Bronson - UK 2009 - Director: Nicolas Winding Refn - Written by: Brock Norman Brock and Nicolas Winding Refn - Producer: Daniel Hansford, Rupert Preston - photography: Larry Smith - Edited by: Matthew Newman - Starring: Tom Hardy, Matt King, William Darke, Amanda Burton, James Lance Others
The Pet Shop Boys and New Order, Verdi (Nabucco , La forza del destino and Attila ), Puccini ( Madama Butterfly ), Richard Strauss ( An Alpine Symphony) and, of course, Wagner (Siegfried's funeral and Das Rheingold ). The history on film: A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Chopper (2000), Shock Corridor (1963), Scum (1979) and Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead (1988), British gangster films such as Villain (1971) and The Long Good Friday (1980) and, of course: Charles Bronson's stoic-locked masculinity, such as in Michael Winners Chato's Land (1972) or Walter Hill Hard Times (1975). This: Vaudeville, episode structure, shock strategies. Actually, says it all about this movie: mixed disparate individual pieces of popular culture and the legitimate, an anti-organic brew. This does not create a whole, should it not, why?
The 39-year-old Dane Nicolas Winding Refn has in his early films in which Pusher Trilogy (1996-2005) and in Bleeder (1999) to directors such as Scorsese, influenced by the immediacy of Mean Streets (1973), self-destructive to the, displaced masculinity of figures such as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). The protagonists Refn live and die in a gray, cold world, where knowledge about the pop culture offers them no guidance. In this thirty- Bleeder stand in a grungy video library around and quoted by the arcane areas of film history, but in their relationships, as husbands, fathers or partners or even semi-competent interpersonal communication partners, they fail completely. They consistently make the wrong decisions, and thus screw up their lives, which in any case equivalent to a Sisyphusaufgabe.
Bronson is Refn's sixth feature film and he tells of a violent loser. The Briton Michael Peterson (Tom Hardy) is about 1974 with a sawed-off shotgun robbed a store and just 26 pounds. He is in jail and attacked so often, the guards that he still sits there today. On the English homepage of the film we are greeted by a counter that tells how long Peterson now even for the few pounds he had stolen, seated. In years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds. There are almost 35 years. Besides his reputation as "Britain's most violent criminal" is the prominent prisoners, especially by his pen name "Charles Bronson" known, which he accepted in a short period of freedom for some illegal boxing matches and then retained in jail.
What drives a man to bury himself in jail - and that is what "Bronson" seems to aim with any new acts of violence? One reason we do not really know. Instead: Body cinema. Bronson / Peterson undresses, runs against the guards and the walls, smeared with blood, tortured a gay art teacher, terrorizing a frightened guards. Refn does not provide answers, not even simple. The man Bronson us remains alien and the appeal on the homepage to let him go at last, is in a strange contrast to the film, after which one has more of the feeling that the man was to us, please, but spared as long as possible in the outside world . remain Who wants to be like tomorrow on the road together beaten without reason by a bald-headed muscleman with retro mustache, just so the back is in jail?
Refn uses more than his movies before distancing and alienating effects: Some scenes are completely submerged in red or blue, some are shown in extreme wide-angle or use long parallel runs. The voice-over Bronson is not an objective, ordering instance, but often complacent and rhetorical. Time and again we see the protagonists pale makeup on a stage before an audience in evening dress. As he stands in a suit, isolated against a black background, and holds awkward conversation with himself once Refn projected to documentary footage of a prison rebellion instigated by him directly to the actor and the background. Hardy also between immobility expressivity and iridescent game refused nearby: he kept his smile switch on and off mechanically, can freeze their movements, or puts his head crooked jerky. Often shows Refn Bronson, as he filmed either in the full profile from the image frame or menacing stares head before the camera goes on, and then directly address the audience.
very beginning of the film proclaims, "Bronson" in the camera: ". All my life I wanted to be famous," identifies himself why so much with the movie star Charles Bronson ? About the "real" Bronson, their role as Charles Buchinsky 1921 Lithuanian son emigrants in Ehrenfeld, was Pennsylvania born, wrote James Dickey, author of Deliverance ( At death, each of the first ), was, despite his violent roles and his muscular body armor because " always about him a silent and reflective personality hidden somewhere within or beneath a body redolent of the workingman - the coal miner, the factory worker, or the truck driver [...] [;] a solid-hewn, aging, tough, essentially moral masculinity is Bronson's trademark. "The iconic actor Bronson was" a strong, no-nonsense one Whose appeal [...] does [...] lie [...] . In his integrity and his great animal vitality " He is also in films such as Death Wish (1974)" a kind of universal avenger - a one-man force against what he CONSIDERS universal evil " . We are not against what Michael Peterson / Tom Hardy moves out of this interpretation avenging angel, but that the man is wearing an all-encompassing anger in itself is beyond question. Bronson has become primarily a visual metaphor for anger - unrestrained fury. And so despite the distance a very intense film.
This criticism is First published in: Splatting Image, No. 79, September 2009
