 |
| Despite it's drawbacks, there is a palpable emotional undercurrent to Out of the Furnace, largely due to Bale's stellar performance. |
I recently took in two extremely well-reviewed Casey Affleck
movies – Out of the Furnace and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – and my
feelings about them are so similar that it made sense to throw them together in
the same review.
Both are stripped-down entries that admirably avoid artifice and
offer subtle, lived-in work from a talented assortment of actors. But both also
take narratives that would normally make for fun, pulpy b-movies and turn them
into somber, artsy-fartsy ballads straining for profundity.
I’m all about subverting genre conventions, and as a general
rule I’m not against these sort of lyrical meditations – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford does
something similar, and it’s one of my favorite films (oddly enough, it also
stars Affleck as a troubled outsider). But going this route can totally defang
a story, turning what could be something worthwhile into a boring and opaque disappointment.
Of the two, Out of the
Furnace is the superior film. It stars Christian Bale as a hard-working
grunt at a steel mill who lands in jail after a fatal drunk driving accident.
While incarcerated, he loses his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) to a local cop
(Forest Whitaker) and misses out on the remaining days of his sickly father.
The only thing he retains is the love of his troubled brother (Affleck), a
restless and emotionally damaged Iraqi War veteran who falls into a bare-knuckle
brawling ring populated by some shady criminals, including a mostly
honorable loan shark (Willem Dafoe) and a homicidal maniac (Woody Harrelson).
The film has a lot going for it. All the actors are in peak
form, insinuating as much character and personality as is possible with such a
bare bones approach. Bale shares a particularly good scene with Saldana that
brutally exhibits what his mistake cost him, and his brotherly bond with
Affleck is believably wrought.
There’s also a nicely modulated mournfulness hovering over this story of blue collar hardship, and it has a good thread at its core. I could easily imagine all of these components adding up to an excellent drama about a good man who did a bad thing and is now left to pick up the pieces. Instead, writer/director Scott Copper gets bogged down with exploring unsatisfying revenge elements. The film builds to its logical conclusion and ends with a boldly tantalizing final image, but it’s all just so limp.
 |
| Ain't Them Bodies Saints embraces a Malick-like aesthetic. |
Ain’t Them Bodies
Saints fairs worse because the character dynamics aren’t as engrossing and
the bad guys are woefully undefined. It focuses on Ruth (Rooney Mara) and Bob
(Affleck), Bonnie and Clyde types who get involved in a robbery gone wrong and
end up in a shootout during which Ruth shoots a cop (Ben Foster). Since Ruth is
pregnant with their child, Bob takes the fall, claiming Ruth was an innocent
victim in all of it.
Several years later, Ruth is on the straight and narrow,
leading a simple life with her daughter Sylvie. When Bob breaks out of prison
prepared to whisk his family away, Ruth has to consider what’s right for her
daughter. There’s also the matter of that cop Ruth shot, who in investigating
Bob’s jailbreak grows closer to her and Sylvie.
Once again, there are things to like – the setup is decent,
the cinematography is breathtaking and the acting is top-notch – but writer/director
David Lowery’s emphasis is put so emphatically on the picturesque landscape and
poetic atmosphere that the whole thing plays as if on mute. Once Bob breaks
out, he not only has to worry about the law, but also three shady goons out for
blood, and it is never explained where these baddies came from. Some might see
this ambiguity as strength, but it only works to add confusion.
