Added to the mix is a woman named Bethan (Olivia Colman) who’s in the hospital about to deliver a baby, where Locke, who hasn’t yet informed his wife, is the baby’s father.  Bethan apparently initiated this series of events by calling to inform Locke that her water broke, not having had any contact since the date of conception.  While it’s a major commitment on his part, walking away from a huge industrial event that requires plenty of checks and balances, as the foundation of a planned skyscraper must be poured right, where the foreman is in charge of timing small groups of over a hundred trucks, where roads must be shut down ahead of time to make way for them to proceed to the site unimpeded.  Meanwhile Locke is receiving incoming calls from his boss Gareth (Ben Daniels), who he freezes out before the night is done, concentrating exclusively on Donal, guiding his every step, while also having to inform his wife Katrina (Ruth Wilson) that he won’t becoming home that evening, who doesn’t take the news well at all, becoming emotionally devastated, locking herself in the bathroom, much to the concern of her two sons who can only suspect something serious is happening.  All these calls and their concerns interlink, flooding the emotions of the driver, where it’s all too much for one man to handle, especially while heading in the opposite direction of his family and his career, as one suspects it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable tragedy occurs.

The visual landscape is in constant change throughout, as it’s a neverending stream of lights illuminated by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, continually changing shape, at times evolving into a kaleidoscope color scheme, as the driver’s face is part of a moving montage of reflected images, where there is no stopping on the road, no fixed image, where it’s all a stream-of-conscious mindset determined by the endless procession of phone calls, each delving deeper and deeper into his own personal nightmare, where within an hour he loses whatever stability he’s spent his entire life constructing.  Making matters worse is a surreal conversation he holds with his deceased father, bitterly angry at him for not being there when Locke grew up, where he’s absolutely certain not to make the same mistake with this coming child, even as he barely knows the mother, as he continually reminds the ghost of his father that he can handle it, simultaneously juggling all these personal catastrophes, as if to prove himself capable because his father couldn’t.  Despite the calm reassurance he tries to project, where he’s known for his meticulous detail and reliability, always being careful and precise, his interior world is a flood of chaotic emotions when things start spiraling out of control, where the enormous implications of the calamity at hand only bleaken his outlook, as he feels helpless to right the sinking ships when he’s not at the control.  His late model BMW car has a digital push button rolodex that he can access hands free through his steering wheel, highlighting a ridiculous number of names and phone numbers, all neatly alphabetized, where the viewer begins to recognize the recurring names and the degree of difficulty escalates with each successive call, where his sense of duty comes into question.  Why is he jeopardizing all that matters most for someone he can barely even remember?  The blur of lights move in and out of focus, as do the headlights, the wheels, the noise of the traffic beside him, the continual anguish on his face, and always the everpresent road that lies ahead of him.  The musical soundtrack by the Tindersticks’ Dickon Hinchliffe, so prevalent in Claire Denis films, couldn’t be a better fit, as the sensuousness of sound and image are wonderfully interlocked, while the jarring interruption of disastrous phone calls becomes an obstacle course of jagged edges to maneuver, where Locke insists upon balancing each one with the needed calmness and dexterity, irrespective of the dark undertones of impending disaster.  In the end, it’s the call he “doesn’t” take that has the greatest impact, a recorded message that becomes a clarifying moment when the personal becomes magnified, when his youngest son so innocently seems to have it all figured out, even if he’s too young to understand the true depth of the problem, yet he has faith that his Dad can somehow pull it all together and life will go on as before. 

All Is Lost

ALL IS LOST              B+                  

USA  (106 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  J.C. Chandor           Official site

Thirteenth of July, 4:15 PM, I’m sorry.  I know that means little at this point, but I am.  I tried.  I think you would all agree that I tried.  To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right.  But I wasn't.  All is lost here—except soul and body, or what’s left of them, and a half-day’s rations.  I’m sorry.

