Vincent Gallo takes centre stage as an escaped Taliban fighter in this survival tale by Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski. With little dialogue, none of which is spoken by the main character, Essential Killing is a tense thriller set against a natural landscape for the first two-thirds of the film as we follow the nameless fighter as he shoots, runs, and hides from the American/Russian forces in the snowy woods. Committing 100% to a physically difficult role, Gallo's charismatic turn pulls us through much of this straightforward premise but after a bizarre climax of a moment on a quiet road, the film rapidly loses the viewer's interest in a final act involving a conveniently mute woman (in keeping with the film's aesthetics). There are also other moments of convenience that are a little hard to buy, notably a moment involving a dog at the right place and time. One can make the argument that it is hard to care about a character we know next to nothing about but there is something about allowing us a silent glimpse at this character in the most primal form of humanity that lets us understand him, at least a little.
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Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine examines the making and breakdown of a marriage, leaping back and forth in time to create a dimensional picture of these two pivotal points in a couple's life. The movie opens with said couple already at an inert point - Cindy (Michelle Williams) is distant and no longer amused by her husband Dean (Ryan Gosling), who spends his days drinking and painting houses for cash. The thread that is ties them together here is their daughter, but as the film progress, even that may not be enough. Simultaneously, we track the lead-up to their marriage, a set of events that shows that despite what they may have thought was love or even might have been love, they may not have been as compatible as they thought. Blue Valentine never tries to make an outright statement, preferring to document and observe this couple, allowing us to see the way Cindy and Dean are destructive to each other, the way the resentment and bitterness rises to the surface despite the good intentions of both and the ties that have bound them for so long. What is great about Blue Valentine is that it lets the viewer infer reasons on why the marriage breaks down from his or her own experience, ringing true to anyone who has been witness to a turbulent marriage. The film's red and blue color scheme amongst its naturalistic cinematography (wisely shot in tne more intimate 1.66:1 aspect ratio) is a gorgeous reminder of the intertwining elements of destructive love. It is probably also of little surprise to those who have followed their work that Gosling and Williams are phenomenal in the film, always convincing and burrowing deep into their characters. It's a testament to their abilities that you are always invested in their relationship, right down to its bittersweet end.
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Having witnessed Vincent Gallo's charismatic turn in Essential Killing earlier in the day, I sat down to watch Gallo's latest effort - as actor, writer, editor, composer, producer, and director of Promises Written in Water. If you follow Gallo's work at all, you will have heard that there were 200 walkouts at its premiere in Venice; while the film is not an easy piece of cinema, and often quite slow, that statement speaks more to me about the quality of the audience in Venice than the film itself. Gallo's work has always had a retro quality to it and with each film he makes, he seems to retreat further into the past, and further into abstraction. With Promises Written in Water, he has made a rumination on death that expands to accommodate various other ruminations on life. I will confess there is a lot I don't understand about the film as a whole and I found the last half increasingly difficult to grasp but it is the work of an artist and individual scenes often hit either on visual levels (a hypnotic dance sequence) or in a more direct manner (conversation scenes that feel like they've cut right to the subtext). There is an elliptical element in the film, not only with the way it seems to progress backwards in time but also with constant repetition, notably in a hilarious sequence where Gallo repeats himself over and over again. It seems to me to be a statement on the way we sabotage ourselves from moving forward but then again, I think you can interpret it any way you like - that's part of the beauty of art and Gallo understands that. It is his weakest effort yet and one I don't think is altogether successful, but it deserves more of a chance than the Venice audiences gave it.
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