It's nice that class, so to speak, is back in and we're back to studying movies again here at New Eyes. This was a nice bit of nihilistic melodrama that had no problem baring its teeth. The story is fairly straightforward, in the way of many great films in the Western genre, there's not lots of frills, camera wizardry, etc. just a focus on a predicament and its resolution.
For me this was mainly a film I enjoyed for its acting. I give the biggest nod of respect to Ray Winstone who I felt was able to stretch his abilities the widest and bring us some top-notch stuff. I could literally feel the stubble on his chin, unkempt from days of toiling over his plan on bringing in Arthur Burns, no time for showering and shaving. When his wife Martha tells of a reoccurring dream she's been having about an infant he stands silently in the doorway until we see two tears run down his face in one of the film's most poetic offerings.
There's not a lot of meat in the film, there's no real backstory to speak of, no reason to particularly care for any of the Burns brothers, and for a film of its running time, we're left not entirely sure what we've experienced puts us at a place much different than where we started from.
Its not unlike some of the existential/nihilistic type stuff like Waiting for Godot. Where not a whole lot happens yet in the points where not much is going on you are left to think about the themes of the film. That's the gist I got.
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