In Bruges
Hopefully you’re some form of an existentialist. Preferably a pessimistic, yet mildly amused existentialist. If not, you should still give this film a shot, because it boils down to a way of seeing life: good, bad, or ugly, it is still lived. And in our living of this one life, how do we live? What is morality, and does it have any basis in a world terribly far from Eden? These questions are perennial. They have been asked for centuries, and I doubt that they will ever stop being asked. That is, so long as there are people around to ask them. (And preferably asked in the form of a joke.)
The film follows two men and their trip to Bruges, Belgium. They are stuck together and must make the best of this Odd Couple relationship that they possess. In Bruges, they must wait, and wait they do. They anticipate a call from their boss, who will then tell them what to do next. All of this is suspicious, and I was keenly aware that it possessed a certain amount of similarity to a certain play by Harold Pinter. And indeed it does. Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleeson, who play Ray and Ken respectively, give striking and layered performances, transforming into characters whose lives are as removed from their own as Ray is from where he wants to be: that is, anywhere but Bruges, and he’ll act like a 5-year-old until someone will let him leave. What unfolds is a story full of ironic humor, existentialist morality, and the Camusian influence of a life that must be lived. If you don’t want all of the waxing philosophic, it’s a movie about two guys who wait to find out who they are supposed to kill next. They’re assassins, and they’re next job is in Bruges, a city Ray finds repulsive and Ken finds enigmatically beautiful in its storied history. Either way (or both), it’s a really well-made film and quite an enthralling story of suspense, relationships, and morals. Not to mention being intensely funny.
Though a very dark film, In Bruges is a hilarious movie that had me laughing hyseterically at times that probably should have had me crying or vomiting, maybe both. Which brings up a good point. This movie is full of oppositional situations, in which humor and gore find the same stage, in which fear and arousal both enter the mind. There is a kind of tongue-in-cheek going on the whole time, which gives each scene an eerily similar tone of both horror and hilarity. To those of you who have read or seen Martin McDonagh’s plays before, this will probably be no surprise, as In Bruges has a striking similarity to Pillowman. In fact, the film seems to be the offspring of Pillowman and The Dumb Waiter by Pinter. This may seem like a spoiler. It isn’t. Rest assured.
The directing of this film has a nice combination of both experienced texture and personal perspective, but not so much of either to be annyoing or distracting. The script, for which it received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, is very, very good. It’s a great story with equal amounts of perturbation and humor, but it may have borrowed a bit from a previous generation. The aspect that sets this movie apart is the overt tone of morality that pervades the whole thing, the whole notion that an assassin can have a sense of right-and-wrong, that a group of people whose occupation involves the payed killing of other human beings can genuinely believe in ethics, is very real and poignant, and it gives the movie what it needs to separate itself for the aforementioned writers/writings.
If you don’t have a stomach for graphic violence (which are done extremely well), then this one should be skipped. If you saw I <3 Huckabees and longed for something dark and violent and a penchant for anything with a hard edge, then this one surely should not be skipped. In fact, this movie is actually quite good, with great acting performances from Ferrell, Gleeson, and Fiennes, gifted writing, a crafted narrative, and a genuinely fine-tuned balance between hilarity and insanity. I don’t know if it will win, but it’s definitely worth watching.
Rating: 3/4 Stars