What the newest antagonist of the Mission: Impossible franchise lacks in characterisation, it makes up for in its unsettling, intangible influence over the basic functions of our technology-dependent world. When we do see the Entity manifest, it is as white beams of light fanning out from a dark centre, pulsing and breathing a raspy, electronic rattle. It is described as a sentient virus, a digital parasite, and artificial intelligence gone rogue, manipulating the transfer of information to impersonate people and fabricate digital signals. Its destruction of a Soviet submarine in the opening minutes of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning lays out the stakes in a thrilling set piece, but even more significantly it also demonstrates the modus operandi through which it takes down civilians – not by launching its own weapons, but by taking advantage of humanity’s reckless naivety.
Much less intimidating than the Entity is the far more standard secondary villain who acts as its “Dark Messiah”, carrying out its orders in the real world to establish its dominion. Practically speaking, Gabriel is little more than a necessary device to give our heroes a body to fight, never quite measuring up to the threat his master poses despite his ties to Ethan Hunt’s past. The other new additions to the cast are served much better in their more ambiguous roles, with Pom Klementieff entering as a reckless assassin set on taking Hunt down, and Hayley Atwell’s professional thief alternating between adversary and ally with her deft sleight of hand.
Even so, Dead Reckoning most of all proves to be a stage for Tom Cruise and his globe-trotting set pieces, taking part in horseback chases across the Arabian desert and pursuing Gabriel through the cobbled streets and canals of Venice. When Christopher McQuarrie’s direction matches Cruise’s practical commitment to the action, the film possesses an even greater exhilarating tactility, reaching a peak as Cruise rides over the edge of a cliff on a motorcycle and parachutes down into the valley. Not even the bombastic finale of green screens and CGI can match the awesome spectacle of seeing Cruise throw his body into truly creative stunts.
McQuarrie may not be taking artistic ownership of the Mission: Impossible series the same way Chad Stahelski has with John Wick, though his contributions towards revitalising its image in recent years should not be discounted. Despite carrying the canted angles across from the first film, his visual style has a sleekness distinct from Brian de Palma’s, and there is even a bit of Skyfall present in the bright, dynamic lighting and silhouetted dancers of the White Widow’s Venetian party. It is through the precision of his parallel editing though that he most effectively ratchets up the tension of his set pieces, crosscutting between a bomb that must be defused through riddles and Hunt’s pursuit of a crucial key through an airport, and later the action unfolding simultaneously inside and outside the Orient Express.
That Dead Reckoning does so little to distinguish its relatively standard espionage narrative from others begs the question why it was conceived in two parts, besides the fact that the Entity holds so much potential for further development as a villain. Playing on renewed cultural fears of an AI takeover is a smart move for McQuarrie as he takes his own creative spin on the subject. As the seventh movie in the Mission: Impossible series, Dead Reckoning proves there is still life to be found in Ethan Hunt’s perilous undertakings 25 years since it began. As the first instalment of a new story arc, there is also just enough to keep us in its grip.
Mission: Impossible series, Dead Reckoning is currently streaming on Netflix.
Buried beneath the deadpan line readings and self-aware framing devices of Asteroid City, there is a quiet, repressed grief, fighting to reach the surface. The story of the youth astronomy convention visited by extra-terrestrials is only the innermost layer of its narrative, framed within a fictional play which in turn is being featured on an exclusive behind-the-scenes 1950s television program. This nesting doll structure isn’t unusual for Wes Anderson, whose cinematic storytelling has always relished mimicking traditional forms of media, but the boundaries between his fictional layers here are far looser and more perplexing than we have seen before.
Augie Steenbeck is the widowed father of four who has been waiting for this family road trip to tell his children of their mother’s passing three weeks ago, while Jones Hall is the actor who plays him. Co-starring next to him is world-weary actress Mercedes Ford playing the equally jaded actress Midge Campbell, who has similarly been drawn to Asteroid City for her daughter’s participation in the astronomy convention. It takes us a few seconds to recognise when either actor breaks character, remarking on the greasepaint used for a black eye or an unexpected commitment to burning one’s hand on a hot griddle. In fact, the lines between performers and their fictional identities become more obscure the deeper we get, as Anderson gradually blurs them until they essentially become one.
Wes Anderson gathers an impressive cast at the Junior Stargazer’s convention including Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson, and Jason Schwartzman among others, though this is only the start of the A-list actors cast in Asteroid City.
There is an underlying logic to these fourth wall breaks in the metacontext of the television production, though they also heavily suggest a personal dissociation that lets these characters step back and question their own actions. “Why does Augie burn his hand on the Quicky-Griddle? I still don’t understand the play,” Jones questions at the chaotic climax of Asteroid City, before heading backstage to chat with the director.
“He’s such a wounded guy. I feel like my heart is getting broken, my own personal heart, every night.”
“Good.”
“Do I just keep doing it?”
“Yes.”
“Without knowing anything?”
“Yes.”
The exchange almost sounds like a man speaking to his own conscience, spurring him on to conquer the inhibitions that keep him from understanding the logic of the universe, as well as his own soul. It doesn’t matter if can’t intellectually comprehend the deep grief of the man he is playing, he is told. “You just keep telling the story. You’re doing him right.”
The backstage drama of Asteroid City often unfolds on these sets, giving the impression that we are watching yet another play on an outer layer. Fiction and reality completely encompass these characters, blurring the lines between both.
Anderson’s trademark self-awareness may be reaching a peak here with the metanarrative of Asteroid City. It is almost impossible to escape the confines of theatrical or televised media here, through which authentic emotions are filtered until we reach enough of a distance to consider their purpose, thereby letting us emerge out the other side as more conscious beings. That is certainly at least the experience that Jones undergoes as he sees parts of himself in Augie, and it is at the core of the enigmatic mantra chanted by the play’s cast in one surreal, unsettling dream sequence.
“You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.”
This surreal dream sequence is an obscure formal break from the narrative, yet offers a mantra that is absolutely key to Anderson’s core thesis – “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.”
Indeed, much of Asteroid City feels as if we are watching one of Anderson’s own dreams of eccentric characters and quaint visual designs, only to be woken up every now and again to recognise its artifice. The fictional play escapes into a world entirely distinct from the boxy aspect ratio and black-and-white cinematography of the television segments, even while Anderson’s crisp depth of field, symmetrical framing, and rigorous blocking are carried across both. In fact, it even transcends the limits of any Broadway theatre as well, unfolding across expansive desert sets saturated with faded pastel blues and yellows. The seams where the floor meets the matte paintings in the background are conspicuous, as is the theatrically curated design of those train and building miniatures that populate its dry, rural landscape.
An inspired framing device in the television production containing the play of Asteroid City. Anderson’s metatextual storytelling is not without purpose – the formal layers of reality and fiction are essential to his characters.The visual distinction between the television program and the play is also carefully considered, contrasting the black-and-white photography and boxy aspect ratio against the widescreen colour landscapes of the desert.
