Post by Capo on Dec 7, 2005 19:04:29 GMT
Bleeder
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
1999 Denmark
In a small Danish town, friends Leo, Lenny, Kitjo and Louis spend their nights watching films. Lenny and Kitjo work in a video store; Lenny lives with Louis’ sister, Louise; Lenny has a crush on chip shop worker Lea; Louis works as a nightclub doorman, and associates himself with thugs. When Louise tells Leo she is pregnant, Leo decides he does not want to the baby. When he witnesses Louis and his friends brutally beat up a man at the nightclub, he feels a burning rage building up in him. His anger gets the better of him, and he beats up girlfriend Louise. In return, Louis threatens Leo never to touch her again. While Lenny struggles to acquaint himself with Lea, finding it difficult to talk about anything but movies, Leo’s disillusioned anger boils over, and he repeatedly beats Louise. Louis this time, with the help of friends, punishes Leo by bounding him up and injecting HIV-infected blood into his body. Leo calls Louise, who has lost the baby. They confess their love for one another. Leo shoots Louis, then himself.
At the heart of Nicolas Refn’s Bleeder is a despair for all its characters, stemming essentially from a lack of communication. It is not an uncommon theme in Scandinavian Cinema; while Bergman’s characters were never lost for words, their monologues were often internal, or concerned with not being able to voice their thoughts with words. In recent years, Marius Holst has tackled this theme with his Øyenstikker (Dragonflies, 2001), in which the characters’ minimal conduct in discourse and other communication made for an intentionally ambiguous work, equally dubbed or discarded as a brooding thriller. Incidentally, Holst’s film shares with Refn’s film a star of recent Scandinavian Cinema, Kim Bodnia, whose introverted torment unsettles the viewer like a more restrained Paddy Considine.
Bodnia here plays Leo, the contemplative good-for-nothing whose girlfriend Louise announces she is pregnant with their first child. Bodnia spends much of the film hovering in doorways behind Louise; the audience await for him to erupt. When he finally does, it comes as a tragic mark sparked by the growing resentment of the life he himself leads. Everyone around him, it seems, is at least in part content with their lives, not least of all his best friend Lenny, who, when not serving films in the video store, is discussing them with colleague Kitjo, or asking Lea, the girl whom he fancies, out to the pictures. Come the end of the film, with Leo breaking down into tears on the phone to Louise, and the final tragedy of the climax impending, the power comes from both Bodnia’s performance and from what the viewer has gone through with his character during the film. If nobody understands one another in the film, because of their own reserve, we as third party onlookers certainly feel something in the way of empathy; even when Leo and Louis openly make up after a bitter falling out, the tension lingers even so, as if none of these characters can escape their Fate.
With that in mind, it may be argued that Refn doesn’t quite differ far enough from cinematic cliché for the work to register as remarkably original. And the idea of males being trapped on the slippery slope to climactic doom is certainly not new. But there remains in Bleeder a certain charm nevertheless, with many light moments. The opening scene has Refn project his own knowledge of cinema—and clear support of auteurism—into the character of Lenny, who, asked by a video store customer what kind of films he has, simply reels off every director imaginable. The customer, overwhelmed by such information, then proceeds to ask where the porn can be found. And Lenny’s initial encounters with Lea, strained and struggling to maintain any kind of conversation, ring all too true in their embarrassing silences.
