The Dardenne Brothers prove their dedication to social realism in La Promesse, tying their narrative up into knotty moral predicaments around one teenager’s vow to a dying, undocumented immigrant, and through its tiny symbolic developments it progresses with archetypal formality, pushing him to be better than the unjust world he grew up in.
Wistful memories and melancholy regrets swirl all through The English Patient’s vast, time-leaping narrative, developing its gentle ruminations over national identity into a historical epic of extraordinary beauty, as Anthony Minghella uses the sprawling emptiness of the desert to underscore the majesty and romance of the larger-than-life characters traversing it.
Danny Boyle’s kinetic pacing, surreal trips, and intoxicating camerawork not only match the edgy vigour of Ewan McGregor’s cynical Scottish drug addict in Trainspotting, but he also uses them as distractions from the crushing despair lying just outside its bubble of energetic thrills, drifting through vignettes that stage a darkly comedic battle between primal temptation and sober stability.