Anderson’s camerawork matches the geometric precision of his mise-en-scène as well, travelling in parallel tracking shots, tilts, and pans whenever he breaks free of his static tableaux. These devices make up the entirety of the long take which first introduces us to Asteroid City before the convention guests arrive, noting its sparse features – a diner, a motel, a half-constructed overpass, and of course the giant crater which gives the town its lofty name. In the distance, atomic bomb tests occasionally disrupt the flat horizon, though these are of little concern to the locals who mainly consist of small business owners and astronomers. They are proud of their town’s small claim to fame, and don’t hesitate in capitalising on their national media coverage when they are unexpectedly visited by aliens.
Anderson develops a stunning colour palette in the dusty rural town of Asteroid City, saturating it with faded pastel yellows and blues, and composing each wide shot to aesthetic perfection.
From the long shots of the town’s 1950s architecture to the throwaway visual gag of the real estate vending machine, there is a thorough dedication to world building all through Anderson’s mise-en-scène, but it is also in his sprawling cast that he develops the rustic southwestern culture of the community. Steve Carrell, Matt Dillon, and Tilda Swinton are among a handful of residents with small-town mannerisms, while Tom Hanks, Liv Schreiber, and Jeffrey Wright fill in the roles of its curious outsiders. Another layer out, we find Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum backstage at the theatre, and Bryan Cranston hosting the television program itself, though the most substantial roles are reserved for those two esteemed actors playing Augie and Midge.
Within this enormous ensemble of A-list actors, Jason Schwartzman and Scarlett Johansson are the centre upon which Anderson’s deadpan drama pivots. Beneath their mannered affects is a mutual fatigue and sorrow, shared in conversations between their neighbouring cabins. The small windows in the side of each hem them into claustrophobic frames, effectively isolating them in their respective worlds, but even so there is a tenderness to their connection that promises a chance to break free of their emotional constraints. If only they had more time for them to explore this further.
Schwartzman and Johansson are the emotional centre of this enormous ensemble, sharing a number of conversations between the small windows in their neighbouring cabins.
It is hard not to see the parallels Anderson is drawing to the global pandemic lockdowns with the arrival of an alien that sends the entire Junior Stargazers convention into quarantine. He is not so much interested in what this “bewildering and dazzling celestial mystery”represents though than the repercussions it leaves in its wake, breaking up the milieu of these characters’ lives and offering them the time to re-examine their relationships. In effect, this is another layer of dreaming which cuts them off from reality, yet which opens new possibilities as romances are forged, school students befriend a travelling cowboy band, and Tom Hanks’ wealthy retiree finds a new respect for his son-in-law. Sleep is not a state of passive inactivity, Anderson posits, but rather renews our connection to the world when we eventually return to it.
The ethereal green glow of the flying saucer breaks up the faded colours of Asteroid City, introducing a “bewildering and dazzling celestial mystery” that will change the lives of every witness.
This is crucial to Jones’ and Mercedes’ development as they sink into the fictional roles of Augie and Midge, only to find mirrored versions of themselves. Mercedes’ disillusionment with the industry is shown early in Asteroid City when she almost quits the play right before opening night, while the source of Jones’ heartache isn’t revealed until the end, though both emerge in their characters as Augie helps Midge to rehearse for an upcoming project. “Use your grief,” she instructs him after a lacklustre performance, and not only do we see Augie’s pain surface in the following line delivery, but Jones’ as well. In an even more obscure fourth wall break that could be spoken by either Mercedes or Midge, they finally realise what binds all four of them together.
“I think I see how I see us. I mean I think I know now what I realise we are. Two catastrophically wounded people who don’t express the depths of their pain because we don’t want to. That’s our connection. Do you agree?”
When Jones randomly encounters the actress who played Augie’s deceased wife before her scene was cut, he finds an even sweeter catharsis to his emotional turmoil, as they recall the lines that they might have shared together in a dream scene. After leaving one stage show, she has simply taken on a part in another, though there is no sorrow to be found in that departure – just new beginnings.
This exchange between Schwartzman and Robbie cleverly parallels the conversations he has with Johansson in their cabins, establishing a distance between both and providing the closure he needs.
In Anderson’s grand metaphor for life and death, everyone is constantly performing roles that they may not fully understand how to play, whether it be as a father, a widower, or professional actor. These are not lies, but rather parts through which humans may understand their truest selves, should they fully submit to these alternate identities and emotionally reconcile them with each other. It is fitting too that a filmmaker so often accused of inauthenticity should find the sincerity in such artifice, and attach such a great spiritual significance to it. Through the union of dreams and reality in Asteroid City, Anderson crafts a cinematic model of this self-realisation, and reverberates a sweet, formal harmony across its sprawling layers of truth.
The inklings of an earth-shaking idea are born in J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mind as a university student, and sparks begin to ignite. Beams of electricity arc out across darkness, bursts of flame dissolve into smoke, and rings of light excitedly vibrate. Physical reactions such as these are born from the ideas of great men, setting off a chain reaction that advances human civilisation one innovation at a time. It is also evident in Oppenheimer though that the excitement of manipulating raw matter is enough to cloud even the most intelligent physicist’s judgement. As the father of the atomic bomb is straddled mid-coitus by his mistress, psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, she asks him to translate a passage from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita she is holding, and all at once Christopher Nolan links the act of life-giving creation to humanity’s eventual destruction.
“Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”
In Western culture, these words spoken by Krishna have since become more heavily associated with Oppenheimer, framing him as a god carrying the burden of seemingly infinite power. Indeed, the atomic blast which can level entire cities proves to be “a terrible revelation of divine power,” forcing those who wish to gaze upon its radiant brilliance to shield their eyes from its wonder and horror. It is a sight not easily forgotten, continuing to haunt Oppenheimer in visions as psychologically invasive as those brief flashes of kinetic energy we witness early on. If Terrence Malick’s elegant interludes in The Tree of Life marvel at the expansive cosmos of the universe, then Nolan’s are in total awe of its quantum processes, and the largescale devastation they produce.
Nolan’s rejection of CGI and commitment to practical effects works wonders in these sharp cutaways to quantum processes and nuclear reactions. The Tree of Life is evidently the strongest influence here. These are the inner workings of Oppenheimer’s mind in the early days, planting the seed of enormous innovation.
Oppenheimer is only Nolan’s second excursion into the annals of history, and it may very well be his densest narrative yet. Still, there is no doubt to be had that this bleak biopic fits perfectly into his career of thrillers and science-fiction films. True to his formal fascinations, time distorts around his central character in non-linear configurations, all the while grounding his story in parallel timelines neatly labelled “Fission” and “Fusion.”
Fission is the nuclear reaction central to the atomic bomb, splitting a nucleus to wreak enormous havoc and giving its name to the 1954 security hearing subplot, where we follow the government’s efforts to frame Oppenheimer as a Communist and strip him of his clearance. Meanwhile, fusion is the merging of two nuclei into one, crucial to the far more powerful hydrogen bomb supported by Washington bureaucrat Lewis Strauss, who dictates much of the second timeline at his 1959 confirmation hearing for the Senate.