That the film turns sour is not so much predictable than knowingly aware on Refn’s part. He owes much to the early work of Scorsese, whose characters all dreamed of better lives, but lacked the existential wit to escape them. When Lenny tries to wring a date out of Lea by seducing her with his knowledge on film, Harvey Keitel discussing his love for John Wayne in Who’s That Knocking at my Door (1967) is never too far away. The use of Bach in the opening shot is in accordance with Casino (1995), and the notion of four friends—with one seeming outcast, in Scorsese’s film Michael, here Louis—spending their nights at the cinema is clearly inspired by Mean Streets (1973). The climactic scene in which Leo shoots himself in the hand, inspired to acquire the gun by the violence around him, echoes Travis Bickle’s climactic assault to save the prostitute Iris in Taxi Driver (1976). This is not mere homage, but an exploration of violence in Film. Much like Gaspar Noé’s [url=Irréversible (2002), whose aggressive, wandering camera resembles this film, Bleeder is very much aware of its own artificiality as a filmic text. As if to render mainstream films which use violence as a way of telling their story as irresponsible, Refn confronts his audience by having Leo question his friends while they’re watching an action movie. He pulls out a gun, much to the bewilderment of the others, and discards his intimidating, worryingly threatening behaviour as “only a film,” which transfers a sort of guilt onto the audience, as we willingly watch these characters undo themselves into a world of uncontrollable violence.
The female characters pose interesting statements in the film. Refn, staying true to the conventions laid down by French film noir (Le samouraï, Le cercle rouge and Rififi all come to mind) and opened up further by Tarantino and Reservoir Dogs (1991), has the two female characters in the film as secondary figures. Both seem, however, the only characters in the film content with their lives, despite being the most oppressed. While Louise is clearly enthusiastic about her pregnancy, Lea shrugs off Lenny’s failure to show for their date and accepts another one when he returns to apologise. Lea also offers the film its most poignant moment; looking through shelves and shelves of books in a library’s basement, it shows the director’s talent goes beyond the mere depiction of brooding males surviving on the mean streets. He pulls off both with equal effectiveness.
CREDITS
Director
Nicolas Winding Refn
Producers
Henrik Danstrup
Thomas Falck
Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenplay
Nicolas Winding Refn
Director of Photography
Morten Søborg
Film Editing
Anne Østerud
Original Score
Peter Peter
Production Design
Peter De Neergaard
CAST
Kim Bodnia[/b]
Leo
Mads Mikkelsen
Lenny
Louis
Levino Jensen
Rikke Louise Andersson
Louise
Liv Corfixen
Lea
Zlatko Buric
Kitjo[/size]
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
1999 Denmark
In a small Danish town, friends Leo, Lenny, Kitjo and Louis spend their nights watching films. Lenny and Kitjo work in a video store; Lenny lives with Louis’ sister, Louise; Lenny has a crush on chip shop worker Lea; Louis works as a nightclub doorman, and associates himself with thugs. When Louise tells Leo she is pregnant, Leo decides he does not want to the baby. When he witnesses Louis and his friends brutally beat up a man at the nightclub, he feels a burning rage building up in him. His anger gets the better of him, and he beats up girlfriend Louise. In return, Louis threatens Leo never to touch her again. While Lenny struggles to acquaint himself with Lea, finding it difficult to talk about anything but movies, Leo’s disillusioned anger boils over, and he repeatedly beats Louise. Louis this time, with the help of friends, punishes Leo by bounding him up and injecting HIV-infected blood into his body. Leo calls Louise, who has lost the baby. They confess their love for one another. Leo shoots Louis, then himself.
At the heart of Nicolas Refn’s Bleeder is a despair for all its characters, stemming essentially from a lack of communication. It is not an uncommon theme in Scandinavian Cinema; while Bergman’s characters were never lost for words, their monologues were often internal, or concerned with not being able to voice their thoughts with words. In recent years, Marius Holst has tackled this theme with his Øyenstikker (Dragonflies, 2001), in which the characters’ minimal conduct in discourse and other communication made for an intentionally ambiguous work, equally dubbed or discarded as a brooding thriller. Incidentally, Holst’s film shares with Refn’s film a star of recent Scandinavian Cinema, Kim Bodnia, whose introverted torment unsettles the viewer like a more restrained Paddy Considine.
