The average volume of New York City sits at 90 decibels on any given day, the opening title card A Quiet Place: Day One informs us – the equivalent of a constant scream. There may be no place more dangerous to be when John Krasinski’s blind, sound-sensitive aliens crash-land on fragmented meteors in the film’s opening minutes, immediately decimating Manhattan’s population. The streets that were crowded with traffic and pedestrians a few minutes earlier are now an urban wasteland of dust, smoke, and debris, recalling familiar scenes of disaster that the city suffered only a couple of decades ago during the September 11 attacks. This is the point that the world changes in the A Quiet Place universe, forcing humanity into an agonising silence as the urge to scream grows ever louder.
Krasinski’s resignation from the role of director in the series ushers in new talent for this prequel, giving indie filmmaker Michael Sarnoski the chance to apply his knack for drama and suspense to the horror genre. His 2021 debut film Pig showcased his fine control over a slow-burn narrative, as well as a patience behind the camera that translates effectively into the tension-ridden set pieces of Day One. Even his protagonists in these two films share common characteristics, seeing both relish life’s finer luxuries as they grapple with grief, mortality, and an enduring loyalty to their animal companions.
Where cancer patient Sam begins to diverge from Pig’s ex-chef is in her fiery wit and cynical vigour, fighting to feel alive in the face of certain death. She is not one to relinquish control to nurses or hospice restrictions, but is determined to maintain a sense of dignity when her time comes. As such, Sarnoski’s reframing of A Quiet Place’s extra-terrestrial threat into an allegory for terminal illness is conducted with impressive deftness. Finally, Sam is witnessing the world confront the same fear that she has live with day-to-day, yet been unable to express in any form outside her poetry. That her motivation remains the same both before and after the attack is incredibly telling – a single slice of pizza from Patsy’s in East Harlem is the endgame, letting her taste a treasured childhood memory before either the monsters or the cancer takes her.
Sam’s characterisation is perhaps the most crucial difference between this instalment in the series and previous A Quiet Place films, with Day One often leaning more into survival drama than outright horror. This balance works particularly well for Lupita Nyong’o who builds on her nascent scream queen status following Us, revealing a fierce protectiveness over Frodo the cat who genuinely seems to have nine lives, while also exploring her screen chemistry with Joseph Quinn’s British law student, Eric. Theirs is not a romantic connection, but a friendship that is slowly built upon a foundation of empathy, self-sacrifice, and humour, finding joy within New York’s few remaining comforts.
On a larger scale, Day One displays some intriguing world building as civilians and the military both try to analyse the situation as it is developing, working through processes of trial and error. Sarnoski uses the urban geography well, distinguishing it from the first two films with its skyscrapers, subway tunnels, and hubs of a once-lively American culture. Meanwhile, the island setting is a godsend for those who can escape Manhattan before it is quarantined, and a death sentence for those left stranded.
Landing as the third film in this series, Day One’s pacing grows tired in its repetitive plot cycle – survivors try to remain quiet, a loud noise is made, the monsters attack, and then a return to quietude – yet Sarnoski still finds room to explore the impossibility of achieving total silence in a densely-populated city. The gentle shuffle of crowds moving in unison towards rescue boats keeps us on edge, even without any individual producing enough noise to draw attention on their own, and it is only inevitable that this metropolis of metal, glass, and machinery will turn on its inhabitants. The creativity in moments like these would be enough to justify this prequel’s existence, were it not for Sam’s stirring journey of acceptance already doing the heavy lifting. Perhaps the A Quiet Place series will soon run its course, exposing the thinness of a premise that tends to fall back on formulaic set pieces, though the team-up between Sarnoski and Nyong’o in Day One at least proves that there is still compelling drama to be mined from the stifling, deadly silence of this alien invasion.
A Quiet Place: Day One is currently playing in cinemas.
The first layer of irony that surfaces in Angela’s job of casting workplace accident victims for an ‘occupational health and safety’ video arrives with understated derision. Contrary to the claims of the corporation commissioning this project, many of their personal anecdotes directly implicate their own employer. For the company, this culpability is irrelevant – it is much easier to feed them scripted lines advocating for their colleagues to wear proper safety equipment, implying that they are the ones at fault. But really, how would a helmet have saved the fatigued, overworked woman who slipped off a walkway, broke her spine, and ended up in a wheelchair?
The second layer of irony that Radu Jude weaves into his black anti-capitalist comedy Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World comes through its overarching portrait of the woman tasked with capturing these stories, quietly suffering under similar conditions as she drives across Bucharest from one location to the next. Angela is no doubt aware of these parallels as she reaches out with compassion to the people she is filming, but at the end of the day she is just another employee who must adhere to the company’s strict guidelines and hustle culture. If she must miss out on a break to get the work done, then so be it. If the executive should insincerely wish that she isn’t working extra hours to complete this project, then she is to meet them with an equally disingenuous response.
“Oh no, for this one no, of course not! Only eight hours, don’t worry.”
In both her job and her professional attitude, Angela is reluctantly complicit in upholding the company’s façade of accountability, while she and the rest of Europe’s working class continue to be exploited by the out-of-touch elite. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World may be set in the modern day, but as far as Jude is concerned this is simply the progression of a slow, cumbersome apocalypse, with the title itself being attributed to a man who witnessed some of the twentieth century’s greatest atrocities firsthand. Polish Jewish poet Stanisław Jerzy Lec foresaw the fall of humanity arrive not through earth-shattering destruction, but rather the creeping dystopia of the banal, herding the middle and working classes into unending routines of mindless frustration.
The arthouse influence of Jim Jarmusch’s deadpan humour, measured repetition, and solemn greyscale photography is considerable here, as Jude commits Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World to a minimalist formal structure that finds absurdism in the mundane. His shots are largely static and last several minutes at a time, sitting in the passenger seat of Angela’s car as she throws insults at other drivers and blares music to keep herself awake. Outside the window, blurs of Bucharest’s fountains, railways, and shops are intermittently brought to a complete standstill by traffic jams, while Jude’s jump cuts underscore the mind-numbing gaps of time that lie between one point of absolute inertia and the next.
Jude’s ambitious attempt at building out the form of his piece into a sprawling indictment of the daily grind becomes a little messier when his focus shifts from away Angela, cutting in clips from a 1982 Romanian film following a taxi driver with the same name. Their routines vaguely line up, and the parallels he is drawing between their struggles are clear, though without a real arc these segments become unnecessary in this nearly three-hour film. The freeze frames and jerky slow-motion he applies to cutaways of the city’s crowds are a little more formally sound, though Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is often at its strongest when it is studying our primary subject as a low-ranking subordinate of the corporate world.
