Kidnap drama – Page 3 – Movie Musings

Frances McDormand investigates one of many pointless slaughters, in the Coen’s bleak but fantastic Fargo

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Frances McDormand (Marge Gunderson), William H. Macy (Jerry Lundegaard), Steve Buscemi (Carl Showalter), Peter Stormare (Gaear Grimsrud), Harve Presnell (Wade Gustafson), John Carroll Lynch (Norm Gunderson), Steve Reevis (Shep Proudfoot), Kristin Rudrüd (Jean Lundegaard)

Sometimes you see a film and, for whatever reason, you expected something totally different. It can throw you when something is so different from your expectations. With Fargo I had been led to expect a comedy. A comedy with dark undertones, but a comedy never the less. Fargo is in fact such a blackly, violently, grim piece of work – with lashings of dark comedy – that I was completely turned off by it. Watching it again, understanding the quirky blackness and nihilistic optimism (yes that’s right!) it contains, I appreciated it more and more as the masterpiece it is.

In Minneapolis, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) is a down-on-his luck car dealer, heavily in debt, who arranges for two small-time criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Storemare) from Fargo, North Dakota, to kidnap his wife, splitting the $80,000 ransom (while telling his wealthy father-in-law the ransom is actually $1 million). However, the kidnapping quickly gets bogged down in an escalating cycle of murder and violence, and events quickly spin out-of-control. All this is investigated by heavily-pregnant and relentlessly positive police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand).

Only the Coens could have made film that is so nihilistic, in which life is so cheap and death so meaningless, but yet at the same time strangely hopeful and life-affirming. Because even after all the horror and casual murder that fills the film, its heart remains the warmth of Marge Gunderson. The film continually returns to the simple affection of her relationship with her husband (a hugely sweet John Carroll Lynch). Even her pregnancy (and their obvious, unshowy delight in it) suggests a hopeful new world, moving away from the horrors of this one. It’s a genuine, emotional heart at the centre of the story, which grounds all the violence and mayhem.

And there is a lot of violence. The film is punctured at several points by brutal and unexpected killings. The body count is extraordinarily high (seven people die during the film, which considering the cast is so small and the running time so tight is pretty darn high). The camera doesn’t shy away from the horrific after-effects of killing – the suddenness, and the cold grimness of the bodies left behind. The killing is often random and pointless, with several bystanders suffering: at one point the camera pans past a parking attendant, in the wrong place at the wrong time, slumped dead on the floor of his booth. And all of this over some money. Well, that and the fact that Peter Storemare’s thug is a psychopath.

All this disaster of course spins out from the feckless vacancy of William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundergaard, a sad-sack loser and overtly “nice guy” who you feel has been an unimpressive, quietly resentful failure his entire life. Macy has never been better, not only making Jerry empty and desperate but also quietly bitter and frustrated. He’s never actually that sympathetic – there is an un-empathetic shallowness in him. David Thomson described him as “a scoundrel, and in the end amiability is as nothing.” Even when he’s being humiliated, you can’t really warm to him. There are several brilliant sequences where Lundergaard’s anger and resentfulness bubble under his “Minnesota-nice” attitudes – be that facing his over-bearing father across the dining room table, or furiously scraping at his car in the ice.

That “Minnesota-nice” accent and rhythm of speaking, its impeccable good manners, are the source of a lot of the films fun and warmth. Every character around the edges of the drama is sweetly optimistic, scrupulously polite and positive. It’s part of the Coens’ genius to set such a cold and violent drama within the confines of a world which is upbeat and positive. There is a brilliant contrasting comedy to the harshness of the world against the gentle happiness of Minnesota. It’s endlessly endearing and sweet.