Bodnia here plays Leo, the contemplative good-for-nothing whose girlfriend Louise announces she is pregnant with their first child. Bodnia spends much of the film hovering in doorways behind Louise; the audience await for him to erupt. When he finally does, it comes as a tragic mark sparked by the growing resentment of the life he himself leads. Everyone around him, it seems, is at least in part content with their lives, not least of all his best friend Lenny, who, when not serving films in the video store, is discussing them with colleague Kitjo, or asking Lea, the girl whom he fancies, out to the pictures. Come the end of the film, with Leo breaking down into tears on the phone to Louise, and the final tragedy of the climax impending, the power comes from both Bodnia’s performance and from what the viewer has gone through with his character during the film. If nobody understands one another in the film, because of their own reserve, we as third party onlookers certainly feel something in the way of empathy; even when Leo and Louis openly make up after a bitter falling out, the tension lingers even so, as if none of these characters can escape their Fate.
With that in mind, it may be argued that Refn doesn’t quite differ far enough from cinematic cliché for the work to register as remarkably original. And the idea of males being trapped on the slippery slope to climactic doom is certainly not new. But there remains in Bleeder a certain charm nevertheless, with many light moments. The opening scene has Refn project his own knowledge of cinema—and clear support of auteurism—into the character of Lenny, who, asked by a video store customer what kind of films he has, simply reels off every director imaginable. The customer, overwhelmed by such information, then proceeds to ask where the porn can be found. And Lenny’s initial encounters with Lea, strained and struggling to maintain any kind of conversation, ring all too true in their embarrassing silences.
That the film turns sour is not so much predictable than knowingly aware on Refn’s part. He owes much to the early work of Scorsese, whose characters all dreamed of better lives, but lacked the existential wit to escape them. When Lenny tries to wring a date out of Lea by seducing her with his knowledge on film, Harvey Keitel discussing his love for John Wayne in Who’s That Knocking at my Door (1967) is never too far away. The use of Bach in the opening shot is in accordance with Casino (1995), and the notion of four friends—with one seeming outcast, in Scorsese’s film Michael, here Louis—spending their nights at the cinema is clearly inspired by Mean Streets (1973). The climactic scene in which Leo shoots himself in the hand, inspired to acquire the gun by the violence around him, echoes Travis Bickle’s climactic assault to save the prostitute Iris in Taxi Driver (1976). This is not mere homage, but an exploration of violence in Film. Much like Gaspar Noé’s [url=Irréversible (2002), whose aggressive, wandering camera resembles this film, Bleeder is very much aware of its own artificiality as a filmic text. As if to render mainstream films which use violence as a way of telling their story as irresponsible, Refn confronts his audience by having Leo question his friends while they’re watching an action movie. He pulls out a gun, much to the bewilderment of the others, and discards his intimidating, worryingly threatening behaviour as “only a film,” which transfers a sort of guilt onto the audience, as we willingly watch these characters undo themselves into a world of uncontrollable violence.
The female characters pose interesting statements in the film. Refn, staying true to the conventions laid down by French film noir (Le samouraï, Le cercle rouge and Rififi all come to mind) and opened up further by Tarantino and Reservoir Dogs (1991), has the two female characters in the film as secondary figures. Both seem, however, the only characters in the film content with their lives, despite being the most oppressed. While Louise is clearly enthusiastic about her pregnancy, Lea shrugs off Lenny’s failure to show for their date and accepts another one when he returns to apologise. Lea also offers the film its most poignant moment; looking through shelves and shelves of books in a library’s basement, it shows the director’s talent goes beyond the mere depiction of brooding males surviving on the mean streets. He pulls off both with equal effectiveness.
CREDITS
Director
Nicolas Winding Refn
Producers
Henrik Danstrup
Thomas Falck
Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenplay
Nicolas Winding Refn
Director of Photography
Morten Søborg
Film Editing
Anne Østerud
Original Score
Peter Peter
Production Design
Peter De Neergaard
CAST
Kim Bodnia[/b]
Leo
Mads Mikkelsen
Lenny
Louis
Levino Jensen
Rikke Louise Andersson
Louise
Liv Corfixen
Lea
Zlatko Buric
Kitjo[/size]