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In Bruges & Hard Eight: Letting Things Be

That both of these features are directorial and screenwriting debuts are a credit to the filmmakers. What they manage to accomplish is no less than tap into the rare form of cinema that allows itself to occupy its own sense of time and space by showing little regard for plot development. These are stories are obsessed with character. Both writers tend not to worry about knowing their audience and there is self-analysis on display rarely shown.

Martin McDonagh was already a celebrated and awarded playwright when he wrote and directed In Bruges. He has an exact grasp on language and tends to present a myopic world-view via an Irishman through the bottom of a pint glass; the comparisons made to David Mamet are appropriate. Two Irish hitmen, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell), are sent by their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) to hide out in Bruges after a botched hit on a priest in England. We learn that they are told to wait for Harry’s call for further instruction, leaving plenty of time for taking in the sights in the oldest medieval city in Belgium. Usually this development sets in motion familiar time constraints and story arcs though this is where McDonagh shows his intelligence as a writer. The dialogue and pacing of In Bruges are staged well enough for it to never feel like a movie being propelled by its narrative.

McDonagh gives Ken and Ray a Bruges isolated in its clouded days and foggy nights – a dreamlike place for the characters to exist and Gleeson and Farrell are good enough to deliver performances that come across as natural and honest. The characters are familiar but in the space of Bruges and in the sincerity of McDonagh’s screenplay they are given time to breathe and become real.

Based on his short Coffee & Cigarettes, Hard Eight was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson when he was twenty-five and shows a young filmmaker with an ear for smart dialogue. We are introduced to a younger man (John C Reilly) sitting outside a Nevada highway diner, presumably broke and homeless. He is approached by an older man, Sydney (Phillip Baker Hall), who takes him inside for a cup of coffee.

Why I won’t reveal, but Hard Eight works with similar archetypes as the main characters in In Bruges – an older mentor taking in a naive learner. Consider the following screenshots from each film and the similarities in their composition and expression of both character and location. Notice whose face is giving the most emotion.

A lot of McDonagh’s and Andersons’s work explore similar narratives around these themes and it seems to go to the core of what their body of work is trying to understand. Hard Eight also works as an exploration of allowing characters the right to exist without time or plot restraints and the effort is rewarding for both writer and actor.

There are two key plot developments introduced in both films, the first being the relationship between the male leads; the sadness within each and the want for connection. Both films are essentially love stories between two men are beginning to understand the nature of their relationship. The second is an act of sacrifice by one for the other to survive. Other developments aside, the films are essentially vehicles for the introduction of the relationship to the transcendence of it. All other plot arcs are incidental which is also a statement on the author’s focus and what they have chosen to explore or leave out.

What makes these films interesting is their avoidance of plot rhythms and the allowance of the characters time and space to be, to exist, in the reality of the film. Yes, we know Ken and Ray are waiting for the call from Harry but the characters aren’t interested in waiting and they make us feel the same. Both films place their characters in the outer of its locations – Bruges could almost be a travelogue but for the constant cloud cover and Anderson shows a gray and mostly colorless Las Vegas and Reno.

An attribute of both writing styles is the sense that we don’t know what will happen next and we are allowed to experience the story as the characters do. These films could also be seen is as the aural equivalent of Robert Altman’s visual grammar, maligned and praised but determined in its own authority as the supreme storytelling device. Where Altman’s camera wanders and finds its visual statements at the edge of the screen, McDonagh’s and Anderson’s screenplays work to find it in their words and stillness. We learn to wait. We become focused on witnessing the rationalization and insistence of the characters right to be, both on and beyond the screen.

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Why this? Why tumblr.? Why now?

Why this?

For the most part, developing and maintaining a working blog at audiodesignstudios.com seems like a bridge too far while so much is in development so for now I will take advantage of the many excellent blogging sites available. At some point this will all be taken over to the site but for now its function and the blog’s function can be separated.

There is an attempt to discriminate and separate the ‘I’ from this space, not only because this is a representation of a company but I also wish to generate dialogue rather than pontificate.

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"Amour" has a lesson for us that only the cinema can teach: the cinema, with its heedless ability to leap across time and transcend lives and dramatize what it means to be a member of humankind's eternal audience. rogerebert.suntimes.com

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