After all, Angela is not some oblivious drone existing only to serve her superiors. She clings to her individuality with coarse defiance, making the time to balance her own ‘art’ with her work duties. Most obvious and obnoxious of all are those TikTok videos she films as her chauvinist alter ego, Bobita Ewing – a vulgar pickup artist who apparently spends his life partying and travelling the world. In these segments, Jude’s cinematography briefly breaks out into low-res colour, applying a crudely unconvincing filter that gives her a beard, bald head, and monobrow.
Bobita is a blatant parody of every ‘alpha male’ influencer online who spews misogynistic trash to his followers, and even name-drops Andrew Tate as one of his friends. Angela may only be performing this persona in jest, but this is still her channel through which she is able to let loose the rage she cannot express at work, and as such she has few inhibitions about who sees it. “I’m just making fun of things. So I don’t go crazy,” she plainly justifies to her disapproving mother, and when she noisily records one video in a public bathroom, Jude’s wide shot amusingly catches another woman nervously peek her head around the corner to catch sight of this bizarre act.
The small detours that Angela makes throughout the day on an already-tight schedule further develop the non-conformist side of her character, especially as she winds up on a film set and finds a kindred spirit in Uwe Boll, notorious director of bad movies. Together, they rail against the limitations that the establishment imposes on creativity, though Jude remains cynically aware of the tasteless, unsophisticated art they are essentially arguing for. When Angela later finds the chance to furtively meet up with her boyfriend during work hours, the two make love in her car, which later forces her to comically cover the stains he left on her dress with an airport pickup sign as she meets a high-profile client. On a more sombre note, she even finds herself at one point contending with a hotel chain that is exhuming her grandparents’ bodies due to a land dispute, adding to the pile of unnecessary stresses wreaked by corporate domination.
With additional references to Queen Elizabeth’s passing, the war in Ukraine, and American gun control, Jude very gradually expands Bucharest’s localised decay into a global dystopia that is pervasively documented in every form of modern media. Angela is unavoidably attached to her iPhone, using it to record videos for both work and leisure that capture different angles of society’s deterioration, just as the taxi driver interludes represent it through the artifice of cinema.
Ultimately though, it is the final act of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World where Jude’s media collage delivers its strongest blow, baring the microaggressions of corporate exploitation for all to see in a static, unbroken 35-minute shot inspired by Michael Haneke’s own surveillance-like photography. This is the culmination of all Angela’s hard work, with wheelchair bound Ovidiu Buca and his family being chosen to star in the work safety video, while the factory where his accident took place looms large in the background. It matters little that he might have been spared this fate had the metal barrier which knocked him into a coma been made from a lighter material, or at least been visibly marked so that the driver who sent it flying had seen it to begin with. Once again, the blame is laid at his feet. Never mind that the incident took place after work hours as he was heading home – he should have been wearing a safety helmet.
Together, the talent and crew suffer through take upon take, with the director making tiny tweaks each time. To avoid giving ammunition to the “enemies,” the incriminating bar must be moved out of the background, and Ovidiu’s mother must hold his hand at a key point to force a bit of sympathy. Behind the scenes, this film shoot quickly evolves into a mock courtroom drama with Ovidiu’s actual lawsuit against the company at stake, but of course none of this is to be shown in the final product. A ‘creative’ stroke of genius sees them pivot towards copying Bob Dylan’s music video for ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, with Ovidiu holding up giant, green cue cards to the camera so the editor can insert whatever words they like. “I hope they won’t write anything that might hurt us,” Ovidiu’s mother voices as they wrap shooting, though the director’s words of assurance couldn’t be emptier.
And of course, Angela is still there through it all, recording her Bobita videos without a care for which bystanders may be unnerved by her offensive monologues. The switch to colour in this section also reveals her glittery dress in full, inconsequentially rebelling against the culture of corporate conformity that has a stranglehold over every other aspect of her working life. These dramatic expressions of identity are amusingly trivial, not quite earning Angela our sympathy so much as demonstrating how feeble they are in the grand scheme of civilisation’s dreary downfall. Jude’s narrative may be tightly confined to a single working day, and yet the dismal landscape that Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World stitches together from media fragments stretches far beyond the city of Bucharest, helplessly watching the slow, mechanical grind of modern civilisation into a never-ending traffic jam.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is currently streaming on Mubi.
Of all George Miller’s additions to his post-apocalyptic world in Mad Max: Fury Road, hardened warrior Imperator Furiosa proved to be the most compelling, speeding and swaggering through the Australian wasteland like a Clint Eastwood-style gunslinger with an unwavering sense of purpose. She was a mystery and was all the more fascinating for it, so the challenge of filling in the more ambiguous parts of her backstory in a prequel that simultaneously preserved her captivating intrigue would require a stroke of genius on Miller’s part.
Even more than the family entertainment of Happy Feet or the fantastical storytelling of Three Thousand Years of Longing, this anarchic dystopia of dictators, marauders, and vehicle chases is clearly where he is most comfortable as a filmmaker. A return to the Mad Max franchise once again turbocharges the Australian director with raw, high-octane vigour, as Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga expands its world to far more expansive proportions than Fury Road’s tightly contained narrative. On one hand, this leads to a plot that doesn’t quite possess the same forward momentum and is more willing to wander off on tangents, though it is no great shame that Furiosa suffers in comparison to its extraordinarily economic predecessor. Quite miraculously, this prequel sticks its landing with dynamic poise, giving us greater reason to admire Imperator Furiosa as a force of undistilled willpower.
Astounding production design crudely made up of animal hides and bones, merging the mechanical with the primitive.
Covering fifteen years from Furiosa’s kidnapping as a young girl to her promotion among the upper ranks of the Citadel’s army, this story offers a new nemesis who leads his own ragtag gang against Immortan Joe’s War Boys. Dementus is a Latin title befitting of a warlord who styles himself in the image of Roman emperors, ostentatiously riding atop a chariot led by motorcycles and employing classical battle tactics. He takes sadistic pleasure in torturing those like Furiosa’s mother who fall captive to his biker horde, and he has no qualms sacrificing his own men for the sake of a tactical deception, yet his boisterous charisma is quite distinctive in this barren wasteland.
A younger Immortan Joe returns from Fury Road, while Chris Hemsworth takes up the mantle as our new antagonist Dementus.With the red cape and chariot of motorcycles, Dementus styles himself in the image of a Roman emperor – an ostentatious presence in this barren wasteland.
Perhaps that is to be expected from an actor so frequently typecast as Chris Hemsworth though, snarling his lines with broad, nasally glee as he breaks out from the stock-standard hero and himbo roles that have largely defined his career up until now. His villainous turn here is just as extreme as Anya Taylor-Joy’s shift into the archetype of silent, brooding action hero, sufficiently carrying on Charlize Theron’s legacy from Fury Road even if she doesn’t quite reach the same remarkable heights.