‘Fission’ and ‘Fusion’ mark the two framing devices, visually distinguished by Hoyte van Hoytema’s colour and black-and-white photography.
Both framing devices present alternate perspectives of Oppenheimer’s rise from his studies at Cambridge to leading the top-secret Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, though Nolan also visually distinguishes between them by presenting Strauss’ story in black-and-white. How the two connect remains somewhat of a mystery for much of the film, and yet as the final act arrives, Nolan skilfully fuses them with great formal precision.
To pull off such an immense feat of narrative structure though requires an equal achievement of editing, posing a challenge that Nolan has demonstrated himself more than capable of handling in the past. Jennifer Lame has now seemingly taken over from Lee Smith as Nolan’s regular editor, following up her astounding work on Tenet to craft what is essentially a 3-hour montage of increasing urgency, not unlike Oliver Stone’s political thriller JFK. Huge levels of stamina are required on Lame’s part to keep this momentum up for such long stretches of time, as she bounces multiple timelines off each other in her propulsive parallel editing, and intermittently cuts away to those tiny surges of pure quantum energy representing Oppenheimer’s inner thoughts.
The celebrations after America wins the war feel totally empty through Oppenheimer’s eyes, and in turn reveals the hollowness inside him.
The pounding electronic score composed by Ludwig Göransson plays a crucial part in maintaining this kineticism as well, barely pausing long enough to allow us any breathing space in our rush towards total annihilation. At the same time though, Nolan is wise in his selection of those sequences where he drops it out altogether, forcing us to linger in the uncomfortable, heavy breathing of those bearing witness to the product of Oppenheimer’s life’s work. As we sit in the incredible majesty of this climactic moment, it isn’t hard to see the existential allure that drew him into this project. Nolan’s rejection of CGI and commitment to practical effects pays off on a grand scale in Oppenheimer’s disturbing nightmares of a nuclear apocalypse, but it is most of all in his lifelike simulation of the Trinity test that we feel his historical impact on a painful, visceral level.
There are few cinematographers who have capitalised so well on modern IMAX technology as Hoyte van Hoytema over the past decade or so, and so of course credit must also be given to him for both the sheer spectacle of these set pieces and the tremendous establishing shots of Los Alamos. Few times before have we additionally seen this largescale format applied to close-ups as intensive as those captured here, staring right into Cillian Murphy’s glassy blue eyes stretched wide open with the guilt of knowing what he has done, and what he is about to do. It is often thanks to this framing that we can truly appreciate his studied performance as Oppenheimer, adopting the physicist’s deep voice and clipped intonations in his speech, and ageing from an idealistic student into a middle-aged man stalked by regret.
Establishing shots have always been one of Nolan’s great visual strengths, and that is no different here. The entire Los Alamos section of the film is filled with these grand set pieces in the middle of the vast desert.Nolan equally proves his hand at shooting close-ups as well, drawing attention to Cillian Murphy’s glassy blue eyes and haunted expressions.
If Heath Ledger offers the best performance of any Nolan film in The Dark Knight, then Murphy surely sits at a very close second. The rapturous applause that his fellow Americans greet him with after his bomb ends the war rings silently in his ears, and rooms seem to vibrate with atomic vibrations around him, radiating his psychological disintegration out from his haunted expressions into his environment.
Oppenheimer may be Murphy’s platform to give one of the best leading performances in recent years, but it also proves to be a showcase for a whole ensemble of A-list actors making the most of their time in the spotlight, including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Benny Sadie, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh. After Murphy though, there is only one actor whose presence leaves a near-equal imprint on the film. Robert Downey Jr. has never been better than he is here as Strauss, Oppenheimer’s friend-turned-rival who becomes vindictively caught up in his own petty grievances. The final act is where he truly flourishes in his vicious spitefulness, cruelly plotting against the physicist and picking at his open wounds like a vulture. It is through his character development that the second line of the film’s opening quote is prophetically fulfilled, simultaneously immortalising Oppenheimer as a mythological figure, and dooming him to suffer at the hands of his guilty conscience and political enemies.
“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.”
After Murphy, it is Robert Downey Jr. who owns the screen as government bureaucrat Lewis Strauss. This is his best performance to date in Nolan’s best-acted film.
There may be no bleaker ending of any Nolan film than that which he delivers here, simultaneously turning back the clock to take an alternate perspective of a scene from earlier in the film, and looking ahead to the future that awaits us. If Dr. Strangelove presents a darkly comic take on humanity’s nuclear self-destruction, then Oppenheimer is its evil twin, leaving us shivering with existential terror. Just as the tiniest of quantum processes may produce vast, explosive reactions, so too can one man set off seismic ripples across human history. From his creation springs death, and under his shadow Nolan whisks us forward with a relentless pace to witness the tortured god that emerges out the other end – the immortal Destroyer of Worlds.
If Barbieland is a bright pink reinterpretation the Garden of Eden, with Barbie and Ken as the Adam and Eve figures opening the door to corruption, then where in Greta Gerwig’s piece of cinematic confectionary do we find the snake who introduces it to them? Perhaps applying biblical metaphors to Barbie is a little kind – this is not a film that asks for audiences to uncover any rich symbolism or subtext, even while it is playing on narrative archetypes set by some of humanity’s oldest stories. Quite unusually for both Gerwig and her cowriter Noah Baumbach, this screenplay would much rather plainly state its message in unambiguous feminist slogans that were expressed with far greater finesse in Lady Bird and Little Women. Still, she is keenly aware of what she is setting out to achieve, even if the artistic stakes are a little lower and the popular appeal is broader than her previous films. Armed with self-aware humour and a kitschy production design, Barbie makes for a dazzling treat, balancing its satirical interrogation of the doll’s controversial place in pop culture against the innocent joy of everything it was intended to represent.
As for where the tension arises between those two contradictory notions, then we must consider that aforementioned source of corruption in Barbie – not any external force bearing malicious intent, but rather those innate flaws which we can only excise through idealised, plastic representations of ourselves. They set the empowering standard that the originators of the Barbie doll believed women should aspire to, encouraging them to become doctors, lawyers, and writers who may never be subservient to their Kens, and yet there is also a lack of nuance in this ideological thinking which Gerwig is sharply critical towards. Sixty years on from Barbie’s invention, she has become an icon of “sexualised capitalism”, rejected by girls looking for more relatability in their role models. Therein lies the existential crisis that Barbie faces when she ventures into the real world.
It is hard to imagine a pair of actors better suited to playing Barbie and Ken than those that Gerwig casts here. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling pose, strut, and roller skate their way through the film with magnetic charm and humour, individually set on opposing visions of utopia that bring them into conflict over what this exactly means for their respective genders. There may be some comedy which misses the mark in this film, but never when it is in either of their hands, and least of all when Gosling steals the show with his 80s pop musical number ‘I’m Just Ken’.
