4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we say goodbye to the man who was the great American novelist of his time. The shots below are all taken from films based on the work of Cormac McCarthy.
4 Shots From 4 Films
All The Pretty Horses (2000, dir by Billy Bob Thornton, DP: Barry Markowitz)
No Country For Old Men (2007, dir by Joel and Ethan Coen, DP: Roger Deakins)
The Road (2009, dir by John Hillcoat, DP: Javier Aguirresarobe)
Child of God (2013, dir by James Franco, DP: Christina Varos)
Today’s music video of the day comes from the one and only Nick Cave. John Hillcoat, the director of this video later went on to direct films like The Road and Lawless.
This video has kind of a nice Dr. Strangelove feel to it, which I like. That said, it was released 15 years ago so hopefully, time is not still running out. At the very least, let’s hope everyone was too busy dancing to launch any missiles.
It was directed by John Hillcoat, who would later direct films like Lawless, The Road, and The Proposition, along with an episode of Black Mirror.
For most of 2012, I was excited about seeing one film and that film was Lawless. Why was I so excited about seeing Lawless? Well, first off, I had spent most of the year being bombarded by the film’s genuinely exciting trailer. Seriously, that trailer was more entertaining than 80% of the film that I’ve seen this year. Judging from the trailer, the film was a period piece that took place during one of my favorite decades, the 1920s. The film dealt with bootleggers and I’m proud to say that there’s a few of those on my family tree. The trailer also featured Gary Oldman firing a tommy gun, Jessica Chastain dancing, Guy Pearce acting odd, and Tom Hardy being all tough and Tom Hardy-like.
When I watched that trailer, it didn’t matter that the film starred Shia LeBouf (who has always struck me as being a bit of a whiney actor). It didn’t matter that director John Hillcoat previously wasted good material with his adaptation of The Road. It didn’t even matter that the film was greeted with indifference at Cannes. “Oh,” I told myself, “that’s just the French critics being reflexively anti-American. Lawless has Truffaut written all over it…”
The only thing that tempered my enthusiasm for Lawless was when the first of the 30-second commercials started to appear on television. As opposed to the exciting trailer, these commercials made the film seem rather average and they now put less emphasis on the film’s stylistic excesses and more on the fact that the film was apparently “based on a true story.” The tone of the television spots was so different from that of the theatrical trailer that it was hard not to conclude that the PR geniuses at the Weinstein Company weren’t sure how to sell the film. I found myself wondering if Lawless would be as confused as its ad campaign.
Last Friday, I finally saw Lawless and judged for myself.
Lawless tells the story of the three Bondurant brothers. In the 1920s, these brothers are succesful bootleggers who work out of rural Virginia and who maintain a peaceful coexistence with local law enforcement through a steady supply of bribes. The oldest brother is a taciturn World War I veteran named Forrest (played by Tom Hardy.) The youngest brother is Jack (Shia LeBouf), who idolizes violent gangsters like Floyd Banner (Gary Oldman). The middle brother is Howard (Jason Clarke). Howard spends most of the movie yelling.
Things are peaceful for the Bondurant brothers until, one day, a corrupt and oddly fastidious prohibition agent named Rakes (Guy Pearce) shows up and demands a cut of whatever profit the brothers make from their bootlegging. Forrest refuses and soon Rakes and the Bondurants are engaged in a very violent and bloody war.
That war, however, doesn’t stop Jack from pursuing a relationship with a rebellious preacher’s daughter (played by Mia Wasikowska). Meanwhile, Forrest hires a new waitress to work at the family bar. Maggie (Jessica Chastain) is a former dancer from Chicago and soon, she and Forrest are cautiously pursuing their own relationship. As for Howard, he yells a lot.
Lawless is an odd film. The actors are all well-cast and Shia LeBouf probably gives his first genuinely good performance here. The film’s violent action sequences are well-choreographed and one could even argue that, in the character of Rakes, the film is drawing a very relevent parallel to America’s own modern-day war on drugs. And yet, as I watched the film, I felt oddly detached from the action onscreen and the Bondurants never came to life for me as individual characters that were worth rooting for. I think the ultimate problem with Lawless is the same problem that Hillcoat ran into with The Road. Lawless is a film full of beautiful visuals and striking sequences but none of it seems to naturally flow together. As a result, the film is visually striking but narratively weak.
As a result, Lawless is ultimately a case of the triumph of style over substance. How you react to the film will probably depend on how much importance you put into either one of those two elements. If you’re willing to accept the film simply as a collection of striking visuals (as I was), you’ll find a lot to enjoy in Lawless but if you’re looking for something deeper, you’ll probably be disappointed.
You’re also going to be disappointed if you go to Lawless expecting to see a Gary Oldman film because Oldman is only in about four minutes of the film, his best scene is in the trailer, and his character lacks that touch of eccentric charisma that Oldman typically brings to his villains. Instead, it falls to Guy Pearce to be eccentric and evil and he does a great job. Sporting an accent as odd as his haircut, Pearce brings a brilliantly perverse jolt to even the simplest of line readings. Lawless is at its best when its content to just let Guy Pearce play at being Gary Oldman.
This trailer has been out for a while now but I still want to post it here because, I have to admit, I have slowly fallen in love with it. Lawless appears to be a stylish period piece about ruthless men shooting each other and, quite frankly, after sitting through such ponderous and overly serious films as Public Enemies and J. Edgar, I think we’re all in the mood for a prohibition gangster film that’s actually fun to watch.
