Okay, this film technically came out in 2017 (which was after it spent a good three years on the shelf from its 2014 finish date), but considering it only just became available here in Australia this year, and how royally muffed-up the cinematic release schedule has been across the board all year, I’m counting this as a 2020 movie. This is actually one that I’ve been keeping an eye out for when it would drop over here, and it’s something I hinted at when I reviewed Monster Trucks. Yep, this is another film with Don Burgess attached to it as DOP that seems like a major step-down for such a legendary figure. However, as I’ll get into, this is a much better fit for him than something like Monster Trucks.
We need to get into the cast for this thing, because hot damn, has it got some great performances. Djimon Hounsou as Denver may have an introduction that makes him look like he’s starring in an MC Ride biopic, but this is easily the best performance I’ve ever seen from him. The trauma, the hope, the endless fountain of soul in his voice; for a performance that (ostensibly) the story revolves around, he more than fits the bill. Same goes for the initially-unrecognisable Renee Zellweger, whose warmth and embodiment of the good that Christian faith can potentially bring out of a person is stellar. The rest of the cast is hit-and-miss, from Greg Kinnear just kinda existing and Jon Voight as everyone’s racist grandad, but between the two of them, they hold up everything else.
As for the production values, for a film that got picked up by bloody PureFlix, this is some of the strongest cinematic craft they’ve been even remotely attached to. Burgess’ framing, right from the start with Zellweger’s Debbie and her prophetic dream about Denver, gives some nice pictorial flair to the proceedings, and when it gets to the flashbacks of Denver’s past, it can range from holistic to bloody terrifying. That effect is aided greatly by Eric A. Sears’ editing, giving a properly cerebral effect to those flashbacks.
Now, for the actual story content. This is a film distributed by PureFlix that is as much a reaffirmation of Christian faith as it is an examination of racism and homelessness. I’ll admit, I was expecting a clunker too, but it seems that writer/director Michael Carney found a solid approach to the material. It taps into a similar vein of shining a light on prejudicial hate crimes that inspired his short film debut Jew, and he shows a better understanding of racial politics than most. In a single monologue from Denver about going fishing, he and the other writers show a remarkable understanding of what white privilege really is, and in the scenes of Kinnear’s Ron Hall working at the local homeless shelter, the explanations given for the reality of that situation definitely ring true.
It even takes a step into acknowledging the negative side of Christian influence when it gets to showing the KKK’s involvement in Denver’s past, depicted with earth-shaking clarity through the image of Denver and the housemaster’s son dressed in white robes, using giant crosses to swordfight. As far as visual storytelling, that is a premium moment and it goes some way to separate the hatred that the KKK hide behind ‘Christian values’ to perpetrate, the apathy that Ron shifts away from with the help of Debbie and Denver, and the true-blue empathy that serves as the big message of this whole thing.
However, as good as this all is for me, it’s also another God’s Not Dead 3 situation where all the good intentions and even genuinely good messaging still have a distasteful undercurrent to them. In the past, I’ve shown some resistance to the label of ‘white saviour films’, as my understanding of that term has been informed by how I view films like Ace Ventura 2 or James Cameron’s Avatar as showing white people fixing the bullshit that other white people put a given native population through. 'White people clean up their own mess' films, if you will.
I can’t make that same distinction here, though; it really is a white saviour narrative, and that’s not helped by how the film ends up focusing primarily on Debbie’s cancer diagnosis by the second half. It also colours some of the film’s intentions as far as promoting empathy. There’s a scene where Debbie describes Ron trying to connect with Denver on a human level as “pretty sexy”, and as much as I personally like the idea of empathy itself being sexy… I dunno, it has the feel of that sex scene from Parasite, where the rich couple turn each other on by describing how decrepit the poor family’s living conditions are. It’s kinda creepy and makes sure that that unfortunate undercurrent sticks around.
But even with all that said (and how this is a bit of a flabby burnout that didn’t need to be two hours long), I still found myself liking this quite a bit. When it reaches for emotional impact, I definitely felt it, I liked how it showed the power of empathy for another human being, and while it doesn’t entirely stick the landing as commentary on racial divides, it showed more understanding on the topic than I was expecting. That, and some of the performances are downright fantastic.
No comments:
Post a Comment