The centre of this is Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson, perhaps one of the quickest and sharpest investigators you’ll see in drama, able to compartmentalise the brutality of crime from the warmth of her home life. McDormand is simply excellent, the beating heart of the movie, despite the fact she doesn’t even appear until it is almost a third of the way in. Her gentle but astute investigation of the crime is marvellously Miss-Marple-like in its sharpness. But she extends the same shrewd and generous understanding of human nature to her personal life: there is a marvellous sequence where, having agreed to meet an old friend from college, she gently lets him down after recognising the lonely divorcee wants something very different from the meeting. That’s not surprising, considering the gentle supportiveness and love in her relationship with her husband gives the film a constant respite of humanity.

Marge may see the world of violence, she may even be able to live in it sometimes, but she doesn’t really understand it. And that’s not surprising because the Coens’ plot here revolves sort of around money, but it’s mostly around mistakes, fuck-ups and confusion. It just so happens that a number of the people involved are dangerous, proud, devoid of conscience or all three. It’s a disaster of epic proportions. But it spins out of no planning, just events going out of control. Jerry’s father in law (played excellently by Harve Presnell, a truly imposing slab of masculinity and the prototype bully) is of course far too controlling and arrogant to not take matters into his own hand by playing hardball with killers.

And those killers are both excellent. It’s a perfect role for Buscemi – scuzzy, fast talking, weaselly – with a look of panic behind the eyes. He’s a small-time hood, out of his depth, who makes some terrible mistakes and resorts to killing and violence. He’s a perfect match with Peter Storemare’s softly spoken, chillingly blank killer who goes about “cleaning up” any mess with a ruthless simplicity.

But that’s the thing about this film. It might be full of ruthless people and killers, but it ends with Marge and her husband, together in bed, spending time together. They have a future and it’s one of simple family values and hope. There may be mindless, terrible killing out in the world – senseless violence that goes nowhere and means nothing – but there is still the warmth of family relationships, the charm of simple home values. It’s a nihilistic film where life is cheap – but it leaves you with a warm and happy feeling.

It’s also of course marvellously made – if you had any doubt about the Coens’ mastery of cinema, watch this – it’s superbly edited and brilliantly paced. It’s a perfect length, short, sharp and achingly profound. It’s also marvellously shot by Roger Deakins. I hated Fargo when I first saw it. But re-watching it twice since then, it’s a marvel. A truly unique and deeply wonderful film.

Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay deal with a horrifying entrapment in Room

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Cast: Brie Larson (‘Ma’/Joy Newsome), Jacob Tremblay (Jack Newsome), Joan Allen (Nancy Newsome), William H. Macy (Robert Newsome), Sean Bridgers (Old Nick), Tom McCamus (Leo)

Several years ago, I read a book on the train while coming back from Manchester. I wasn’t even sure why I had bought it: the cover made the story look fluffy and empty and (horror of horrors) it was narrated by a child. Surely a recipe for a tiresome read. I couldn’t be more wrong: I couldn’t put it down. Room was sensitive, it was heartbreaking, it was life-affirming, it was fantastic. If that’s not a tricky act to follow, I don’t know what is.

Room tells the story of Ma (Brie Larson) and her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay), who live together in a small room, with one skylight and no contact with the outside. Ma has built a whole world of childish adventure and excitement for Jack in this room, and their days are filled with games and laughter. But the audience knows better: at night Jack sleeps in the cupboard, ordered never to come out as Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) comes into the room and sleeps with Ma. Ma (or Joy) is a woman in her early twenties, kidnapped and trapped in this room for seven years.

Room is an extraordinary piece of film-making, which really captures the compelling richness of a fantastic novel. However, one thing I think is very interesting about this film is the varied reactions it receives from people. I watched this film with my wife, and we had quite different reactions to it: she found it bleak (despite having a positive ending), while I found it (like the book) a hopeful and positive film, a life-affirming story about the conquest of innocence over adversity.

Abrahamson has perfectly captured the tone and style of what was already a hypnotic and engaging book. In the book, the entire story is interpreted through the eyes of the child. The reader knows the situation is far more dangerous and sinister, but we see the confined world of the room from the viewpoint of a child who literally knows nothing else. The book requires the reader to tell themselves the “full story” between the lines of the child’s perceptions.