There are three reasons why I think Lawless might be good and those three reasons are: Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, and Guy Pearce (though I do have to wonder what exactly is going on with Pearce’s hair). Seriously, this trailer had me as soon as Oldman flashed that little smirk of his. As for Tom Hardy — well, I’m with Jessica Chastain on this one. I’d dance for him too.
There are a few reasons to be concerned. Director John Hillcoat previously directed The Road, which I didn’t really care for. (The end of the world might be many things but it should never be boring.) However, my biggest concern is the fact that even though the film features Hardy, Oldman, Pearce, and Chastain, it apparently stars Shia LeBouf. When I saw Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I had to keep reminding myself that the film was actually about LeBouf because he just seemed so forgettable and watching the trailer for Lawless, I find myself wondering how, if LeBouf couldn’t even summon up enough charisma to hold the screen against Michael Douglas, how is he going to handle being in a film with Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, and Gary Oldman?
When I first saw John Hillcoat’s film The Proposition I was literally shocked and dumbstruck with what I had just witnessed. As a long-time aficionado of the horror genre I could say that part of me has become desensitized to onscreen violence and nothing really shocks me. Even though I’ve seen films with more violence throughout its running time, The Proposition just had a heavy sense of despair, moral ambiguity, and a Miltonian feel throughout. The film felt like how it would be if one accepted an offer from one of the damned to stroll down to the Nine Circles of Hell. As much as I didn’t want to accept that offer the curiosity of what I might see won out. That’s how I was able to sit through the entirety of Hillcoat’s ultra-violent and nihilistic tale of lawless and amoral individuals in the untamed wilderness of 1880’s Australian Outback.
I must agree with several critics who have said The Proposition seemed to mirror another dark and violent tale. Hillcoat’s film shares so much the same themes and tone as Cormac McCarthy’s brutal novel, Blood Meridian, that one almost wondered if the film was adapted from McCarthy’s great novel. But similarities aside, Hillcoat and Nick Cave’s (director and writer respectively) film can clearly stand on its own two bloody legs.
The film begins with a bloody siege and shootout and we’re soon introduced to two of the three Burns’ brothers. We soon find out that both brothers, Charlie (played by Guy Pearce) and Mikey (played by Richard Wilson), are outlaws wanted for a multitude of heinous crimes with a recent one the senseless rape and murder of the Hopkins family. One Capt. Stanley (Ray Winstone) who acts as law in this particular area of the Outback also happens to be friends of the unfortunate Hopkins clan. When he finally apprehends the two brothers after the siege gives older brother Charlie a proposition. He’ll spare the younger brother’s life from the hangman’s noose if Charlie finds their older brother Arthur (played with Kurtz-like menace by Danny Huston) and kills the outlaw leader. The quest is set as Charlie accepts and sets out to find his elder brother. Whether Charlie will go through with killing his older brother Arthur is one thing the audience won’t find out until the final minutes of the film. Even though there’s no love-lost between Charlie and Arthur, there’s still the traditional bond of family that makes Charlie’s quest a complex one.
We realize early on that Charlie is very protective of his simpler, younger brother Mikey and would do anything to save his life. Guy Pearce does a great performance as the conflicted and brooding Charlie Burns. There’s a quiet intensity in Pearce’s performance. He’s pretty quiet through most of the film, but one could feel the palpable rage just roiling beneath his brooding countenance. Pearce’s Charlie is one who is only a trigger away from exploding into outright violence. Charlie is definitely a child and creation of the lawless Outback the film is set in.
Arthur Burns on the other hand comes in introduced as an almost warrior-poet (though in this story it would be more like a charismatic-sociopath) who would watch the sun set and spout poetry as easily as gun down an innocent or slice a man’s throat without missing beat. Danny Huston does a bravura performance as the charismatic and wholly amoral Arthur. His performance easily matches that of Pearce’s scene for scene. Another performance that I must point out as being very strong in the film is Ray Winstone as Capt. Stanley, the Ahab of the tale with his obsession to bring civilization to the lawless Outback and to bring Arthur Burns to ultimate justice even if it means dealing with the lesser evil that is Charlie Burns.
The Proposition will be talked about alot for its unflinching look at violence onscreen. Though there’s been films that have more violence per hour than Hillcoat’s film, but the extreme brutality of the killings, maimings and rape in The Proposition has such an air of realism to it that one cringes at every gunshot wound and knife slashing. Like Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, this film’s scenes of violence makes one want to rush into the shower and cleanse off the dirt, grime and stink of the film. It’s in this unflinching and realistic portrayal of death and violence that the film shares alot with McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. The images are difficult to watch, but our curiosity makes us look through squinted eyes to see the full breadth of the violence. In time, just through the audiences acceptance of the oncreen violence do we soon become complicit in whats going on the screen.
It is a shame that The Proposition had such a limited release in the US. Even since it’s release on video it’s a film that still seems to be underappreciated. I think this film would’ve done as well as Eastwood’s Unforgiven in giving the audience a different, darker side of the Old West mythology (though its really the Australian Old West). John Hillcoat has crafted himself a brutal and nihilistic film that’s very hard to watch but also difficult to ignore. The Proposition is a film I highly recommend as it is the type of film that helps redefine a whole genre.
Through the Shattered Lens 