Even beyond its high-energy dance-offs and broad slapstick though, Gerwig embraces the camp theatricality of Barbie’s pop culture status right down to its dollhouse aesthetic, cartoonishly painted across an entire city. It is fortunate that we don’t spend too long following Barbie’s journey through the real world given how much of this film’s strengths lie in the absurdly garish design of Barbieland, setting the scene for an amusing battle of the sexes across pastel-coloured beaches and streets.
From the make-believe water running out of faucets to the open-air dreamhouses that disregard walls altogether, Gerwig accomplishes a beautifully curated feat of world building here, especially drawing inspiration from the artificial city that Jacques Tati built for his 1967 French satire Playtime. Even closer comparisons can be drawn when we reach the Mattel headquarters, with our similarly naïve protagonist striding down endless rows of grey, boxy cubicles to the heart of the bureaucracy that controls her image. This set piece in its entirety is wonderfully inventive, sending Barbie up to the top floor where Will Ferrell’s ditzy CEO meets with other executives, before plunging her to its basement where the company’s ghosts live on. At the same time though, it is also indicative of a larger trend in the film that lets its smaller subplots and formal threads quietly fizzle out, including the careless disappearance of Helen Mirren’s narration by the end.
The Mattel headquarters bear more than a striking resemblance to the bureaucratic offices of the 1967 French satire Playtime – a strong line of influence in set design from Jacques Tati to Greta Gerwig.
Even so, there isn’t a second of Gerwig’s film that isn’t entirely dedicated to the love and appreciation of its central icon, revealing the depths of Barbie lore that no one besides a very niche group of fans might have suspected existed. One of the great running jokes comes in the homages to those bizarre, discontinued dolls that never quite fit the mould, yet even they find renewed purpose here as misfits whose mere existences expose the hidden prejudice of Barbieland’s rigorously high standards. The existential discomfort of being human is a small price to pay for the freedom that comes with choosing one’s own identity, and Barbie goes even further to revel in the delightful incongruency of that awkwardness against such overcooked perfection. The matriarchal paradise that Gerwig builds with careful curation and whimsy in Barbie is not a utopia to be protected from humanity’s flaws, but a dreamy vision that sees both come together in perfect, feminist union.
Ever since his directorial debut in 2009, Warwick Thornton has positioned himself as Australia’s leading Indigenous filmmaker with a flair for genre dexterity, pivoting from harsh social realism in Samson and Delilah to a colonial western in Sweet Country. With his third solo narrative feature film, The New Boy, he defies expectations once again, this time pushing the formal boundaries of his psychological drama with an air of ethereal, magical realism.
It especially seems to emanate from the most recent arrival at Sister Eileen’s remote orphanage, located somewhere in the dry heartland of 1940s South Australia. This mute, nameless Indigenous boy is found in the sweltering wilderness with no home or family, and as such his mystical connection to the land that he apparently sprung from makes for somewhat of a mystery. From there, Thornton delicately weaves a surreal allegory for spirituality, assimilation, and colonialism’s rigid stranglehold on ancient powers far greater than any settler’s understanding, and possessing greater spiritual dimensions than any imported religion.
Next to Aswan Reid’s subtle performance as the titular ‘new boy’, Cate Blanchett offers a fascinating turn as the unofficial head of the orphanage, Sister Eileen. She sets the tone for the compassionate culture here, devoutly ensuring that each boy receives a religious education so that they may be baptised on their thirteenth birthday and sent out to work on rural sheep stations. Only when her small chapel finally receives a sculpture of Christ to hang on its empty cross does she notice strange phenomena around the new boy, who develops a strange connection to the icon. His palms develop open wounds and begin to bleed, marking him with stigmata, and soon he begins bringing animal sacrifices to its altar. For Sister Eileen, her prayers expressing divine wonder and desperate questions of what it all means turn to fearful suspicion when she is met with silence from both him and God. His merging of Christian and Indigenous iconography sits far outside the realm of her structured religious culture, leaving the boy totally ostracised within the confines of his new home.
Absolutely crucial to the complex relationship Thornton crafts here between this pair of spiritual beliefs is the ravishing beauty which encompasses them in the yellow panoramas, rushing creeks, and withering vegetation of outback Australia, characterising the land as the boy’s mystical source of power. Against burnt orange sunrises and cloudy purple sunsets, Sister Eileen’s monastery is often silhouetted as the sole manmade structure too, blessed by the warm, natural light which shines through the church’s windows in golden beams.
For as long as her small community humbly respects the formidable environment it resides within, there is harmony that exists between them, represented in the perfect union of beliefs within the new boy. When one child residing there is bitten by a snake, the new boy is the one who uses his esoteric wisdom to cure him, and so too does Thornton imply his influence over the atmosphere itself as his hand gently commands the movement of dust in the air. Like the natural world though, this power can be temperamental when it is threatened, seeing him inadvertently set a nearby hill on fire with a random lightning strike after he is chastised by the nuns for his unconventional worship of Christ.
For those colonisers who see the powerful, mystical connection that Indigenous cultures have with the Australian wilderness, unfathomable in their ancient unknowability, it becomes seemingly apparent that the only way to ensure their own survival is to tame both. Though the new boy openly adopts tenets of their faith, embodying a religious pluralism that simultaneously finds fulfilment in his Indigenous beliefs and Christianity, his extraordinary faith is not valued without total obedience to the latter.
This is obviously not easy for a nameless child who never quite learns the customs of polite society though. He would much rather slurp from his bowl than learn to use a spoon, and prefers to joyfully dance on tables rather than on the ground with the other children. His expressions of faith are unorthodox but deeply felt, even taking the Christ sculpture down from the cross, feeding him jam, and tucking him into bed in much the same way he was cared for when he arrived. He may not pray out loud, but the one word he does finally learn to say conveys it all in his perpetual repetition of “Amen.” His most personal expression of faith though is the tiny, flickering ball of light which keeps him company, like a playful spirit upholding that sacred bond between man and country.
Still, Thornton is never so heavy-handed in his narrative as to confirm the reality of the new boy’s power. For every miracle he performs, there is often a level of ambiguity regarding whether we are simply looking at the world through his eyes, just as Sister Eileen is starting to do. As his erratic behaviour and her uncertainty grow in the film’s final act, Thornton fully unleashes the surrealism he has been teasing all along, moving through long passages with minimal dialogue, and replacing it with sharp, visual storytelling of the growing rift between the two faiths. Long, dreamy dissolves marvellously bridge gaps in time that seamlessly disappear, and slow-motion photography achieves the inverse in dragging it out, all while the figure of Christ in the church appears to move in response to the new boy’s visits.
