Welcome to New York. You’re dead
Everyone knows it’s rude to talk during a movie, but once the credits roll, you’re bound to have an opinion that needs, nay demands, sharing. Every other week in the National Post, experts, artists and movie buffs dissect a recent release. It’s fun. It’s healthier than nachos. It’s the Popcorn Panel.
This week’s panel
Alison Broverman is the not-at-all violent editor of the Popcorn Panel.
Peter Kuling is a professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Alexander Huls is a freelance writer who has contributed to The New York Times, Toronto Life and other publications. This week’s film: A Most Violent Year
Alison J.C. Chandor’s new film is a deliberate meditation on personal honour and morality, and the way the definitions of those things can stretch under pressure. Abel (Oscar Isaac, in a terrifically pristine camel coat) is trying to grow his heating business, and trying to keep his business honest in a vicious and corrupt industry. But there’s great tension between his ideal of himself as an honest, self-made immigrant businessman, and the truth, which is that his Brooklyn moll of a wife (Jessica Chastain, who continues to perfect the strong-wife-to-husband-incrisis role) might be pulling some illegitimate strings behind the scenes. Peter His camel coat was absolutely fantastic. I had high hopes for this film after it started out with some great music and editing during the opening credits. While the performances were great across the board, I didn’t really get the link between the most violent year in New York (1982) and the evolution of Abel as a business/gangster. I think I was deliberately misled by the trailers as I expected Scorsese style gangsterism throughout the film. The only violence I actually experienced was having to watch countless scenes that Chandor dragged out way too long and repetitive scenes that did nothing to advance the plot at all. Violent struggles like these are best expressed in literature or at least movies with extensive personal narration to drive the protagonist’s inner turmoil. Alexander A Most Violent Year was a curious moviegoing experience for me. On one hand, I (mostly) enjoyed the movie, the performances, the mood, the dabbling with theme. Especially what Alison alluded to: Abel trying to be a good, principled man in an industry that’s anything but. On the other hand, the movie has absolutely no drive, despite the fact that the narrative drives toward plot points that should have major “oomph.” We know momentous things happen (frankly, Abel had such constant bad luck, it was almost comical, not Shakespearean as intended), but A Most Violent Year never feels momentous. Just inert. It felt like Chandor had trouble melding his thematic ambitions with a crimemovie plot, and the result feels undercooked. Alison The film’s relative inertia is actually one of the things I liked about it — it’s a slow burn, an anti-gangster movie. I also felt misled by the trailer, but I was relieved that was the case, since the trailer looked like a movie that has been made countless times already. But a story like Abel’s is one that’s new to me, and I love Isaac’s portrayal of him as a good man who isn’t necessarily a nice one. And if Chandor is exploring the challenge of resisting corruption while seeking success, it makes sense to set this story against a year in New York where violence and crime is at a major peak. The movie spends a lot of time with Abel in his car, listening to awful news reports. It helps underscore Abel’s sense of isolation in pursuing the “most right path,” as he says to David Oyelowo’s district attorney. Peter While “slow burn” accurately describes this film about heating fuel, I still felt I never got the necessary release when the flame finally met its payload. This movie was about as exciting as watching a really long property contract negotiation. Abel’s relationship Anna (Jessica Chastain) focused on mood rather than any real complication. Chastain was passed over for an Oscar nomination because frankly there isn’t enough material here to work with. While the production design and pacing were certainly unique, there isn’t much here that compels me to recommend it. The best scene involved Abel coaching his sales agents on how to sell his heating fuel to sucker buyers, but there was only one moment like this. Alexander I think Chastain has particularly little material to work with here given that I felt the film curiously neuters her halfway through. There’s a wonderful tension (if, albeit, eventually repetitive) early in the film with the sense that she’s always just about to unleash her inner-gangster. Every time she’s made to hold it back by Abel. Every time she gives him grief about it. But then she curiously drops from the narrative, is less antagonistic. And while that may because to some degree because Abel is stepping up and doing what needs to be done more to her liking (maybe?), it also is a microcosm for the film itself to me: never quite sure where to maintain (or sustain) its focus.