It is worth applauding the cast that Miller gathers beyond these two leads as well, and the hilariously inventive character names given to each. John Howard and Angus Sampson respectively return from Fury Road as the People Eater and the Organic Mechanic, filling out their backstories as Immortan Joe’s associates, while Tom Burke impresses in the role of fleeting love interest Praetorian Jack with a pitch-perfect Australian accent. The appearance of Indigenous actor Quaden Bayles among the War Boys imbues the tribal militia with shades of corrupted innocence, and Miller also makes especially excellent use of David Collins from the Umbilical Brothers as a member of Dementus’ biker horde, drawing on his aptitude for physical comedy.
George Shevtsov’s History Man and David Collins’ Smeg are two welcome additions to the Mad Max series, and Angus Sampson’s Organic Mechanic returns with a fuller backstory.
Quite unexpectedly though, it is George Shevtsov’s tattooed History Man who becomes the closest thing to an audience surrogate in Furiosa, connecting this world’s grotesque degradation back to a pre-apocalyptic past that only survives through his living memory. Miller unfolds some tremendous world building through this character, reflecting on the War of Roses, the three World Wars, the Water Wars, and the Tri-Nation Nuclear Wars that span our own past and future, before adding the brand-new Forty-Day Wasteland War to this list of humanity’s futile attempts to assert its blood-thirsty dominance. To preserve knowledge in a world that burned its books long ago, he etches his mournful wisdom across every inch of skin, thereby setting up a key plot point when a captive Furiosa uses his ink to draw a star chart on her arm. To get back home to the Green Place, she must simply follow this guide, and this alone stands as her sole hope across years of confinement.
A brief glimpse at the mysterious, fabled Green Place reveals the objective that propels Furiosa forward in her character arc across both films.
Those familiar with Fury Road will see the loss of this arm coming from the start, but Furiosa never falls into the trap of gratuitously hitting anticipated plot points for the sake of empty fan service. Each step that Furiosa takes towards becoming the woman who eventually rescues Immortan Joe’s wives lands with impact, seeing her objectives shift with incredible resourcefulness as old doors close and new ones open. She is certainly a proficient driver, fighter, and mechanic, though these skills merely back up a resolute, retributive anger which positions her as a force that any adversary should tremble to reckon with – “The darkest of angels, the fifth rider of the apocalypse.”
Nothing quite tops Charlize Theron’s devastating collapse upon realising the Green Place is gone, but Anya Taylor-Joy carries on Furiosa’s legacy with stoic resolve.
Just as key to unlocking the mysteries of the woman we recognise in Fury Road is the hyper-stylised visual storytelling which surrounds her, pushing Furiosa to the brink of sanity in this surreal, malformed world. Swapping out the Namibian desert landscapes used previously for the authentic Australian outback, Miller’s scenery is as strong as ever, saturating the dusty orange sand beneath the harsh sun and washing it in stunning shades of sapphire when he shoots day-for-night. An inventive use of flare guns also injects bursts of vibrance through red, green, and black clouds of dust, unnervingly staining Dementus the colour of blood at one point, and making this environment’s crude, primitive production design appear increasingly alien. Miller’s silhouettes and rigorous blocking of actors are often admirable within still compositions, though the jerky movements of his visuals stand out even more, seeing him subtly manipulate frame rates as vehicles rush towards the camera and the camera dramatically hurtles towards actors.
Miller was forced to shoot in the Namibian desert in Fury Road as a matter of circumstance, while this time round he is finally able to use the Australian outback. The visual difference isn’t significant in the final product, but perhaps that is for the best – the saturated, burnt orange sand of the wasteland is consistently striking across both films.Miller shoots day-for-night unlike so many other modern directors, applying an intense sapphire wash to his vast landscapes.A gorgeous shot basking in the red dust of a flare gun, staining Dementus’ beard and cape a deep, bloody crimson.
It requires a marvellously steady hand to maintain such fine control over these fast-paced set pieces, though Miller’s kinetic editing and keen sense of geography keeps them from slipping into incoherence. This is particularly impressive in one Fury Road-style pursuit that splits its attention between Praetorian Jack driving the gigantic War Rig, Furiosa clinging to its underside, and bandits attacking from parachutes and propellors strapped to motorcycles, but Miller’s vehicular warfare also expands beyond chases here. Ambushes, infiltrations, and escapes from fortresses often use the architecture of these giant, metal beasts to brilliant effect, piercing the walled defences of Gastown and its moat of crude oil, and dangerously scraping the edges of the Bullet Farm’s deep quarries.
The closest Furiosa gets to Fury Road is this War Rig chase with motorbike bandits, held together with brilliantly kinetic editing and a thrilling forward momentum.Establishing shots like these contribute enormously to Miller’s world building, introducing new settlements scattered throughout the wasteland such as Gastown and the Bullet Farm.
The allegory behind Miller’s trucks, cars, and motorbikes in Mad Max has been explicit ever since the first film in the series, transforming these vehicles into mechanical extensions of their driver’s body, status, and personality. Furiosa is no exception here either as she learns to navigate the powerful War Rig, though equally core to the question of her survival in this demented wasteland are the dehumanising compromises that must be made. Bit by bit, shards of metal, plastic, and glass replace the lost pieces of one’s soul, until that too is as brutally mechanical as the machine one drives. “To feel alive we seek sensation, any sensation to wash away the cranky black sorrow,” Dementus solemnly contemplates as he faces Furiosa one last time, and indeed there is a strange overlap between the futility of their attempts to find release from this hellhole. To actively carve out a greater purpose with compassion and resilience as noble guides though – that alone is enough to set this warrior apart from the multitude of nihilists and zealots driven mad by the emptiness.
“The darkest of angels, the fifth rider of the apocalypse.”
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is currently playing in cinemas.
A stuntman will only persevere through so many dangerous pratfalls and snubs before they steal their moment in the spotlight, though David Leitch’s Hollywood satire is not tainted with the bitterness of being sidelined. The Fall Guy is a tribute to that under-recognised breed of performer who is resilient in both mind and body, putting their lives on the line for art, and stoically dedicating themselves to a job that A-list celebrities will inevitably claim the credit for when the red carpet is rolled out.
Though Leitch loosely bases his film off the 80s television series of the same name, there is little connecting the two besides the character of Colt Stevens. Next to Aaron Taylor Johnson’s bombastic presence as Tom Ryder, the actor who Colt doubles for, Ryan Gosling’s understated charm perfectly counters Leitch’s embellished caricature of show business, taking the constant belittlement directed towards stuntmen in his stride. A peaceful life working as a valet seems appealing, especially after the near-fatal accident which pushes him to leave the industry, yet the thrill, romance, and spectacle of Hollywood moviemaking is irresistible. It is only a matter of time before Colt is drawn back in, allured by the prospect of reconciling with his ex-girlfriend Jody during production of her directorial debut Metalstorm, but the path to redeeming his former glory is not so straightforward.
Tom Ryder’s sudden disappearance into a shady circle of mobsters is merely the catalyst for this action-mystery narrative, plunging Colt into the depths of a Hollywood conspiracy as he seeks to track down and rescue the man who has overshadowed him at every turn. Leitch’s celebration of practical stunt work goes far beyond paying lip service too – The Fall Guy breezily surfs along waves of adrenaline-pumping set pieces, opening with Colt falling several storeys to a devastating injury, and appropriately reaching its climax on a pyrotechnic movie set. Some stylistic experimentation in these sequences doesn’t go amiss either, particularly in one night club fight scene that bursts with neon vibrance and drug-fuelled hallucinations.
Movie producer Gail’s claim that he is well-suited to the task of finding Tom due to the natural ability of stunt doubles to go unnoticed is partially correct, but it additionally becomes apparent that only a daredevil like Colt could handle the brawls, chases, and feats of extraordinary physical prowess that the job entails. Hanging from the back of a pickup truck, he surfs on a slab of metal across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and later escapes mobsters by faking his own death in a boat explosion. The narrative moves briskly, though Leitch is wise to hold back his editing in longer takes that let his hand-to-hand combat take centre stage. It is especially worth savouring every second when it comes to the record-breaking eight-and-a-half cannon rolls that stuntman Logan Holladay performs in a crashing car, appreciating the incredible level of coordination that went into such a complex manoeuvre.
Though it occasionally seems as if Leitch is simply searching for any excuse to escalate a scene into an extravagant set piece, The Fall Guy at least acknowledges its own extraordinary artifice. Meta-movie references are abundant here, with Metalstorm’s thinly veiled Dune parody mimicking Hans Zimmer’s score with hilarious accuracy, as well as a Cowboys & Aliens allegory barely concealing the subtext of Colt and Jody’s embarrassingly public post-breakup chat.
Still, oftentimes The Fall Guy seems less interested in satirising Hollywood movie conventions and more in revelling in them, leading to a climactic confrontation that plays out with disappointingly little tension. By exalting escapist entertainment as cinema’s most noble purpose, Leitch misses an opportunity to push formal boundaries in the same way his old collaborator Chad Stahelski has with the John Wick series. This is not to say that the project lacks passion though – The Fall Guy is clearly a labour of love for Leitch, shining a light on an underappreciated industry profession that he worked in for many years before sitting in the director’s chair. If movies are manufactured illusions, then stunt doubles like Colt personify the reality that must be hidden, only to be acknowledged and honoured inside cinema’s artificial worlds with a wry tinge of self-awareness.
When aspiring tennis player Tashi first meets doubles partners Art and Patrick at the US Open, she lays out the metaphor at the centre of Challengers quite plainly. “Tennis is a relationship,” she romantically opines, binding opponents in perfect harmony. As long as they are locked in this combative back-and-forth, they see into each other’s minds in a way that no one else could possibly imagine, anticipating and performing manoeuvres with an impassioned, instinctive efficiency.
The pivotal Challenger match woven through Luca Guadagnino’s narrative is clearly the purest distillation of this ethos, telling a story of friends-turned-rivals that only those who bore witness to their journey might comprehend. Art and Patrick’s end goal here transcends merely winning the game – that would be far too simplistic a motive for men with as complex a shared history as theirs. In reality, there is another player here who has taken her place on the sidelines. Tashi may not have played professionally since her career-ending knee injury, but her impact on this match is just as impactful as Art and Patrick’s, becoming the third person in a love triangle that has spent thirteen years fluctuating between cold resentment and fervent desire.
“Tennis is a relationship” becomes the central metaphor of Challengers, and Guadagnino goes out of his way to infuse it in every level of his back-and-forth narrative structure, camerawork, and editing.
With his laurels resting on the success of Call Me by Your Name, Guadagnino is no stranger to exploring queer romance, and so it should be no surprise that the polyamorous, homoerotic relationship of Challengers remains so compelling throughout its lengthy runtime. From the moment Art and Patrick lay eyes on Tashi at the US Open as naïve 18-year-olds, they are instantly entranced by her vibrant passion and charm, locking their eyes on her side of the court while everyone else’s heads follow the ball. Later that evening, they are astonished to discover that she has accepted their invitation to their hotel room, and even more surprised when their truncated threesome brings their latent bisexuality to light. Whoever wins the junior singles final the next day will have her number, she promises in the aftermath, incidentally driving the first of many wedges between them. Patrick thus claims his prize and begins dating Tashi shortly after, though it is ultimately Art who marries and takes her on as his coach.
Between this fateful meeting in 2006 and their reunion at the Challenger event in 2019, Guadagnino energetically hops between timelines with incredible deftness, intercutting the years of their youth, the week leading up to their final game, and the climactic showdown itself. As a result, this rich formal structure uncovers hidden signifiers and motivations in Art and Patrick’s decisive match, from a subtle shift in the way Patrick serves the ball to his purposeful double faulting. The editing remains dynamic in the transitions too, gliding across eras through match cuts that seamlessly maintain the narrative’s brisk pacing, and elsewhere shifting between contrasting scenes that bear hidden connections. This is especially evident when Art and Patrick reunite in a steamy sauna before their Challenger game, where Guadagnino breaks up their oddly intimate argument with Tashi and Patrick’s brief liaison eight years earlier. In the years since, Patrick has maintained his fiery passion despite a meagre career while Art has burnt out on professional success, yet both still share a common belief in Tashi as the key to unlocking their true potential.
Old lovers collide through pure accident in flashback, bouncing Josh O’Connors reflection off the window as their paths meet.
As for where Tashi sits relative to this broken brotherhood, Guadagnino’s opening scene paints a perfect picture, symmetrically aligning her with the net as the camera briskly dollies across the court to her position in the dead centre of the crowd. Challengers is not an extraordinarily beautiful film, but in moments like these he works in vivacious flourishes of style to vibrantly match the temperamental dynamic between Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor, as well as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score of propulsive synths. During a pivotal argument between Tashi and Patrick, Guadagnino volleys his camera between both sides as if watching a game of tennis, and later an even greater breakdown unfolds in the middle of a storm furiously whipping leaves of loose paper around them.
Inventive camerawork offers fresh, invigorating perspectives at tennis matches, sinking the camera beneath the ground in extreme low angles and lifting it up into overhead shots.
Ultimately though, Guadagnino reserves his most invigorating visuals for the court, where Art, Patrick, and Tashi release their frustration through raw, physical power and skill. Between games, the camera will often patiently survey the field through panning and tracking shots, while during rallies we flinch as Guadagnino lets the ball fly right past the lens. By the time the match interlaced throughout Challengers reaches its final sets, he similarly lets it build to a cinematic apex, making for one of the most thrilling games of tennis put to film. Close-ups keenly observe sweat pour off faces and extreme low angles dramatically peer up from beneath the ground itself, but it is the extreme slow-motion photography which most triumphantly imbues this sequence with stylish tension, apprehensively drawing out split-second decisions and reactions. As this tightly edited sequence approaches its climax, Guadagnino uses Tashi as the division in a split screen and even attaches us to the disorientated point-of-view of the ball, throwing us onto the court like another participant in this match.
Tennis may be a relationship according to Tashi, though by capturing both aspects of these characters’ lives with the same primal passion, Guadagnino pushes this metaphor even further – tennis is sex, revelling in the exhilarating union of synchronised bodies and building to an explosive finish. When it comes to matters of carnal expression, who wins and loses is entirely inconsequential, with such concerns only leading to discontentment. For what is otherwise a relatively inexplicit film, Challengers intersects lust, love, and loathing with electrifying sensuality, fulfilling a mutual desire for intimate connection through relentless, heated competition.
Endlessly creative shot choices as Guadagnino ramps up the chaotic tension in the final scene, attaching his camera to the ball’s point-of-view as it ricochets across the court.Sweat drips onto the camera in slow-motion – visceral, carnal imagery.
If award-winning war photographer Lee and her team of journalists are to accurately capture images of Civil War’s dystopian conflict, then it is necessary for them to first detach emotionally from their work. Their job isn’t to intervene, Lee stresses, but merely to chronicle reality so that other people can ask the hard-hitting questions instead.
Frequently when these reporters snap photos on the frontlines, Alex Garland thus cuts away to black-and-white still shots of their subjects, briefly muting the sound design to remove us from the fervour of the moment. At times it is a relief to breathe just for a few seconds, even if we are still being forced to gaze upon brutal executions and massacres. It is exactly in that silence though that a new, unexpected horror comes to light – one which has taken root in supposedly impartial outsiders who try to deny the personal impact of such visceral psychological trauma. Lee’s hardened mental barriers aren’t indestructible, though equally her sensitive protégé Jessie can only take so much of a beating before she sets up similar defences, as Garland sets both on inverse paths towards a self-destructive conflict of human instincts.
Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny lead the film along a pair of inverse character paths, converging at the point of psychological self-destruction.These cutaways to still, black-and-white photos are a superb formal choice with a devastating pay-off, desensitising us to the carnage.Each stop along the odyssey brings its own threats and twists, revealing the sadistic penchant for violence within ordinary Americans.
Even more than Annihilation’s surreal venture into the unknown, Civil War marks Garland’s largest, most ambitious project yet, setting out an odyssey across a future America that has been violently split into loyalist and secessionist states. The world building is remarkable here, covering an enormous scope from the ferocious riots in New York City to the military siege of Washington DC itself, and positioning a tyrannical, three-term President at the centre who sanctions the murder of journalists. Seemingly untouched towns trying to live in blissful ignorance and gas station attendants torturing dissidents in their garage continue to develop this divided America at a ground level too, revealing the lives of civilians desperate to maintain some semblance of normality, and those viciously buying into the carnage.
Nick Offerman’s three-term is only in the film’s opening and closing scenes, but his impact is felt strongly across a divided America.There is a huge scope to Garland’s staging and narrative, set up in establishing shots covering military units, camps, and helicopters – clearly one of his biggest budgets yet.
At the same time though, the history and politics of this civilisation is not Garland’s primary focus. Much to the chagrin of audiences hoping for a hard partisan stance, Civil War purposefully neglects the granular details which might have made pigeonholed this film into a shallow take on left-right ideologies, and in doing so saves us from overly didactic monologues stopping the narrative in its tracks.
The unlikely alliance of California and Texas as the Western Forces only further distances Garland’s war from the United States as it exists today, though not so much that we are totally alienated from his characters. This team of photojournalists may have a better contextual understanding than us, but this information is irrelevant in hostile environments where survival is the only meaningful objective – besides their endeavours to record such scenarios in digital snapshots. Even more protective than their Kevlar vests identifying them as press are the cameras which separate them from reality, imbuing Garland’s disorientating cinematography with a cutting self-awareness. The shallow focus close-ups visually isolate his characters when their PTSD kicks in, though even more unusual are the chromatic aberrations and smeared lens effects reminding us of the prism we are viewing this world through, purposefully distorting our perception to save us from the maddening truth.
Shallow focus close-ups shift us outside the immediate reality, and into Lee’s detached mind.The chromatic aberrations around the edges of the frame are another nice formal choice from Garland, filtering PTSD through a prism.
Garland continues to reveal an uncanny beauty in scenes of Lee’s team driving through blazing forest fires while sparks fall around them in slow-motion, but when he does let the horrors of Civil War unfold in a full view, it is easy to see why such filters are so necessary. The bloodshed is often visceral and downright shocking, grotesquely revealed in one particularly disturbing overhead shot of Jessie crawling out from a mass grave of white, bloodied corpses, and marking each episode in this cross-country journey with its own unique threat. Apocalypse Now is evidently a key influence here, as Garland lets its carnivalesque chaos emerge in the depressing sight of a derelict Christmas fair hosting a shootout between enemy snipers to the depressing sound of ‘Jingle Bells.’ Unsure of which side is which, Lee questions the nearest combatants, and the response she receives is eerily evocative of the insanity at Do Lung Bridge.
“No one’s giving us orders man. Someone’s trying to kill us. We’re trying to kill them.”
Lens flares and slow-motion as the crew drive through a forest fire – an unearthly beauty tainted by the traumatic stench of death.
Whatever deeply held convictions instigated this war have officially lost all meaning to those merely fighting to stay alive, and perhaps the same could even be said for those soldiers simply seeking excuses to indulge their most sadistic desires, represented in Jesse Plemons’ unnerving ultranationalist. As strong as Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny are in the two lead roles, he very nearly steals the entire film as the militant in red-tinted sunglasses who captures their entire crew at gunpoint, suspensefully toying with them in his deadpan voice. If Robert Duvall’s Colonel Kilgore was the standout minor character in Apocalypse Now, then Plemons is the memorable equivalent in Civil War, playing a character who rests his entire life’s purpose upon the barbaric conquest of dehumanised enemies.
Jesse Plemons may very well steal the film with his deadpan sadism, playing easily the most terrifying character of the film.
Lee may claim to be desensitised, even suggesting that she would capture the death of her colleagues on camera if she found herself in such a situation, but she at the very least retains a humanity which so many others have clearly lost. By the time she arrives in Washington DC, Dunst has very much earned the major character shift that sees her break under pressure, yet still find the capacity for a rejuvenated selflessness. Not only this, but the cutaways to her team’s photographs throughout Civil War intersect her story arc here with formal aplomb, playing out a crucial turning point in an otherwise bombastic final set piece through a montage of silent, black-and-white stills. Remote objectivity is an impossible standard for any human to uphold in the face of severe trauma, yet after all we have witnessed in Garland’s gruelling wartime odyssey, the prospect of cynically detaching through media’s distancing filter regrettably looks a whole lot more appealing than the alternative.
Throughout the first two acts of Monkey Man, the only manifestations of the Kid’s childhood trauma come through splintered flashbacks, aggressively piercing the mental barrier he has placed between the past and present. They are just as disorientating as they are potent, triggering intense feelings of rage and grief at the sight of a familiar ring, or otherwise overcoming him with peace as he recalls the stories of Hindu gods his mother once read. Dev Patel’s handheld camerawork leans heavily into close-ups in these interludes, hazily singling out key details that have ingrained themselves in the Kid’s psyche, and yet which he must keep some emotional distance from if he is to exact clean vengeance against those responsible for his physical and psychological scars.
The fine control that Patel exerts over the non-linear structure of Monkey Man is an impressive feat for any first-time filmmaker, though the time he has spent acting under great directors such as Danny Boyle and David Lowery has no doubted imparted valuable lessons. Repeated images of corrupt police chief Rana Singh silhouetted against a burning village irrevocably binds the Kid to his fearsome nemesis, just as the recurring image of Hanuman the Monkey God is linked to the Kid himself, setting him on a spiritual journey from bloodthirsty retribution towards cathartic enlightenment.
Fragments of the past aggressively pierce the Kid’s psyche, binding him to feelings of fear, anger, and grief through sheer formal repetition.Flashbacks often play out in extreme close-ups, offering both intimacy and a hazy disorientation.
The gorilla mask that the Kid wears as an underground fighter in the Tiger’s Temple may be the clearest representation of this, though when he opens a rift in his chest during a hallucinatory, spiritual awakening, Patel even more specifically evokes the iconography of Hanuman revealing his heartfelt devotion to gods Rama and Sita. Patel is wise to choose this moment as the reveal of the Kid’s full backstory, transcending mere exposition by marking it as a crucial turning point in his arc, and thus allowing him to stare his trauma in its face rather than let its intrusive fragments domineer him. All those shards of stray memories thus congeal into a pitiful portrait of corruption in modern-day India, recognising the Kid as a nameless avenger of not just his own family, but an entire caste of society that has been crushed by political oppressors.
Incredibly creative use of Hanuman the Monkey God as a symbol of the Kid’s journey, calling upon the imagery of him tearing open his chest.For what is essentially a Hollywood action film, Patel’s work is extraordinarily spiritual, and in deep conversation with Hinduism’s core tenets.
The towering brothel that the Kid infiltrates to reach Rana becomes a magnificent metaphor for this ascension too, with each floor signifying distinct levels in a rigidly segmented social hierarchy, and respectively bringing our hero closer to shattering the fascistic branch of Hindu nationalism his archenemy serves. This movement is not to be confused with Hinduism as a religion, Patel is careful to illustrate, especially when the Kid aligns himself with a deeply spiritual community of Hijra – a third gender originating in India thousands of years ago, encompassing individuals who may be transgender, intersex, or eunuchs. Hinduism is an intricate belief system interlocked with an equally complex political landscape, and so it is a testament to Patel’s visual storytelling that both are weaved with such nuance into Monkey Man’s vibrantly textured setting, offering tangible stakes to the Kid’s brutal conquest of evil.
Endless creativity in the action set pieces much like John Wick, using a leaky aquarium as an obstacle that both combatants must contend with in a bathroom fight.The camera often rotates in overhead shots, taking a gods-eye view of the Kid’s retribution and enlightenment.
Of course, a great deal of this also comes down to the sheer creativity and practicality of the visuals, destabilising the Kid’s world with overhead shots, canted angles, and slow-motion sequences. The settings are often as dynamically engaged with the action as the actors themselves, imposing obstacles such as a large aquarium slowly flooding a bathroom, and offering an array of improvised weapons in a kitchen where stoves, microwaves, and knives are wielded with gruesome resourcefulness. While Patel keeps up an expeditious pace in his editing throughout Monkey Man, he also knows when to let his camera hold on longer takes and let his hand-to-hand fight choreography shine through, made all the more impressive by his dedication to performing his own stunts.
The Tiger’s Temple makes for a magnificent visual set piece, filtering a dirty golden light through the thick, humid air and often playing out the action in slow-motion.The strip club inside the tower is defined by its soft purple tones, stylistically elevated above the lower-class levels below.Emergency lights flood the elevator with red, heralding a climactic finale.
Patel’s direction continues to shine in his lighting’s vivid distinction of each location too, separating the humid, yellow atmosphere of the Tiger’s Temple from the dim purple ambience of a high-end strip club, and eventually even drenching the Kid in crimson as the tower elevator takes him to the end of his journey. There at the top, Diwali fireworks and an earthy red painting of Hanuman reigning over a battlefield become auspicious backdrops to his final confrontation, effectively rendering the Kid as a modern avatar of the Monkey God meeting his destiny. It is a rare thing to witness a first-time director meld such handsomely stylised visuals with mystical symbolism, yet by its marvellous conclusion Monkey Man has thoroughly proven Patel to be just as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it, crafting a Hindu allegory that envisions the righteous delivery of divine, cosmic justice upon India’s corrupt political landscape.
Hanuman makes one last appearance in the final scene, bringing the Kid’s journey full circle back to the Hindu myths that once inspired him.
From the bottom of a chasm residing on the outskirts of Rose Glass’ rustic Southern town, a rotten stench is bleeding out. Dark secrets have been decaying down there for years, eating away at those who either willingly or reluctantly shroud them in silence, as well as those who tragically fall into their orbit. For vagrant body builder Jackie, fate seems especially intent on pulling her into these shady circles, both through her burgeoning relationship with local gym manager Lou as well as the casual job she incidentally picks up at the shooting range owned by her father, Lou Sr. As she pursues physical perfection in anticipation of an upcoming bodybuilding contest, Lou is right by her side supplying performance-enhancing steroids, unknowingly feeding an addiction that soon uncontrollably careens into a seedy underworld of treachery and murder.
Much like Glass’ debut, Love Lies Bleeding does not shy away from the eerie dread and murky morality of its female characters, though this erotic thriller sprawls much further out than Saint Maud’s introspective character study. Gone are the formal notes of Roman Polanski and Paul Schrader, here replaced with the rural noir influence of the Coen Brothers as bodies stack up in the sordid backwaters of America, and amateurs clumsily try to cover up their tracks. Gyms and streets alike are dimly lit with a grimy green ambience, suffusing this 80s landscape of spandex, baggy shirts, and shaggy hairstyles with an air of suburban decrepitude. There are few options in life for queer locals like Lou who dwell far outside the mainstream, but with a violent, paternalistic chauvinism rearing its ugly head, even those who seek the stability of traditional marriage are destined to be severely disappointed.
Glass’ dingy lighting contributes enormously to this decrepit setting, calling back to Coen Brothers films like Blood Simple with the rural noir aesthetic.The chasm is an eerie metaphor for dark secrets lying just outside town, as its use passes from the hands of one generation to the next.
Sporting a greasy mullet and gaunt cheekbones, Kristen Stewart’s brooding screen persona is an ideal match for Glass’ shabby town, taking on its muted bleakness even as she fights its corruptive influence. Amusingly enough, this internal battle is frequently distilled down to her ironic habit of smoking while she actively listens to anti-smoking audiobooks, revealing a weakness for addiction that she will inevitably pass on to her new girlfriend. Very gradually, we witness Lou’s steroids taking fearsome effect on Jackie, eroding her impulse control and mounting a rage in her that can only be contained for so long.
Two powerful leading female performances from Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien, bearing the physical and mental strain of the crimes they have been caught up in.
On a physical level, Jackie’s metamorphosis is rendered as visceral body horror akin to Requiem for a Dream, acutely observing needles pierce bare skin and muscles ripple, bulge, and stretch in grotesque formal cutaways. Given Glass’ team-up with Darren Aronofsky’s regular composer Clint Mansell, it is a fitting creative choice too, as the synth-heavy score pounds and reverberates throughout the film with ominous trepidation of what may come from Jackie’s monstrous transformation. From there, Glass oversees a descent into drug-fuelled hallucinations that only aggravate her insecurities, yet also push her to inhuman limits.
O’Brien’s ripped physique is astounding, especially in those body horror cutaways that see her muscles bulge and morph beneath her skin.
As for Lou, there is no denying the creature she has accidentally created, especially since it has partially arisen from the demons she has been fighting for years. Red-drenched dreams of her past haunt her in menacing cutaways, surfacing memories of Lou Sr’s illegal schemes that she was once shamefully complicit in. Even outside these visions, Glass continues to rupture the green and yellow ambience of this town with hints of crimson lighting, in one scene harshly bouncing it off Lou Sr’s face from a nearby vending machine and snapping Lou’s nightmare into vivid reality. Although both father and daughter are mirrors of each other in this battle of wits and violence, it is clear to see who is purely driven by self-preservation, and who is fighting for love. While Lou Sr’s crimes have been ambiguously responsible for the unexplained disappearance of his wife, Lou is determined to keep Jackie from slipping away, and instead actively endeavours to pull her back from the brink of destruction.
Nightmares drenched in red, visualising Lou’s PTSD with an unsettling aggression.Glass’ overhead shots bring a sense of eerie surveillance to her lonely rural town, tracing the movements of cars through dark streets.
True to her Coen Brothers influence, the dark humour which underlies Glass’ chaotic sequence of events colours in the setting with a wry cynicism, seeing fellow lesbian and comic relief Daisy threaten to derail Lou’s plans. Beneath her naïve optimism is a childish penchant for manipulation, seeking little more than her own self-satisfaction while remaining wilfully ignorant to the danger quietly gathering around her.
When Love Lies Bleeding approaches its climactic ending, Glass finally ratchets the absurdity up one last time to the point of inhuman surrealism, formally uniting Jackie’s physical and emotional transformation through a colossal symbol of feminine power. Much like the last scene of Saint Maud, this daring resolution fully departs from the material world and lifts us into the distorted psyche of Glass’ characters, albeit through freakish imagery that is far more likely to provoke laughs of disbelief than chills. The brief epilogue which follows doesn’t quite maintain the same brilliance, yet still can’t take entirely away from the grand culmination of Love Lies Bleeding’s collision of narrative arcs. Only through selfless acts of faith and sacrifice can Lou and Jackie uncover hidden reserves of strength that have laid dormant through years of loneliness, nourishing an unconventional love that seeks to rise above the miserable, moral degradation of a society that never truly cared for them.
Love Lies Bleeding is currently available to rent or buy on Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon, and Google Play.
It isn’t that Japanese toilet cleaner Hiriyama is discontent with his janitorial duties in Perfect Days, nor that his lowly status at the bottom of Tokyo’s working class is eroding his spirit. If anything, his methodical repetition of the same procedures from day-to-day is a soothing meditation, finding fulfilment in the conscientious act itself rather than the end goal. It is fortunate too that this motivation is so self-sustaining, given that these toilets are almost immediately soiled by the public the moment they are cleaned. There is little external gratification to be found in this line of work, and thus Hiriyama’s Zen-like mindset breeds an appreciation for its small, unassuming details, from his car playlist of classic rock to the trees he photographs in his lunch break.
Still, there is something missing here, gradually revealing itself as time stretches on without him speaking a single word. Hiriyama may be the loneliest man in Tokyo, only ever interacting with his capricious younger colleague who talks enough for them both, and the regulars at the public bath and restaurant that he visits at the end of each workday. He is a man comfortably bound by tradition, yet mildly perturbed by those unpredictable disruptions which throw off his perfectly balanced schedule. At least by minimising the influence of external factors, he can maintain that peaceful equilibrium in his life, even if it means never truly understanding the happiness that comes through sharing it with others.
Formal rigour in the construction of Hiriyama’s routine – spraying his pot plants each morning, photographing trees on lunch breaks, visiting the bathhouse after work, reading before bed – each detail revealing a bit more about his intricate character.
It has been some time since Wim Wenders has directed a film that has emerged from Cannes Film Festival with such high acclaim, and while Perfect Days does not quite reach the cinematic heights of his work in the 80s, it is compellingly consistent with his pensive elevations of mundanity. Where Wings of Desire flitted between stream-of-consciousness voiceovers from the minds of ordinary people though, Perfect Days denies us any verbal entry into Hiriyama’s inner world, leaving us only to gage his character through Kōji Yakusho’s largely silent performance and Wenders’ rigorous narrative structure.
Hiriyama dwells at the bottom of society in a rundown apartment block, and wears a uniform emblazoned with the company title ‘The Tokyo Toilet,’ though he does not find humiliation or degradation in his status. This lifestyle suits him perfectly.
It is especially in the latter that this minimalist meditation attains impressive formal rigour, thoroughly setting up Hiriyama’s routine on the first day that we spend with him, and then repeating it with minor variations. By the time the second day arrives, we can virtually predict each beat with reliable accuracy – the way he folds up his floor mattress, his spraying of his pot plants each morning, and even his daily purchase of coffee from the same vending machine outside his rundown flat. The restrooms that he visits daily become his domains, each standing out in ordinary parks as architectural marvels, such as one brutalist structure made up of harsh angles and another with colourfully transparent walls that turn opaque when locked. Though Hiriyama can see straight through when it is unoccupied, he nevertheless knocks on its doors before entering, if for no other reason than to carry out his habitual duty.
Wenders clearly relished location scouting, picking out some of the most architecturally unique public toilets in Tokyo.
Over time, the patterns which emerge in these recurring actions, location, and shots imbue Perfect Days with a formal precision evoking Yasujirō Ozu’s sensitive domestic dramas. Unfortunately, Ozu’s dedication to carefully arranging the frame does not quite carry through in the same way here – an unusual oversight for Wenders whose previous films have featured the sort of austere photography that would have strengthened Perfect Days’ exacting focus. Perhaps the greatest flashes of style here arrive in the hazy, greyscale dreams which structurally divide one day from the next, weaving in abstract visions of Hiriyama’s waking life through a series of long dissolves. Trees, shadows, wheels, and pedestrians call upon recent memories with gentle repose, while very occasionally we catch glimpses of familiar faces that have taken root deep in his subconscious.
Wenders continues to weave his fantastic form through the hazy, greyscale dreams that visit Hiriyama each night, dividing one day from the next. These are surreal, visual breaks from the naturalism of the piece, peering deeper into his mind.
Quite prominent among these illusory nighttime visitors is Hiryama’s niece Niko, who unexpectedly turns up at his apartment building one evening to stay with him. Whatever trouble has been unfolding at home is none of his business, especially given the clearly estranged relationship he has with his upper-middle class sister, Keiko. Hiriyama desperately tries to maintain a semblance of routine through her passive disruptions, yet her insistence on joining him at work forces him to share his meditation with someone else for the first time, and very gradually we witness a wondrous evolution take place in this relationship. Not only does Hiriyama speak, but through this connection he even relishes his usual habits even more – photographing the trees on his old film camera while Niko does so own her phone for instance, and riding bikes on the weekend through the streets of Tokyo.
Niko comes as an unexpected but necessary saving grace, revealing the joy that can be found in sharing quiet meditations with others.
When the time comes for Keiko to take her back home, Hiriyama is quietly distraught. Perhaps not only due to the tender relationship that has been snatched from him, but Keiko’s visit has also instigated a confrontation with his own selfish habit of isolating himself from others. From this perspective, Hiriyama’s meditative lifestyle may be little more than an escape from the pressures of a complicated world, which when faced head-on send him falling back on unhealthy habits.
Still, journeying outside one’s comfort zone is an adventure that inevitably entails stumbles and bounding leaps, both equally disturbing the precarious routine that Hiriyama has carefully cultivated. With the decision to boldly initiate social contact comes a spiritual rejuvenation that work alone cannot fulfil, no matter how relaxing its gentle rhythms and cadences may be. That Wenders weaves these so smoothly into the rigorous narrative structure of Perfect Days is not only a testament to his own formal attentiveness, but also consolidates communality and introspection with prudent devotion, inviting audiences into a deep reverie of collective contemplation.
The classic tale of knights and beasts that opens Nimona is like many we have heard before, telling of the legendary heroine Gloreth who vanquished a Great Black Monster and built a fortified wall to protect the kingdom after her death. The series of illustrated tapestries depicting this conflict in the prologue effectively solidify it as historical fact within this fantasy world, offering the city a sense of identity, culture, and purpose, and further justifying the traditions that have persevered for one thousand years. As such, the futuristic, medieval kingdom where Nimona’s main storyline picks up is built on a foundation of distant mythology, and it is here where directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane playfully subvert the genre to consider the nature of prejudices unquestioningly passed from one generation to the next.
While Pixar has been struggling to deliver a certified hit ever since its success with Soul in 2020, other animation studios such as Sony Pictures and even Nickelodeon Movies have swept in with a partial return to 2D stylisations, though this alone has not compensated for the deficit in cinematic fables targeted at children. Nimona may be the closest any recent film has gotten to recapturing the magic of 2000s-era Pixar storytelling, revitalising familiar archetypes through the fresh, imaginative setting of a medieval kingdom located in the distant future. The clean geometric shapes drawn through sets and character designs effectively mimic the prologue’s tapestry style art, but are also imbued with a neo-futurist liveliness that thrusts the aesthetic forward in time, dynamically reflecting the anachronistic paradox of the clashing eras.
Of course, much of this energy comes down to the character of Nimona herself, a mysterious shapeshifter who has sought out fugitive Sir Ballister Boldheart. Mischievous, impulsive, and ready to pick a fight with anyone upholding the status quo, she believes she has found an ally in the knight framed for the murder of Queen Valerin, and quickly dubs herself his villainous sidekick. Her backstory is kept deliberately ambiguous, though Bruno and Quane relish animating pieces of it upon the tiled walls of a subway station, creatively developing their tapestry-style illustrations into a more modern, urban art.
Like Nimona, Ballister has previously been ostracised for his commoner background, despite proving his capability in serving the kingdom and joining the Institute for Elite Knights. Rather than lashing out in bitter revenge though, he is simply determined to uncover the identity of the Queen’s true killer and prove his innocence – even if Nimona’s troublemaking tactics tend to have the opposite effect. Rather than trying to counteract society’s negative, fear-driven opinions of her, she has chosen to become the terrifying monster they believe her to be, and sow chaos wherever she goes.
Given Ballister’s relationship with fellow knight Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, the queer subtext of Nimona only barely lingers beneath the surface, criticising the prejudice directed towards those who live outside heteronormative conventions. The myths passed down from ancestors to their descendants as cautionary tales are the same as those which reinforce outdated beliefs, and so only when their origins are challenged can society identify where its true corruption may lie.
Many of the twists in Nimona can be spotted from a mile off, and yet in true Pixar fashion they nevertheless go right for the heartstrings and tug on them with gentle sorrow, eventually uniting its well-earned emotional climax with apocalyptic medieval action. Despite sharing common ground as outsiders, Ballister and Nimona possess entirely different attitudes around dealing with their alienation, and it is in the equal, compassionate understanding of both that this film develops a surprising complexity. By undermining the very basis of archaic narrative traditions and demolishing the walls they build around our worldview, Nimona recognises the freedom that lies in open-minded acceptance, and reshapes them into a historic allegory for a new age.