This elusive symbolism may be one of Thornton’s great strengths, especially when it comes to the melancholy resolution of this colonial fable. That said, there does come a point in its very last scene when it manifests more as vagueness, unsure of where to place its final word. In moments like these, The New Boy feels a little half-complete, not quite shading in its characters or story enough to let either reach their full potential, though the image of cultural and religious assimilation they project is nonetheless compelling. There is no divinity to be found at all in the rigid boundaries set by organised religion, Thornton posits in the closing minutes of his ethereal, psychological drama, and most of all within the kind that seeks competition and dominance instead of coexistent harmony.
Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson | 2hr 16min
The conventional standard of 3D animation and photorealism has been so entrenched in the movie industry of recent years that it often feels as if mainstream studios such as Disney have hit the ceiling of creativity, prioritising cutting-edge technology over illustrative artistry. Perhaps 2018 audiences didn’t know it at the time, but they were ready for freshly inspired animators to shake up the medium, and so Phil Lord and Christopher Miller stepped up with the vibrantly expressionist Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. All at once, the comic book movie genre was reinvigorated with a meta-modernist spin, Sony Pictures Animation established themselves as a serious competitor to Disney, and audiences were reminded of the artform’s enormous artistic potential.
If nothing else, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is confirmation that the success of the first film was no fluke. The fluorescent, Ben-Day dotted New York city that defined that story’s primary setting is largely secondary here to the huge array of alternate Earths we visit, each one defined by its own distinct pop art style. Therein lies the bulk of Lord and Miller’s visual ambition, which may even exceed the Into the Spider-Verse. At its most eccentric, brief diversions within the film adopt the look of Renaissance parchment sketches and stop-motion Lego, while the more significant character of Spider-Punk seems to be made up of moving collages from aggressive rock posters, and Spider-Man 2099 takes on a more neo-futurist composition. When these variations mix in large ensembles, there is a mish-mash effect of assorted frame rates and designs running up against each other – not unlike the small collection of incongruent Spider-Men from the first film, but this time expanding out into entire worlds.
Each Spider-Man is tied to their own distinct pop art style – here it is Spider-Punk with a collage of rock music posters, jagged edges, and incongruent frame rates.Spider-Man 2099’s neo-futurist design.Spider-Man India’s world is modelled after Indian comics like Amar Chitra Katha.Ben-Day dots and pop art graphics continue to permeate the aesthetic of Across the Spider-Verse, like seeing a Roy Lichtenstein artwork spring to life.
Besides Miles’ New York which is as sumptuous as ever, the greatest aesthetic accomplishment of all these universes clearly sits in Gwen Stacey’s, which appears to shift colours, tones, and backgrounds like impressionistic renderings of her changing moods. Her New York is painted out in pastel watercolours that liquefy around her, and the editing matches this fluidity in match cuts which effortlessly slip through time. During one argument that takes place between her and her father, even the walls of their family home begin to subtly drip around them like wet paint, before brightening into geometric patterns as some hope for their relationship emerges.
Spider-Gwen’s world is a stunning visual achievement in animation, washing pastel watercolours across her New York that shift colours with her mood.Watercolours drip down the canvas before brightening to abstract geometric backgrounds, shifting and mutating according to each character’s emotional states.
If there is anything which binds all these distinct styles together, it is the hyper-kineticism present in their dynamic editing, thrusting us through split screens, slow-motion action, strobe-like montages, and pop-up boxes divulging brief pieces of exposition before disappearing. Gravity also seems to hold little power whenever a Spider-Man variation is around as the camera is constantly finding unorthodox angles unique to their perspectives, clinging sideways to walls and upside-down from towering structures.
Creative uses of split screens fill the screen with maximalist action.An inspired dedication to backgrounds, often turned upside-down and spun on their side as we orient ourselves with Spider-Men.
It is similarities like these that bind each incarnation of this superhero into a single unified identity, and which in turn becomes the subject of Across the Spider-Verse’s genre deconstruction. Here, they are neatly labelled the ‘canon’, defining every Spider-Man by a common series of events that pushes them towards their destiny, and connecting them to a broader set of archetypes within their own narratives. Where the previous film considered this as a benchmark for new generations of heroes though, questions of free will enter the mix here – perhaps personal suffering does motivate people into creating better worlds, but must it be a prerequisite?
Though the two antagonists presented in Across the Spider-Verse are conflicting in their designs, with one being a comical “villain of the week” and the other a single-minded protector of the multiverse, both serve similar functions in ensuring that Miles meets the tragedy the canon dictates. That one essentially disappears halfway through the film and the other only really enters at this point marks a small formal flaw, but at the same time it is difficult to fully assess the structure of this story given how much it seems to be connected to its upcoming sequel, Beyond the Spider-Verse.
The two main villains of Across the Spider-Verse are promising in their setup, but it remains to be seen how well their arcs will be paid off on in the sequel.
As this film builds to a climax, Lord and Miller do well in pulling one over on the audience with nifty a fake-out edit not unlike the police raid of The Silence of the Lambs,leading into a cliff-hanger which, while tantalising, does not provide any real closure. Even while comparable films like Avengers: Infinity War and The Empire Strikes Back simultaneously set up further sequels while dramatically raising their stakes, they still effectively wrap up their own self-contained plots in a way that Across the Spider-Verse does not. Lord and Miller’s grand plan to dismantle the elevated hero archetype with self-reflexive humour and bombastic animation is evidently not even close to complete at this point. As far as cinematic storytelling goes, this is merely the first half of a much longer film, endeavouring to break through the same narrative conventions that its predestined characters are fighting against.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is currently playing in theatres.
There is a sharp irreverence baked into the Guardians of the Galaxy series which goes beyond tension-diffusing quips thrown together in a writer’s room, or facile jabs at a super villain’s ridiculous comic book name – though no doubt it has featured its own fair share of both in the past. James Gunn’s greatest strengths are as a director of weirdos and misfits, often allowing him an escape from the typical studio trappings of restricted artistic control. His great success with The Suicide Squad in 2021 has rocketed him right to the top of the DC Films hierarchy just as his time with Marvel Studios is coming to an end, though with a farewell as playfully spectacular as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, there may be some concerns as to whether this move into producing might hold him back from a more hands-on approach. He might not be the next Terry Gilliam or Steven Spielberg, but his cartoonish eccentricity and creative reign over blockbusters certainly puts him in the lineage of both, injecting mainstream movie culture with his own colourful sense of humour.
What one might not be so prepared for when entering the most recent instalment of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is just how painfully brutal it is, introducing a new group of ragtag oddballs in tragic counterpoint to Peter Quill’s team. While they set off on a mission to save a wounded Rocket, his comatose mind is reliving his past as an animal experiment. Gunn, being a self-proclaimed fan of the 1932 horror film Island of Lost Souls, wears his influences very clearly on his sleeve. The High Evolutionary is the Doctor Moreau of this story, cruelly mutating lower life forms into bizarre humanoid figures, and essentially positioning himself as their God. Lylla, Teefs, and Floor are the disformed mutants produced in the rejected Batch 89 alongside Rocket, whose extraordinary intellect makes him a reluctant accomplice to the High Evolutionary in his mad experiments.