In the film this is much harder to create – we can see everything for ourselves. What Abrahamson and Donoghue (who adapted the script from her own novel) do so well is keeping the child at the centre, and filtering much the film through him – we don’t see or experience anything Jack doesn’t. This means that Abrahamson is able to bring some of the love Jack feels for the room around him into the story – an opening montage of their daily routine, including eating, play and exercise, shows that to a kid, this could be seen as a fun place to live.

It’s also, for Jack, an extraordinarily safe place: he knows every inch of his universe, and never encounters anything that he does not know or has not seen before. The struggle for Jack is not to escape the room, but to grow up – to accept the existence of a wider world around him and leave childhood security behind. It’s a theme in that helps make the film universal, despite its extraordinary circumstances, as a heartfelt coming-of-age story. Abrahamson’s skilful and brilliantly subtle direction threads this concept through the entire story, undercutting its potential bleakness and providing it with warmth and depth.

The fact that this was (for me anyway!) an uplifting film demonstrates with what grace it has been put together. The alternative story that runs underneath Jack’s full understanding is handled with sensitivity but unflinching honesty. Joy may go out of her way to protect Jack from what is really happening to her – imprisoned and routinely raped several times a week – but the viewer understands far more. When Jack says there are days when “Ma just needs to sleep all day” we know the causes of her feeling – and the quiet shot of Joy silent and still under a duvet speaks volumes of the mental strain she is under.

So why is this uplifting? Because for me, this story is about Joy’s struggle to keep her son innocent, to keep him safe and to protect him from the reality of what is going on around him. To make sure that his father never has a piece of him. In this she is completely successful: in fact, her focus is so overwhelmingly on protecting Jack that later in the film, when events remove the need for this, she herself undergoes a terrible mental collapse. But the message throughout is Joy’s overwhelming love for her son and her desire to protect him: and this makes her story, in a strange way, a triumph.

Joy’s story also seems (eventually) positive, due to the power of Brie Larson’s performance. Winner of a well-deserved Oscar, Larson is unflinching in her empathy for Joy’s situation, her dedication to the role apparent in every frame. She never allows Joy to become weak – she may be trapped, she may suffer from depression, but she has an inner strength that has developed from her fixation on the welfare of her son. She is uncompromising though in playing the reality of the emotional burden Joy is carrying both for herself and her son.

Larson also deserves much credit – as does Abrahamson’s direction – for the simply breathtaking work from Jacob Tremblay as Jack. It’s no exaggeration to say that without a child capable of delivering a performance like this, the film could not have existed. Tremblay’s performance is completely natural, totally unforced and deeply affecting. We totally invest in his fate. He has the pressure of carrying huge chunks of the film and does so with complete confidence. He and Larson have a totally natural chemistry between them, a bond that seems unshakeable.

This is a film I found profoundly moving – there are several moments (at least three) where I felt a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes: moments of sadness, but also moments of triumph and moments of simple human warmth. It’s a spoiler to even say that there are other people in this film, but the second half of the film widens the story and subtly changes its nature: it is a survival story from the start, but it’s also one of adjustment and recovery. This later act of the film is as wonderfully told as the first part, rich with empathy and human emotion.

Room is a truly wonderful film, a small scale story about huge and powerful themes that wears its greatness very lightly. Lenny Abrahamson’s direction – both technically and in its control of actors and story – is exceptional, creating a film that balances dozens of tones with aplomb. Like I said, it’s a film that invites you to take many readings from it: it’s a film about a victim, that feels like a triumph story; a film about a confined world that teaches us about the wider world; a film about imprisonment that feels like a celebration of freedom. It’s an extraordinary work, and there isn’t enough praise for Larson and Tremblay. I can’t imagine not being moved again the next time I see this – it’s a film for the ages.