Bronson

I really don't know quite how to feel about this movie. It's not bad, it's not good, it's just kind of. . . I don't know. I'm not even indifferent about it, but it isn't of a quality, one way or the other, where I can say that you should see it or not. I'm simply confused and, in a rare turn of events, I am at a loss for words.

But I'll try to fill up this page anyways.

My main confusion about Bronson is that I don't know what kind of movie it is and I suspect it doesn't know either.

It's an interesting experience and it certainly is not a bad one, but the movie is a tad bit all over the place-- or it would be if it were more manic. The failures of the film come in around the edges. They're ambiguous little leaks that mean nothing on their own, but start to mean a whole lot when you find yourself ankle deep in constable blood and mustache wax. That is to say there is no one cock up in the movie that weighs it down, it's just a lot of small, almost unnoticable things.

The main problem I found was that I have no idea what to make of Bronson. What's worse is that I don't think that was the movie's intention. Instead of leaving the film with the kind of "I think the movie meant this" and "No, I think the movie meant this!" experience, I just kind of left it with a severe lack of evidence for whatever theoretical argument I was going to yell at my equally theoretical girlfriend.

The movie doesn't quite spell out what kind of animal Bronson is. Is he insane? Is he just an asshole? Is he a genius? Is he a man out of time? Does he just like to punch men in uniform whilst naked? I have no idea. I'd like to think I understood Alex De Large or Barry Lyndon or the King of New York or Andy from Shawshank, but with Bronson, I've got no clue what the fuck he is. It doesn't exactly make for high drama when I don't know or can't know what the main character is going to do. It's like making a character piece about a great white shark. It's going to be fun, whatever happens, but I feel entitled in saying that at the end of the experience I'm not going to be left with any serious life lessons.

Obviously if the narrator/main character doesn't have a distinct personality-- and he is in every single scene-- then the film is not going to have a distinct personality. The director Nicholas Refn is obviously a talented man and I look forward to his next film (the trailer of which I have linked her before), but his talent alone is not enough to guide this great character (the real life character Charles Bronson, I mean) into a great film.

He has a strong voice, so that isn't what's wrong with it. It's just that I feel like I'm reading his dialogue-- without the inflections or emotions of a human being, how am I supposed to know what this dialogue means? But the movie isn't ambiguous, it's just ill defined. If it ambiguous was what the movie was going for, I feel it'd be a bit clearer to me-- as strange as that sounds. I think the problem isn't that the movie wants to confuse the audience, it's that the movie is confused by itself. Is is a crime drama, is it an art house movie? Is it a character study, is it a theatrical production? Is it a British Bob's-yer-uncle-crime-wank or is it a kitchen sink drama?

Well, I guess it's all of these things and none of these things. As I write this, I realize that's a horrifically poltroon-like cop-out, but it's as close as the truth as we're ever going to arrive at in a fucking blog post. The movie is confused. It isn't bad, as I've stated far too many times (as if it needs its defenders), but it's a flawed movie.

A noble, flaw, I guess. Bronson is a movie which desires to be something else-- something greater than the rest-- but can't quite make it and that is a failure worth seeing, worth thinking about, worth blogging about.

Failures are wonderful. They shouldn't be castigated as much as they usually are, because, as far as art is concerned, when great men fail, they fail spectacularly. Just think about the Challenger 7. That took thousands of hours of work, labor, and ingenuity and it all ended up in a horrific tragedy. But, are any of you going to forget Challenger 7? No, you aren't, because even the failure is capable of leaving an indelible mark on yourself. Bronson is not on par with half a dozen astronauts exploding, don't think that I'm comparing the two. What I am saying is that even when things are irrecoverably fucked up they can still create a memorable and-- dare I say-- positive experience. Bronson is that kind of a failure.

A few people have been throwing around "in the style of Kubrick" but other than the fact that the movie is incredibly well shot and acted, I can't quite see the similarity. Maybe I'm just ignorant. I don't see it. But maybe the folks who are laying down that kind of a statement have only seen A Clockwork Orange, which as my High Life hazed mind recalls, had more than a few important musical interludes-- Oh, and it involved crime and Bronson involves crime, so there must be some kind of blood relation between the two.

It's a bullshit comparison, but Bronson is not without its sublime beauty. The opening scene is a wonder to behold and I'd like to believe that even the empressario Kubrick would have liked to have composed an opening like this one:

Watching this scene again makes me think: You know what? Fuck it. I'm going to watch this movie again.

Which I think means I liked it.