These flashback sequences mark some of the most visceral scenes of Volume 3, turning Rocket into as sympathetic a character as a CGI raccoon can get. If there was ever a song to underscore his own self-loathing and trauma, then Gunn does well in expressing it through Radiohead’s acoustic version of ‘Creep’, accompanying him through a series of tracking shots in the film’s opening as he saunters through the team’s headquarters.
On an even broader level, Gunn’s development of his entire ensemble also deserves recognition. With an alcoholic Quill grieving the loss of Gamora, Drax getting in touch with his paternal instincts, Nebula completing her redemption arc, and Mantis finding new companions in a trio of unseemly monstrosities, only Groot is really left with little growth of his own in this film. Still, where each are left by the end of Volume 3 is perfectly fitting, lining up with the most gratifying needle drop of the series since ‘Come and Get Your Love’ and earning the shift from late twentieth century music into the 2000s.
More than just a talented writer of quirky outsiders, Gunn backs up his characters with a peculiar cinematic style that has always been well established in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, yet still competes with fellow Marvel directors Ryan Coogler and Taika Waititi in terms of pure visual audacity. Perhaps the trademark slow-motion walk is a bit played out at this point, but the production design during the extended heist scene within the Orgosphere, the biotic headquarters of the High Evolutionary’s nefarious operations, is quite easily a stylistic highpoint of the film. As Quill and his gang descend in a technicolour assortment of spacesuits and explore its fleshy interiors, Gunn lets loose with a string of amusingly bizarre set pieces, turning everything from the staff uniforms to the vibrant architecture into warped, Cronenberg-adjacent visions of whimsical body horror. It is hard not to wonder what Gunn might be capable of should he craft an entire film around such daring aesthetics.
As it is, there is still a lot in Volume 3 which expands it to a bloated two-and-a-half hour run time, including the introduction of the largely functionless Adam Warlock. This has less to do with Will Poulter’s amusingly airheaded spin on the comic book character, and more to do with his relative disconnection from the narrative. That said, Gunn still finds ripe opportunities to centre him in visual gags, paying homage to Michelangelo’s ‘The Creation of Adam’ in one scene that clearly parallels Noah’s Ark, and later awkwardly hanging him on the edges of a group hug. For all its flaws, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 rarely lets its humour get in the way of its character drama, and vice versa. As far as storytelling in the Marvel Cinematic Universe goes, this fine tonal balance and stylistic playfulness makes it a terrific send-off to the franchise’s most colourfully eccentric series.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is currently playing in theatres.
When Brandon Cronenberg first lands us on the fictional Pacific Island of Li Tolqa in Infinity Pool, there is an eerily oppressive atmosphere running through its bright, luxurious settings. Much like Midsommar, we might assume that the horror of this location lies in some dark secret kept by the locals who wear grotesque masks and warn tourists not to leave the compound. Our introduction to the resort even comes through a series of upside-down tracking shots, tumbling us above pools, huts, and hotels with no sense of spatial orientation, and thereby evoking Gaspar Noé’s own dizzying camerawork. We are right to be unsettled about these vague suggestions of evil lurking on Li Tolqa, yet Cronenberg pulls off a chilling subversion of our expectations in his reveal of its true source – not the residents who are simply trying to live ordinary lives, but the tourists who exploit its laws and culture for their own destructive, hedonistic pleasure.
Among the most recent batch of visitors is James, an American writer who is on holiday with his wife Em, yet quickly grows attached to another guest claiming to be a fan of his work. Mia Goth continues her streak of brilliant horror collaborations here as the eyebrow-less, English-accent Gabi who sinisterly draws James deeper into a conspiracy that seeks to tear away his humanity, and who is gradually revealed to be a leader of sorts within a small cult of wealthy tourists.
Instrumental to her reign of terror on Li Tolqa is a local law protecting foreigners from capital punishment. If they are sentenced to death, then they can instead have a clone of themselves produced and let them be executed in their place. The first time James undergoes this process following an accidental hit-and-run, there is a spark of fascinated horror in his expression as he watches his double stabbed multiple times in the belly. From there, he finds his transition into Gabi’s inner circle an uneasy yet slippery slope, meeting a cabal of fellow vacationers who visit Li Tolqa every year to commit heinous crimes, and use the suffering of their own clones as a disturbing form of entertainment.
Cronenberg’s overarching metaphor may not be particularly subtle, but it is overwhelmingly visceral – the abuse of others inevitably leads to the dehumanisation of oneself, and once those self-preservation instincts are destroyed, a primal, deranged masochism takes over. Through its vacation setting, Infinity Pool even takes on a satirical edge in its depiction of Western tourists turning foreign destinations into their own personal playgrounds, holding reckless regard for local customs and citizens. In retrospect, perhaps those warnings to avoid leaving the heavily guarded compound aren’t there to protect the guests, but rather to contain them like wild animals.
Of course, with the science-fiction concept of cloning in Infinity Pool comes philosophical questions of identity, as several times we are led question whether it is actually the ‘originals’ being sacrificed rather than the artificial doubles who continue to live in their place. Cronenberg does not so much provide firm answers here than leave it as an uncomfortable possibility in the back of our minds. He especially uses this uncertainty to pull the rug out from under us in one scene when he leads us to believe the original versions of Gabi’s crew are being executed, only to reveal their actual selves in the audience cheering at their own demise – though even here, there are still doubts as to which characters are the ‘real’ ones.
On more formal level, the possibility that these tourists are copies of copies distance them even further from their humanity. At a certain point, the grotesque masks that they steal from locals and wear during their crime sprees become truer representations of their inner selves than their actual faces, transforming them into misshapen, demonic figures engaging in violent felonies, depraved orgies, and illegal drugs. Infinity Pool’s expressionistic visual style is fairly front-loaded with its vibrant neon lighting, but at the height of the hallucinogen-fuelled debauchery later in the film, Cronenberg lets loose on his nightmarish, mash-up montages, forcing us so deeply into James’ dazed mind that his and new friends’ contorted masks seem to come to life.
These frenzied nightmares of technicolour lens flares and surreal, unfocused imagery aren’t solely reserved for James’ drug-induced visions either, as the cloning procedure similarly warps his perceptions of reality through distorted visual sequences. In doing so, Cronenberg draws a formal connection between both dehumanising experiences, ripping James from his old life of stability and into a helpless, primal state. The appearance of one clone who has reverted to his most basic animal instincts supports this notion even further, and by the time James has completely submitted to Gabi’s Freudian mother figure, it is evident that he has hit the point of no return.
Much like Cronenberg’s previous film Possessor, there is a despairing cynicism which guides Infinity Pool through to its ambiguous end, dooming characters to meagre, joyless existences. Without the sweet release of death, this ongoing self-destruction becomes an endless loop of psychological corruption, as wretchedly consistent as the seasonal cycles that entice the same degenerate holidaymakers back to Li Tolqa every single year. For those who have already destroyed everything meaningful in their own lives, there is no such thing as home – just the invasion and obliteration of everyone else’s most sacred, personal spaces.
