A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Monday, July 21, 2025

The Escapist (Rupert Wyatt, 2008)

Joseph Fiennes, Brian Cox, Liam Cunningham, and Seu Jorge in The Escapist

Cast: Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Joseph Fiennes, Seu Jorge, Liam Cunningham, Dominic Cooper, Steven Mackintosh. Screenplay: Rupert Wyatt, Daniel Hardy. Cinematography: Philipp Blaubach. Production design: Jim Furlong. Film editing: Joe Walker. Music: Benjamin Wallfisch. 

Prison break movies tend to fall into three types: the moral fable like A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956), the technical thriller like Escape From Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) and Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960), and the sentimental melodrama like The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994). The Escapist tries to be all three, which results in something of a muddle. Director and co-writer Rupert Wyatt intercuts the drama leading up to the escape with scenes from the escape itself, which challenges the viewer to keep track of time and place. This scrambling of the narrative serves a purpose which is revealed at the end of the film, at the risk of alienating the viewer. Fortunately, he has an ensemble of fine actors, headed by Brian Cox, who make things watchable even amid the confusion and occasional implausibility.  

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