On Violence Begetting Violence with Rust and Bone

De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) is Jacques Audiard’s follow up to the fantastic A Prophet (2009). The latter achieved what it set out to do with perfection, combining style with substance and creating a masterpiece of the crime/prison genre. Rust and Bone does not replicate this achievement, which may be the result of it being a combination of two short stories and therefore feeling more episodic. 

However, it is incredibly well acted and at times as stylish, brutal and powerful as A Prophet was. 

A Prophet was a film that did not shy away from violence and used it often to force the audience to face the realities of the protagonist’s incarceration. It is interesting to look at Rust and Bone from the point of its violent interactions, which ultimately propel the film forward and, as A Prophet did, forces an audience to face uncomfortable realities about characters they have engaged with.

Matthias Schoenaerts’ Alain is inherently violent; he treats his young son with the temperament of a man with a short fuse; he is drawn to jobs that require confrontation and attempts to make it as a professional mixed martial arts fighter. This is a man who lives with violence, even if he is not explicitly violent that often. Marion Cottillard’ s Stephanie, a trainer of killer whales is a woman who has violence done to her. While putting on a SeaWorld show she is attacked by one of the whales and loses her legs. This act of blameless violence draws her into the arms (literally as he carries her) to Alain. The violence done to Stephanie begets, to a greater degree, Alain’s own violence as she encourages and inspires his illegal mixed martial arts fighting. Yet, Stephanie is a woman coming to terms with violence, she is not a home with it and ultimately Alain’s treatment of her and others drives them apart.

It is only an act of self harm – violence unto himself – that allows Alain to develop as a person. Here Audiard, while looking at (often glamorously) violence, may be making the point that only when violent people turn their brutality inwards and accept it can they develop.

Rust and Bone can feel contrived. Yet it is at times beautiful and challenging cinema. The scene where Alain and Stephanie walk into a illegal fighting ring, with the sun setting behind them to Springsteen’s State Trooper is as memorable as anything this year.  

On Mise-en-Scene and On the Road

How do you adapt one of the most enduring and loved novels of the 20^th Century? Hiring a director perhaps best known for already making a great road movie is a good start. In 2004 Walter Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries and word has it that it was this film that got him the job of bringing Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to the cinema screen.

To compare the film to the book is a pointless exercise. They are different mediums and use different tools to achieve something absorbed in completely different ways. Fans of novels, especially ones as meteoric as On the Road will never be happy, even if Kerouac could somehow direct it himself.

Therefore, how does On the Road work as a film? The best way to approach a review of this film is through Salles’ construction of his mise-en-scene, which is very impressive. From the costumes to the sets to the props, all communicate an incredibly vivid sense of time. Even the roles are very well cast. Everything within the frame is so meticulously constructed that we wish we could step into the screen and be instantly transported to this world of bohemian intellectuals in New York, or San Francisco.

But we can’t step into the screen and if we could would we like what we found, for even though Salles’ mise-en-scene is rich and warm, his film is cold. There is a distance between the characters and us that is never breached. We remain observers unable to enter the world of Sal and Dean; uninvited for being too conventional or conservative. So much occurs within this film and that we never feel engaged with the story or care about the characters is a major problem. On the Road may have suffered by being swamped by its own expectations.

On Cinematography and Skyfall

Even for a Bond film, Skyfall has received massive amounts of hype. Maybe this time (the 23^rd in the series) it was justified. An award-winning director in Sam Mendes, the talented Javier Barden as the antagonist and Daniel Craig returning as James Bond. None of this really matters when the films are so formulaic that any talent attached to them is diluted by the strictures imposed upon the story. However, this is a ridiculous criticism to make of Bond films as they remain essentially unchanged and if you don’t like the formula, don’t see the films.

Where Skyfall deserves celebration is in hiring Roger Deakins as cinematographer. Deakins has worked on countless films of a quality far greater than that of Skyfall and has brought to this most average of spy franchises a beautiful image. Fargo (1996), Jarhead (2005), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and True Grit (2010) are just some of Deakin’s more recent films as director of photography.

Some of the dialogue in Skyfall is excruciating and there are plenty of times when the film could be muted and pleasure could be taken from what Deakins has achieved. A silhouetted fight scene atop a Singapore skyscraper is incredible. The mist hanging over the Scottish moors communicates more about the atmosphere of the film and the mood of the characters than the script can achieve. Talent will (almost) always survive being attached to a Bond film, but rarely does it shine throughout it. Deakins makes one aspect of Skyfall something to be admired. 

On Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is one of those films that comes out of nowhere and is suddenly everywhere. The actors and filmmakers are relative unknowns, which allows the film to quietly approach cinemas, but also means that its success seems to be magnified, as if critics can’t quite believe these unknowns made a full feature length film.

BOTSW tells the story of a young girl and her father living in the bathtub, an area of an unnamed US state that has been flooded in a storm and then walled off by a levy. The leap to the real life events of hurricane Katrina are purposely and clearly made, despite the film taking on a more surreal direction, where some residents, despite being asked to leave, have decided to remain living in the bathtub.

The narrative is very loose and at times shaky. There are elements that feel contrived and those that feel repetitive. Yet, it is an ambitious film and for writer/director Behn Zeitlin it is a very impressive debut feature. Where Zeitlin’s skills lies are in the performances he extracts from his inexperienced cast, specifically Quvenzhané Wallis, who as the young girl forced to learn how to survive in the bathtub, carries the film. Wallis’ performance is beyond her years and acting experience and the immediate attached we feel to her makes BOTSW the emotional rollercoaster it is and makes it easy to forgive or forget some of the more obvious weaknesses.

Cinematographer Ben Richardson has done a fantastic job as the film has a beautiful grainy feel to it that uses light majestically. Richardson brings what is a hard landscape to film to life. BOTSW is not a flawless film and is probably not fully deserving of the unending praise thrown on it, but it is a brave film and should be celebrated.