To what extent can the constant failures of Joaquin Phoenix’s guilt-ridden paranoiac in Beau is Afraid be blamed on him, and how much can be directly pinned on the surreal, irrational world he fearfully exists in? In this bizarro version of New York, a deranged, naked killer known as the Birthday Boy Stab Man haunts the streets outside Beau’s apartment building, along with masses of other violent lunatics trying to break in. Angry neighbours slide passive-aggressive notes under his door in the middle of the night demanding he turn down his music, despite there being no music to begin with. And just as he is just about to leave to visit his wealthy, successful mother, he discovers the keys to his front door have disappeared, thereby abruptly ending his plans, and disappointing her in the process.
Beau is Afraid may not be as straightforward a horror as Hereditary or Midsommar, but the nihilistic terror which Ari Aster crafts with acute formal detail rather manifests as a cosmic, existential dread, expanding far beyond the reaches of any cult. Whether the senseless world we are presented with is real or merely the filter through which Beau might justify his faults is irrelevant – it is sometimes both, and occasionally neither. Picking one apart from the other would be futile. This three-hour odyssey from Beau’s city apartment to his mother’s country mansion is absurdism at its purest, so hypnotically inscrutable that it is surprising Charlie Kaufman didn’t conceptualise it first.
The formal detail of this absurd alternate universe is incredibly well-drawn by Aster in the first scenes – corpses lie in the streets, violent men lurk outside Beau’s apartment, and even the elevator inside dangerously lets off sparks every time the doors move.
Even so, Aster’s fingerprints are all over this film, both in the way he frames his tableaux like stages and uses them to hint at sinister forces pulling strings behind the scenes. After Beau badly injures himself and is taken in by oddball nuclear family, hints that he is being closely studied begin to appear. Roger and Grace are uncomfortably accommodating to their guest, giving him their angsty teenage daughter’s bedroom and offering to drive him straight to his mother’s place. After they eventually pressure him to delay the trip by a day, Grace covertly slides him a napkin with a message.
“Stop incriminating yourself.”
It could very well be a scenario lifted from Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, accusing our protagonist of an unknown crime which nobody will tell him. Later when she slyly urges him to flick to channel 78, he discovers live surveillance footage recording his every move. Most unsettling of all, hitting the fast-forward button briefly reveals his own future – scenes from the film that not even we have reached yet. Is his entire life predetermined? If so, by who? Can he truly be blamed for anything if his path was laid out from the minute he was born?
Time disintegrates with the frequent intrusion of Beau’s childhood flashbacks, warping our comprehension of how they really unfolded.
Linear time continues to erode all through Beau is Afraid, frequently flashing back to childhood traumas and vanishing entire chunks of his life through swift, seamless transitions. At one point when he accidentally stumbles across a pastoral theatre troupe in the woods aptly named the ‘Orphans of the Forest’, reality also follows the disintegrating path that time has disappeared down, absorbing Beau into a colourful, partially animated dreamscape. This may be the most mesmerising, visually adventurous sequence of the film, as well as its most confounding. Like a character in a pop-up storybook, artificial environments rise and collapse all around him, blending live-action sets with ravishing hand-drawn animation to transport him into yet another universe even more distant from our own.
The tale we are presented with during this interlude is one of grief and perseverance, transforming Beau into an alternate version of himself who starts his own family, is separated from them in a flood, and spends his entire life searching for them again. Accompanying us through it all, a narrator speaks in second-person future tense – “You will” – prophetically offering him safe passage into an imagined life that might manifest should he break free of his mother’s paralysing grip. Though there is much heartache to be found here, there is also the notion that he once had something valuable to lose. In the film’s reality, he never even had that.
The partially animated play of Beau’s alternate life is an astounding piece of direction from Aster – a true cinematic highlight in an occasionally messy film.
This alternate Beau’s search for lost family certainly parallels the main Beau’s journey to see his mother, with the narrator accusing them equally of being “so lost in your selfishness no one could ever find you,” yet the happy ending of this play is not one we ever expect to see manifest at the film’s conclusion. The darkly comic repetition of Beau’s constant, ironic defeats is so rigidly woven into this narrative that only an interlude as artificially constructed as this could break from that pattern.
Instead, the more the film moves along, the more pitiful Beau becomes. Much like his role in You Were Never Really Here, Phoenix packs on a great deal of weight for this role, though the way he carries it is feebler and far more lethargic. This is an image of a man burdened by his own passivity, desperately desiring the approval of his mother yet constantly falling short. The plain grey pyjamas he wears on his mission to finally do something right make him stand out as a man not ready to engage with the outside world, and especially one so vibrantly complicated as that which Aster has assembled. He feels much safer inside his own guilt-ridden mind, and so that is exactly where he is doomed to linger in the film’s mind-bending final act.
Joaquin Phoenix is paunchy, jumpy ball of nerves as Beau, disappearing into the role as easily as he did with the Joker or Freddie Quell.
The rug that Aster pulls out from under our feet is not some elucidating, rational explanation of everything we have witnessed, but rather sucks us even deeper into Beau’s self-loathing subconscious, finally literalising his deepest, most humiliating fears. A sexual encounter with the only person he ever felt some attraction to before his mother came between them might almost be his first successful, independent rebellion against her authority, though even this is tainted with reminders of the past. Specifically, the realisation that the very bed they are making love on is his mother’s and the fact that his father died mid-orgasm at the exact moment he was conceived both turn him into a modern Oedipus of sorts. No wonder his life has borne so much guilt, given that the reason for its being is so tied to death.
The Freudian layers of these relationships are formally intricate, if not always tonally consistent, especially when a monstrous symbol of sexual repression arrives on the scene and aims for cheap laughs. Given the film’s tendency to draw out scenes a little longer than required, this isn’t a one-off flaw either, leading to a narrative which is somewhat bloated in parts. That said, the enormity of Aster’s psychological reckoning in Beau is Afraid absolutely necessitates its three-hour run time, and may have simply been better served with more succinctness across a greater number of settings.
Beau’s mother Mona is a constant presence throughout this film in Beau’s flashbacks, revealing the source of much humiliation and repression.
Even at its most imperfect, there is still little which can take away from the incredible formal invention and surreal string of symbols which hold Beau is Afraid together as an elusive, Kafkaesque allegory, almost certain to reveal deeper nuances on multiple viewings. The natural instinct to gain both approval and independence from one’s mother is the paradoxical objective that connects Beau to the rest of humanity, yet the guilt which comes from recognising the impossibility of this is magnified by a thousand in Aster’s surreal character study. For Beau, the chance that she perceives these exact thoughts running through his head is the most mortifying scenario of all, as only then would his last shred of perceived dignity be swallowed by his self-destructive shame. Beneath the absurd randomness of his psychological voyage, this primal horror offers an internal, guiding logic to Aster’s cinematic nightmare, carving out a delusional path to the original source of man’s self-destructive shame.
