Beware Spoilers in other 'reviews'!
Added 4/5/2009
Red Road is a brilliant, emotionally draining piece of work. It doesn't need any more kudos from me to secure its reputation. BUT FOR GOD'S SAKE avoid the petulant, brattish "Kid's Review" dated April 5th, the unpleasant little troll gives away a HUGE plot spoiler that isn't revealed until the end of the film. Hopefully, if you're reading this page you've already treated yourself to one of the best European movies in years. If not, read no more about the movie, from any source, and give in to its extraordinary dark power.
One other caveat: as another reviewer points out, the US DVD is NOT REPEAT NOT anamorphic widescreen. It's full-frame, and frustratingly crops actors out of the frame at key moments. That Andrea Arnold's movie survives this treatment is a testament to her talent. And no wonder Tartan Films has gone out of business.
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Dishonest film-making with a spuriously uplifting ending.
Added 4/5/2008
This is one of the most dishonest and manipulative movies I've seen in a long time, especially considering its Dogma associations. It is very well-made and is a remarkable achievement given its tight budget, and despite comments elsewhere, this isn't remotely boring - in fact quite gripping and engrossing.
Let's be quite clear: despite initial impressions, this film is nothing like Rear Window or The Conversation, where characters obsessively piece together snatches of seen or overheard experience. (Each of those films is serious and honest in a way that Red Road seems to aspire to be, but just isn't.) In Rear Window this process becomes analogous to the experience of watching movies - making sense of scraps of discrete but juxtaposed images. In Red Road, like Jefferies in Rear Window, the protagonist's point of view dominates, and quite often we see precisely what she sees, courtesy of surveillance cameras. Her obsessive interest in one of the faces (Clyde) she sees is bewildering and incredibly disturbing, as she places herself in increasingly precarious situations. It is repeatedly implied that the guy she is watching is a crook, or worse, a sex criminal/paedophile, and my heart was in my mouth as I wondered what on earth she was doing and feared that she was endangering herself in a really horrible way. But of course, she knows exactly who the guy is, has personal experience of him, and whilst he isn't someone I'd like to have round for tea, he clearly (once we know the full story, as Jackie does) isn't likely to sell her into slavery, eviscerate her, etc etc. In fact, Jackie is embarking on a complex revenge plot, not without its dangers and personal trauma because of how she and her family have suffered in consequence of Clyde's past behaviour, but they have little to do with the dangers the film so cleverly implies. For about 80 minutes, the audience is put through the ringer in ways which have nothing to do with the real risk Jackie is running, and the real nature of the unpleasantness of her connection with Clyde. Those 80 minutes completely falsify the truth of the potentially very interesting narrative.
After a deeply disturbing and explicit sex scene, the penny is allowed to drop (or is it a pocketful of loose change) and the story is clearly revealed as a revenge saga, which then becomes touched with the miracle of forgiveness and redemption in the last 5 minutes, accompanied by quite out of keeping saccharine music. All is revealed! And we can go home teased but cheerful that things have moved forward for Jackie and Clyde. (We have an earlier shot of Jackie looking in a shop window at an advert for a kid's party magician, and I certainly felt the magic wand hovering over the film at this point, except 'trickster' rather than 'magician' would be a more appropriate term!)
How someone deals with bereavement due to criminally dangerous driving is an interesting and challenging subject. How the urge for revenge could enable a woman to have the most intimate sex with a guy responsible for the deaths of child and husband would make for a really disturbing and difficult movie. How the desire for revenge can become transformed into a kind of understanding and forgiveness, even the degree of empathy that this film seeks to show, would make a very interesting film. But this film isn't it and its attempt to drag that in at the end is completely unconvincing and not remotely explored: in other words a mere narrative trick to tie the ends up. So as a thriller the film is dishonest, because the central character (and the film maker, of course) know so much more than we do that undermines the 'thriller element', and as a piece trying to say something about revenge and forgiveness it is glib and superficial to the point of actually being almost offensive, an offensiveness made even worse by its indie credentials really exploiting traditional manipulation.
6 out of 10 people found this helpful.
