Killing
for survival...
An Afghan
soldier (Vincent Gallo) is imprisoned after
killing three American soldiers. The imprisoned soldier, after a car accident that is taking away the
prisoners, escapes from his
captors. And from there,
there is a desperate escape,
an authentic struggle for survival.
Pursued and
exhausted, without food or water, without rest, physically and mentally impaired, lost and without direction, its
path is an inhumane torture, an escape in complete
solitude with the surrounding snowed forests, a landscape that is
unknown and that appears to be endless. You could say that he is moving blindly towards nowhere.
His
actions are instinctive, primitive, and
wild, he has only one objective: to react to any aggression, resisting with difficulty and trying to keep
going, to get out of this
unknown place alive. This man
is reduced to the deepest impulses of a human
being, to his innermost untamed nature, in an enemy's land that seems not to
offer an apparent loophole.
Clearly, we
could extract several topics to talk about out of this movie, especially
political ones; however, above all, my interest is in the
instinctive reactions of the protagonist, in his heroic effort
to find some slim chance to get out
of the overwhelmingness he is facing.
In this
sense, I appreciate the harshness, the dryness of a film based
on the challenging interpretation of Vincent Gallo, speechless,
playing a really hostile character in natural and as hostile outdoor setting,
which is the perfect
setting for building up the tension needed in this film structure.
A vast
immensity of territory is displayed in fascinating ways. And the final sustained shot
(suggestive, sharp and
terrible), of poetic
inspiration, final that I will not reveal, is nothing else than a sublime
and esthetic beauty and also a very skilled way to give closure to
this admirable and abstract film.
Writers: Jerzy Skolimowski (screenplay), Ewa Piaskowska (screenplay) Stars: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner and Zach Cohen
No comments:
Post a Comment