Long before John Wick’s wife passed away, and even before his days as a professional hitman, death has been his most steadfast companion and cruellest enemy. It has bonded so close to his soul that oftentimes throughout this series he has become its literal personification, delivering swift ends to those who believe they can outmatch him. In this fourth chapter, Bill Skarsgård’s deranged villain, the Marquis Vincent de Gramont, even describes him as a ghost with nothing left to live, die, or kill for. He is only partially correct – the overwhelming desire for vengeance which motivates Wick to mow down waves of assassins often seems more a force of habit than anything else, though beneath that there is a much melancholier desire to meet his end with some humanity. Perhaps only then can he reacquaint himself with the peace he once knew during his short-lived marriage.
As a result, the purgatory-like settings that John Wick: Chapter 4 lands him in makes for a more darkly spiritual film than previous instalments, and instils the heightened stakes with an imposing formal majesty. This epic, globe-trotting narrative carries all the weight of his grand resolution to take down the High Table, which we have seen exert a divine authority all throughout the series, and which now fatefully draws him towards his final fight for freedom.
The scope of this narrative matches its enormous stakes and spectacle, spanning four separate continents and bringing magnificent visual style to each.
Just as significantly, director Chad Stahelski brings an astonishing creativity to each set piece along the way, delivering some of the finest action scenes in recent years. In one overhead tracking shot lasting several minutes, he slices the roof off a Parisian apartment complex and takes a gods-eye view of Wick’s violent conquest. Later as he fights his way through lanes of traffic around the Arc de Triomphe, a graphic dissolve smoothly transitions from a helicopter shot into a scaled-down model of Paris, above which the Marquis looms menacingly. From this dominant position, the High Table effectively becomes the omniscient, omnipotent god of Wick’s universe, seemingly manifesting new threats from the shadows.
Stahelski holds on this overhead tracking shot for several minutes as Wick mows his way through a Parisian apartment building, delivering a gods-eye view of his conquest.
Skarsgård’s wealthy narcissist clearly possesses his own violent streak, most of all evident in one scene involving a vicious hand stabbing, but he is also far less likely than those below him to carry out the dirty work. Where Keanu Reeves operates best as a dynamic physical presence and relatively minimal dialogue, Skarsgård commands entire scenes with an unnerving aristocratic charm, at home in the most opulent of Parisian settings. Eugene Delacroix’s painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’ forms a stunning backdrop inside the Louvre when the Marquis accepts Wick’s duel, drawing historical parallels to the lonely hitman’s revolution against the High Table, while the Palace of Versailles and the Palais Garner also lavishly host his nefarious operations.
This is more than great location scouting – the Palais Garnier already has immense architectural beauty, but Stahelski’s angles, lighting, and blocking makes it entirely cinematic.
Stahelski is not simply leaning on his location scouting for these incredible settings, but the way he lights and frames each with such vivid attention to detail makes for some tremendous scenic backdrops. The beauty of Barry Lyndon is specifically evoked in one Russian Orthodox cathedral which basks its ornate Renaissance architecture in the warm, golden glow of candles, and seems to expand its columns infinitely upwards towards the heavens. Within this holy sanctuary, Wick’s desperate prayers take the form of underground bargains, and personal atonement is found in the restoration of old relationships.
The cathedrals of John Wick are lit with warm, golden candles, and offer holy sanctuaries to Wick as he faces down his own mortality.
Historical tradition may run deep in this world, and yet in Stahlelski’s vivid lighting and futurist architecture he is also constantly reminding us of the modern culture which it must compete with. Here, the influence of Nicolas Winding Refn announces itself in a huge number of expressionistic set pieces, taking us from the neon-drenched Osaka Continental Hotel to a pulsating Berlin nightclub which cascades waterfalls down multiple storeys. If the success of other John Wick films can be narrowed down to a few superb sequences, then virtually every new scene in Chapter 4 is competing with the last in pure ambition and astounding visual style.
That Stahelski is capable of imagery and set pieces like this is only hinted at in previous John Wick films, and makes his future as a director beyond this series even more exciting.
Then there is the action choreography itself, transcending Stahelski’s passionate displays of mise-en-scène and infusing John Wick: Chapter 4 with a tactile, kinetic energy felt in every stunt and tracking shot. Nathan Orloff’s dextrous editing is certainly a highlight, but Stahelski is not afraid to sit with long takes during these fight scenes either. He and his entire cast commit to a level of practicality which is refreshing to see in an age of CGI spectacle, earning references to silent cinema genius Buster Keaton. Much like The General or Sherlock Jr, a film as brutally physical as this could have only ever been directed by an actual stunt performer who understands the incredible coordination of each set piece, creatively transcending mere back-and-forth blows between adversaries to incorporate fully interactive, constantly shifting terrains.
Clearly this is only the beginning of Stahelski’s love of cinema history though, with Chapter 4 going on to pay homage to noirs, westerns, martial arts movies, and even samurai films. These are more than just off-hand nods too, with the brand-new character of Caine playing on the trope of the blind, sword-wielding assassin, and refreshing it vibrant depth. That it is Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen in this part instils it with an even greater cultural authenticity as well, and further sets up an equal match for Reeves in physical combat.
There is real commitment to scenic backdrops all through John Wick, especially emphasising the dynamic lighting setups in virtually every set piece.
If the Marquis is God in Chapter 4, then Caine is often framed as a reluctant angel of sorts, fulfilling his obligations to take down Wick yet occasionally bending the rules to help him where he can. It is only fitting then that the Basilica of Sacré Coeur de Montmartre offers a heavenly location for the final showdown, and that Wick must first fight his way out of the underworld and up several flights of stairs to reach it. The imagery Stahelski brings to this painstaking endeavour goes beyond Christian theology, and continues to take on the hopelessness of Sisyphus’ eternal, uphill struggle from Ancient Greek mythology. Stahelski is more than just a crafter of visceral action sequences, proving himself in astounding sequences like these to be a storyteller firmly in touch with formal structure and symbolism.
Inspired symbolism blends with brilliant action in this Sisyphean struggle up the stairs towards the Sacré Coeur, ascending from the underworld towards the heavens.
Given the modern trends of franchise filmmaking tending towards a decrease in quality with each new sequel, it is unusual and exciting to see a series like John Wick invert that and end on such a cinematic high. Stahelski has a talented team behind him, with the most notable of all being Guillermo del Toro’s frequent cinematographer Dan Laustsen, but at this point there is no doubting his credentials as an auteur who is fully engaged with refining his artistic voice and talent. With its staggering set pieces and consequential narrative stakes, John Wick: Chapter 4 is simultaneously a model of franchise filmmaking at its most effective, and a confirmation of Stahelski’s well-earned position among our great modern action directors.
