So today I watched it and decided to see what the movie critics say about it. And I realised that the movie critics should stick to reviewing Adam Sandler, Transformers and Star Wars cartoon spin-offs, because clearly the idiots can't even understand what a movie with more than three words put in one sentence twice is about.
Click here for stupid.
Comedy, they call it. A comedy thriller. A criminal flick with dark humour. A comedy. Yeah, right.
Thing is, it's not a comedy. At all. In terms of theatric generes, this is tragic comedy - with comedy meaning something that's fairly different from the modern meaning of the term. If the reviewers would have bothered watching more than two trailers and the first and last ten minutes of the film, they might have actually understood that.
The film is great. The presentation, the pacing, the acting, it's all done really, really well. A man's personal hell, as we find out - and his way of trying to deal with it. Of course, humour is involved, humour is in a sense the guy's only way to try to focus on something else, fairly realistically so.
As a brief verdict, I really liked it. A very good psychologic/philosophical drama with spots of dark humour here and there.
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The film brings up several themes. On the personal level, it talks about Ray's way of dealing with an event in his past that he feels guilty about.
ReplyDeleteOn a larger scale, for me, the movie discusses rituals. The characters share their views about religion and religious rituals, they observe and follow criminal rituals of honour, even though they state out loud and many times that these rites are meaningless and foolish, and they discuss political correctness, which is similarly a kind of social ritual.
Yes, the film is not a comedy and treating it as a comedy cheapens its value. It is brilliantly written and performed. In Bruges should be watched appropriately by people with more than two brain cells.
Definitely. Amusing how not a single review really mentions anything about social commentary. A few manage to cough up the bit about personal drama, but social aspects? No, no.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in part this may be attributed to the fact that the reviews as such have to be dumbed down for the dumbed-down audiences that read this kinds of trash. It could be that. I mean, if you mention the words "Social commentary" and such in public, who will go to see the film?
Instead, focus on laughs, the guns, the violence, the dwarf! That will get the people to go see it. Too bad there were no explosions, the movie could've gotten ten times more money that way.
On a side-track, to add to my list of praise, the atmosphere. The early winter scene, the general darkness and the music set it up brilliantly.