Country:
United Kingdom
Recognizable Faces:
Tom Hardy
Directed by:
Nicolas Winding Refn
For a very obscure reason, Tom Hardy is in every movie I watched recently. Going into Bronson from a tip by my friend Mustafa, I had no idea I was going to watch a biopic. Charles Bronson (he really changed his name to Charles Bronson for bareknuckle boxing purpose) is alive and well (and 57 years old) somewhere in a British prison. Here's the proof. The guy has been transfered 120 times and spent 30 years in solitary confinement over a 34 years sentence. Intriguing character to say the least....
It's hard to establish a timeline for Bronson. The scenes are tied together by this stage in Charlie Bronson's mind, where he escapes to his imaginary audience. He distracts them with demented cabaret-like numbers. These scenes come back with the same regularity than the solitary confinement streaks in prison. So what you're seeing on screen are the greatest hits of Charlie Bronson life, seen through his eyes. No narration, no space-time related constraint, just pure madness and joie-de-vivre.
Born Michael Peterson, Bronson got a seven years jail sentence at 22 years old for robbing a post office for peanuts. Somehow, prison was a revelation for him and he took on himself to rise to fame as "Britain's most violent prisoner". A reputation he quickly got and still holds to as of today. He fights with inmates, screws, takes hostages and all of that, in a healthy and cathartic fashion. He gets out of jail to start a bareknuckle boxing career, but he quickly gets back inside, where he still is today, terrorizing the staff with a smile. There's nothing to understand from the life of Charlie Bronson. Maybe that he's a unique and mesmerizing character, but that's all.
Nick Refn has an obvious influence from Stanley Kubrick. Bronson looks like a modern days Clockwork Orange in its overflowing, colorful violence, but also in the scene structure. Long travelling shots(a Kubrick trademark) slow the movie down, but make for nice surprises. A character walks down a corridor and then, out of nowhere, that anonymous character gets cracked in the face by Bronson and a riot ensues.
What I enjoyed the most from Nick Refn's work was his actor direction. The funny farm scenes where Bronson is drugged. The travelling shots, the wide angles and the bleak photography capture the alien feeling of the place. That (I think) is the point Refn was trying to make, he was trying to express the alien effect of Bronson on wherever he went (120 places). Refn, as an "art" director, concentrated on creating a feeling rather than a story and it's rather well done.
I couldn't skip on Tom Hardy's performance. He has taken on the world in the last years (RockNRolla, Bronson, Inception). He was given a character so over-the-top in a movie with such a low narrative approach, but he rose up to the challenge. He underwent a tremendous physical and mental transformation. He dictates the rhythm of the scenes in a way not that far from what Charlie Chaplin did back in the early days of cinema.
Overall, Bronson is an enigmatic movie. A violent arthouse that draws its inspiration from Kubrick, with the high ambitions of getting inside the head of a strange and dangerous man. It's not for ever viewer, but if you're looking for something to challenge your senses and break free from traditional narrative, this might be what you're looking for. I would've loved to have a faster paced movie in the tradition of the Japanese directors like Tsukamoto. In a sense, it would have suited a chaotic character like Charlie Bronson better. The elegance of Nick Refn is somewhat distracting and his treatment of the subject objectionable (the movie ended up being the best PR move for Charlie Bronson), but it's something unique that draws the art from chaos and for that, it won't waste your time.
Whoo...that was hard, wasn't it?
SCORE: 82%