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Of Loss and Reparation
Added 2/26/2008
A very impressive first outing for director, Andrea Arnold. Other reviewers have revealed the plot and the intrigue attending Jackie's(Kate Dickie)stalking through surveillance cameras of Clyde(Tony Curran), and eventual liason with him. The film is set in the grimy margins of Glasgow, where every fluttering leaf of activity caught on camera might arouse suspicion. So what is this lonely woman's obsession with Clyde? Arnold's gift of telling is remarkable. The ultra close-up framing of the leads' faces, the agile, hand-held camera made a tour de force by Lars Von Trier, effects our complicity in her quest for resolution. We are only a step behind her own awareness, her own motives, as she literally lays herself bare, sacrifices her dignity, to absolve the trauma that has frozen her. The sexual explicitness makes us feel her dilema and sympathise with Clyde's subsequent confusion.Someone said that the best thrillers burrow inward, and by the sheer power of cinematic observation make it hard for us to look away less we miss something. 'Red Road'is such a film.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Liminality
Added 2/1/2008
There are few films, not to speak of books (such as those written by Paul West), that focus on and reveal liminal space, or the "in-between." Red Road does this magnificently. The protagonist is a woman whose job is to watch cameras that provide surveillance around the city, to prevent and report crimes--and so she is a watcher of others rather than having agency herself. And there are moving episodes here, where she follows individuals with pets--with whom they have a relationship--and when she comes across one of these individuals with his dog, he and she look into a store window and have no relationship with each other.
There are a number of scenes where Kate Dickie, as the protagonist, is on the margins--at the wedding of her friend, for example. It is only at the end of the film that one has a glimpse of this pattern of liminality changing, when she stops to greet a man with his dog who are crossing the street.
The photography is marvelous, especially the early shots of the protagonist's face. While the face is beautiful in and of itself, the camera angles and the shading are stunning.
So to end where I began.... For those of us who have resonance with liminality, for those of us who live on the margins--however described, this is a film to watch.
3 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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artful thriller
Added 1/11/2008
Jackie may not have much of a life of her own, but she has found a way to live vicariously through the lives of others. As an employee of the city of Gloscow, Scotland, her job is to monitor the security cameras that have been strategically placed throughout the city and to report any suspicious activity or possible crimes she sees to the local authorities. For the most part, she keeps a respectful distance from those she's observing, contenting herself with following the course of their lives as a generally dispassionate observer. That all changes, however, when one night, much to her horror, she spots the man, who was recently convicted in the deaths of her husband and daughter, walking freely through the streets of the city, his sentence overturned on a technicality. Jackie decides that she must now take matters into her own hands to procure for herself and for her loved ones the justice the legal system has clearly denied them.
"Red Road" is a taut, tantalizing thriller that turns into a touching human drama in its closing stages. For most of the movie, Jackie is obsessed with exacting revenge on the man who destroyed her life. She follows him around, first through the various monitors that record his every public move, then in person as she literally stalks him through the streets of the city. It is at this point that Jackie crosses over the line from passive observer to active manipulator of events. At times, her obsession seems to take on an almost erotic tone, particularly after she makes personal contact with him several times, making this yet another forbidden line Jackie threatens to cross. Yet, the movie is much more than a mere tale of erotic obsession; it is a complex study of the stages a grieving soul must go through before it can finally let go of the past, confer forgiveness when forgiveness seems least possible, and achieve the peace it so achingly longs for.
Kate Dickie is both intense and poignant as the woman trying to come to terms with her overwhelming tragedy. In an intriguing example of the media becoming the message, director Andrea Arnold keeps her camera tightly focused on the character at all times, almost as if we, too, were watching Jackie's life as though through a monitor. Tony Curran is also very effective as the man who may not be quite as evil as Jackie has convinced herself that he is.
By holding her cards close to the vest, Arnold never reveals more of the mystery than we need to know at any given time. We don't always understand exactly what is going on or why Jackie acts in the way she does, but this ambiguity only heightens our desire to see the story through to the end. And that ending, when it comes, is a beautiful and richly rewarding one, as the movie takes us to a place we hadn't expected it to at any point prior to its arrival.
Two caveats may be in order, however, one fairly minor, the other quite major. The minor one is that the heavy Scottish accents make much of the dialogue virtually incomprehensible to those of us with more Western-oriented ears. Luckily, the filmmakers have headed off the problem by kindly providing subtitles for us. The more serious warning involves a graphic sex scene later on in the film in which the action is anything but simulated. Those easily offended by such activity had best be forewarned
5 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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