—Our Man (Robert Redford)

Of interest, director J.C. Chandor is the only one of a throng of Sundance participants since 1978 to ever ask the festival founder, Robert Redford (age 77), if he’d ever star in a Sundance film, which he gladly agrees to do here.  And that choice makes all the difference, as you don’t see anybody else in the entire movie, an old man and the sea adventure with just Redford (listed in the credits as Our Man), the boat, and the sea.  There’s a brief opening diary entry that the old man recites, but other than a single word outpouring of frustration, which points the way to the inevitable, there is no dialogue either.  The script is only 31-pages long, and Redford was impressed with the detail of specifics.  Essentially a one-man survival tale, the film interestingly provides no backstory whatsoever, offering no reference to who he’s speaking to in the opening narration, who he is, what skills he has as a sailor, or why he’s out there alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the first place on a 39-foot yacht called the Virginia Jean, some 1700 miles from the nearest land.  In the darkness, he wakes to discover water leaking into his sleeping quarters, only to find a gaping hole in the ship’s hull caused by ramming into the side of a floating shipping container that apparently fell overboard.  The inside flood of water into the cabin destroys the electronic equipment used to navigate the ship as well as pump the water from the boat.  Displaying undue calm, he’s able to detach the yacht by cleverly hoisting his anchor and placing it on the other side of the container, and begin the meticulous process of repairing his ship. 

This opening round of assaults is just the beginning, as he quickly patches the hole with homemade glue and pumps out the water by hand until tiring from exhaustion.  As he sets his sights on the horizon, another storm is approaching.  After a few brief minutes, he’s lost his radio signal, so there’s no way to send an S.O.S.  While he appears alert and clear-headed, he makes the best decisions he can, under the circumstances, though the next round actually overturns his vessel, breaking the mast, where the side is leaking again.  Thrown about the cabin like a rag doll, he’s knocked unconscious by the severity of the ship’s sudden movements, awaking to water already as high as his bed.  Redford is seen constantly in motion, never sitting still, going through a series of deliberate procedures in an attempt to stabilize the boat as best he can, but the groans of the ship still at the mercy of the undulating waves suggest there is little time left.  He prepares a life raft and a survival kit, briefly taking what he can carry from the waterlogged cabin, and after surviving through the night, watches his vessel slowly sink into the sea.  Floating in the life raft, he studies what he has left, which includes a sextant and a map, where he calculates his position and discovers he’s nearing a shipping lane, which is his best chance for flagging down a passing ship.  But when he taps into his emergency water reserve, one of the plugs accidentally opened, leaving nothing but seawater to drink.  He devises a plan to place a cellophane sheet across a cut out container, collecting moisture through condensation, but the amount of water collected is far too little. 

The director doesn’t utilize any experimental or avant-garde aesthetics, and sticks to old-fashioned cinema, allowing the camera to tell the story, where it’s not exactly a silent film, as sound permeates throughout, giving the viewer a feel for atmospheric conditions, as it only grows quiet during the calm.  The film is largely a showcase for his ingenuity, as he has managed to keep himself alive under the harshest conditions, keeping his wits about him, never panicking, maintaining his composure.  During the quiet moments, Redford studies an old book, Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen, helping him use the sextant, noting he is venturing into the shipping lanes, keeping his eyes peeled for help.  When he finally spots a ship, how ironic that it turns out to be the cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama, perhaps the exact same vessel used in Captain Phillips (2013), as it looks identical.  He signals them with emergency flares, and amazingly they pass close by, but they keep on going, leaving him in abject despair.  Another vessel awakes him in the night, where he again lights flares, but to no avail, where the tone of the film shifts from continually doing something about it, to there’s nothing left to do.  Redford is suffering from thirst, hunger, and exposure, and when he finally stops moving around, sitting alone and dejected, we see his fate etched upon his face.  It’s in these final solitary moments that Redford is most impressive, where he’s worth his weight in gold, as his entire life feels like a weight upon his shoulders, becoming a hushed poem of unending anguish, where the solemn orchestral music by Alex Ebert very much resembles Arvo Pärt’s remarkable Spiegel im Spiegel in Gus van Sant’s equally tragic GERRY (2002), Intro - Gerry - Gus Van Sant - YouTube (5:21).  An ultimately moving experience, one must note that Redford did all his own water stunts while carrying the entire film on his own, all underplayed in a minimalist style, where only what’s essential is revealed.