The surreal, sepia vision of Toronto that Denis Villeneuve shapes around his mysteriously linked doppelgängers in Enemy often feels as if it is ensnaring them in a paralysing spider web, psychologically binding them so tightly together through its cryptic motifs and obscure narrative that they might as well be two sides of one unfaithful, insecure man.
The grand long shots and rapid montage editing of Raoul Walsh’s boxing set pieces in Gentleman Jim are well matched to the agile fighting technique of its historical subject, James J. Corbett, using its action to lightly probe the brutish, primal nature of our sporting passions and the concerted efforts to reconcile those with our refined humanity.
Steve McQueen’s dip into the crime genre with Widows shrewdly carries on his style of uncompromising filmmaking, using dazzling camerawork and slick pacing to navigate a sprawling, rolling narrative which sees the consequences of one failed robbery ricochet through Chicago’s gangs, politics, and the grieving wives who soon decide to collaborate on their own grand heist.
There is certainly madness to David O. Russell’s elaborate plotting of conspiracies and murders throughout Amsterdam, but with his intimately framed close-ups and stylish rendering of 1930s New York, he builds a humorously sweet affection between the main trio of accidental detectives that outlasts any vicious political manoeuvring surrounding them.
Accusations of abhorrent crudity may be fairly lobbed at the subject matter of Blonde, but certainly not at Andrew Dominik’s talents as a provocative, implicating filmmaker, solemnly studying Norma Jean and Marilyn Monroe as dual identities in perpetual conflict, and disturbingly manifesting their world as a surreal, existential nightmare psychologically fusing them together.
As one widow wanders the gloomy remnants of her estranged husband’s derelict home in Vitalina Varela, Pedro Costa glacially slips through cinematic paintings of a decaying Portuguese village, dimly illuminating its weathered production through harsh vignettes of light that seek spiritual healing from grief, and which challenge us to peel back the layers of its solemn visual poetry.
The confrontation of one reformed outlaw with the shameful vestiges of his old life unfolds with a remarkably cynical disposition in Man of the West, as Anthony Mann’s widescreen, dusty landscapes and meticulous blocking presage the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone by several years, driving these brilliant character compositions with a sense of overbearing guilt and humiliation.
It is remarkable on its own that George Cukor united Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart in one film and captured such fine performances from each, though The Philadelphia Story is also even more delightful for its marvellously constructed web of romantic entanglements, which its lively screenplay and stars pick apart with insurmountable charm and a quietly savage wit.
The Departed’s intricate construction of double-crosses and manipulations propels its gripping narrative forward with impeccable pacing, teasing out the parallels between an undercover cop and a criminal spy hellbent on uncovering each other’s identities, and yet in Martin Scorsese’s sly formal motifs there remains a nihilistic despair that these opposing forces may just cancel each other out.
As a crafter of truly stunning set pieces, Raoul Walsh expertly matches gangster Cody Jarrett’s huge emotions with kinetic, bombastic visuals in White Heat, but such slick direction is also perfectly suited to the Freudian bond he shares with his mother, exposing a pitiful underside to the tough, vicious persona he puts out into the world.
