I don't find anything wrong with Noah Baumbach or Lena Dunham, they're great. But the Safdie Brothers seem to have come out of nowhere and maintained an ability to avoid pressure from the studios. They're films are raw; the plots feel like something mundane happens and then the character just meanders along a hamster wheel of repetitive complications. They capture the spontaneous. They start nowhere and get nowhere, but some point in between there's a point where we find emotional identification.
Good Time (2017, Josh and Benny Safdie) is an indie urban crime drama set in New York that feels like the New Hollywood's best of the early 70s. Like the other films from the Safdie Brothers, Good Time is shot on film (35mm Techniscope) with mostly long lenses and handheld; the story's pacing is relentlessly climactic; the conflicts are melodramatic and the wall to wall moogy Cliff Martinez sounding score from Oneohtrix Point Never never lets go, and remains the sole modern touch in this wonderfully realized gritty tale about family and redemption.
The centerpiece of any Safdie Brothers movie is its lead actor, and Robert Pattinson as CONNIE NIKAS marks the first time the directors have cast a movie star in that role. Pattinson's intensity is the film's cornerstone. But Benny Safdie as NICK NIKAS enthralled me in his turn as the innocent brother trying to live up to his older brother's expectations.
Connie is the ideal Safdie hero. There's a nice touch with Connie's dialogue where he tends to exaggerate figures lower than they ought to be. Connie asks for "a few thousand dollars," when he needs ten thousand. Connie tells the bus driver he needs to be dropped off "just a couple blocks away." Connie will need "just 2 minutes." And when he makes his parasitic opportunistic demands, he'll usually repeat himself to emphasize the importance of the matter.
As I sat in the dark theatre, the opening scene was so riveting I knew the Safdie Bros. had not only preserved their talent but have continued improving it in exciting ways. The anger, hostility, and defensiveness exhibited by Nick towards the therapist, embodied by his tough, masculine determination quickly shatters and crumbles revealing his delicate filial pain and remorse. I often question whether or not and how effectively a drama is either sentimental or contrived. But Nick's backstory involving his grandmother, and Good Time's bookending device left me with a profound sense of pathos and a cathartic identification with the unintentional suffering we bring on those of our family members who love us most.
When Nick has his haircut and is wearing the black and yellow Southpole puffer jacket I couldn't help seeing my own little brother up there. And aside from my overwhelming emotional baggage that left me with, Connie's journey gave me a vividly realistic empathy for fuck-ups in that way that tells us they are not other, they are us. But it also gave me a newfound understanding about the motivations of people who seem to have lost all moral sense and how they may have arrived at that point.
Sorry to be so serious. I should add that Good Time actually has a lot of hilarious moments of comedic brilliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment