John Ford’s sentimental mythologising cannot be criticised for a lack of rousing sincerity in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, commemorating the dutiful perseverance of one Old West cavalry troop seeking peaceful resolution to a historic conflict, and basking in the vibrant majesty of the rugged American wilderness.
The struggle to survive in the Siberian wilderness of Letter Never Sent is as psychological as it is physical, swallowing four diamond-hunting adventurers up in its primordial chaos, and forcing us through Mikhail Kalatozov’s daunting camerawork to bow down before its ravaging elemental forces.
Patience, discernment, and cunning are virtues embodied in veteran Terry’s violent pursuit of justice in Rebel Ridge, and as he fights to save his imprisoned cousin and expose a corrupt police force, so too are they superbly carried through in Jeremy Saulnier’s tense, brooding storytelling.
The question of what exactly constitutes a fraud is meticulously woven throughout Steven Zaillian’s monochrome study of a New York con artist in Ripley, witnessing his unscrupulous attempts to ascend the social ladder by way of identity theft and murder, even as his own amoral corruption threatens to sink him into a dark, suffocating abyss.
The violent sounds of battle may be confronting to hear, but in Edward Berger’s take on All Quiet on the Western Front, the true tragedy of war emerges in the still, lifeless aftermath where grief is born, painting out World War I’s carnage in scenes of harrowing beauty, and centring a group of traumatised German soldiers trying to survive the last few weeks before armistice.
Preston Sturges’ confrontation of early Hollywood “message” movies in Sullivan’s Travels is a complex balancing act of conflicting tones, playing in the realms of slapstick, irony, and meta-humour to craft a screwball comedy unlike any that has come before.
The painter’s perspective that Céline Sciamma offers us in Portrait of a Lady on Fire uses its delicate renderings of seaside cliffs and eighteenth-century French manors as the setting for a gorgeous romance between an artist and her reluctant subject, powerfully intertwining their passions with classical archetypes vividly rooted in ancient Greek mythology.
There is an invitation built into both the title and story of C’mon C’mon, beckoning us to join a radio journalist and his nine-year-old nephew on a road trip across the United States, through which Mike Mills’ beautiful greyscale cinematography and stream-of-consciousness montages paint a portrait of a relationship as sweet and unhurried as his narrative’s easy-going pace.
