Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier, 2014)

[Finch]

There's nothing else on the forum yet about Blue Ruin, except a pithy zedz dismissal ("generic crap") in his post about another film. I'd have to disagree. For the second time this year (the first was Cheap Thrills) a no-budget independent genre picture has outclassed most other recent and more high-minded Indie dramas I've seen about similar themes. The writing and directing are taut and genuinely thrilling. Things unfold in a suspenseful and unpredictable direction in this story that's driven largely by realistic and relatable characters thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The film also has a willingness to break stuff and make huge messes that consistently surprised me and challenged my expectations of the sorts of things I'd see in a film at this budget level. Both the practical and visual effects were integrated seamlessly and with a polish that rivals much more expensive productions. I do have some minor qualms about the casting of the lead who -- perhaps especially underneath that hobo/hipster beard he eventually loses -- has what I can only describe as too much of a comedy face.

Surprised that zedz seems to have thought Blue Ruin was generic. I thought it often takes the unexpected route enough to not be generic and I found the film often nervewreckingly intense. Walter Chaw has a wonderful write-up here.

[repeat]

Blue Ruin was definitely one of the bigger disappointments of 2013 for me too: in light of all the hype that had been heaped on it by then already, I thought I was in for something truly extraordinary, but instead got "just" a solidly made, rather humorless revenge thriller. I mean we do know how to make one of those by now, don't we?

[warren oates]

Blue Ruin was definitely one of the bigger disappointments of 2013 for me too: in light of all the hype that had been heaped on it by then already, I thought I was in for something truly extraordinary, but instead got "just" a solidly made, rather humorless revenge thriller. I mean we do know how to make one of those by now, don't we?

I guess I can see how you'd be unimpressed if you were expecting the sort of next step in the historical evolution of the revenge film after, say, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance. But short of disappointing those kinds of massively high expectations, I'm not sure what this little backlash is about. Maybe it would help to think of Blue Ruin more like a standard collection of Indie dramedy tropes re-energized by recontextualization in an genre piece: "A slacker returns home to deal with a family emergency, uncovering uncomfortable secrets about his parents, and finding himself out of step with his sister, his old town and the people some of his friends have become." Oh, and I do think there's a pretty dead-pan streak of black humor throughout.

[wllm995]

Blue Ruin was an unexpected delight for me. I really enjoyed its indie vibe and the protagonist was completely different from other more "macho" types that we usually see in these types of revenge pics.

Recommended!

[repeat]

Didn't want to use the word but gotta say I found the deadpan humor way too generic to be genuinely amusing - but that's a minor fault in my book as I don't think it was meant to be that funny to begin with.

You're probably right that my disappointment was a personal backlash against the hyperbole I'd read before going in - let me put it this way: I found it to be a film of modest ambitions that achieved what it set out to do with economy and effectiveness, but I can't consider that a four out of four as the stakes were too low to begin with. It's a well-made suspenseful thriller as well as a fine example of successful low-budget filmmaking, and I'd recommend it for those reasons, but it's not getting anywhere near my top ten.

[repeat]

This film still keeps bothering me enough to keep reading every article I see about it, and finally Nick Pinkerton's intriguing piece on revenge films in Film Comment includes what I would consider a sober assessment of it: he opines that the film is very good when it sticks to the level of essential action (and I agree that that's where it works best), but falls flat when it appears to strive for loftier ends, taking on "a philosophical air, leaving behind the concrete to become a film of ideas". More importantly, he notes the film's failure to achieve a real sense of tragedy, offering a seemingly haphazard comparison to James Gray, which he unfortunately doesn't pursue further, because at least for me it offers a key to why I found the film so profoundly unsatisfying:

Blue Ruin to me feels like the work of someone who wants to (and knows well how to) make fun, cool movies with thrills and kills and laughs and great visuals, but who in this case for whatever reason felt it necessary to try and push for something more serious, and decided to change the tone from the original mischievous black comedy towards loftier tragedy (and IIRC the director has admitted as much). The story in itself would probably have allowed for this, but the project falls flat because of the essentially ironic mode of filmmaking that remains unchanged, preventing the sort of genuine investment in the characters that a tragedy requires. What's left is a sense of inachievement in both departments: it ends up like a Coen brothers film without the jokes, both unamusing (beyond a superficial level) and curiously unaffecting.

I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but I feel that this inappropriate ironic attitude that I felt throughout the film is key to why I found it so disappointing; a big reason why I love James Gray is that he is non-ironic almost to a fault, playing straight-faced for high tragedy in a very unzeitgemässig way, and the payoff is greater because the stakes are higher. Blue Ruin doesn't put much at stake, and while it sort of achieves the coolness goal, it fails badly in the greatness department, and could've been a lot less disappointing if it hadn't tried to go for the latter at all.

[warren oates]

Now you're starting to lose me. It's clear that you wanted to see a different film. But it's not clear that you've demonstrated how this film falls short on its own terms. The film is ironic in the purest sense and almost exclusively with regard to its central drama -- where the protagonist's actions often have unintended consequences that are the opposite of what he intended to achieve -- rather than its tone. From the first moments of the film right up to his initial irreversible act and its aftermath, the protagonist himself is the best argument against yours -- he's pathetic. He goes from being a homeless drifter to a clean-shaven schlub. But he's never that formidable or ruthless. Instead, we see him as rather self-deluded -- with plans as ad hoc as his food foraging -- foolishly believing he can maybe still bargain his way out of it all right up until the end. And there's nothing "cool" about his arc or the film's attitude toward it. The Blue Ruin I saw aspires to neither the philosophical tragic heights nor the stylized cynical lows you seem stuck on. And though there is a modest strain of deadpan humor throughout, it's relegated to the background -- it's not the work's raison d'être or even its dirty little secret self. Like I've said above, the whole film is better understood as a recontextualization of Indie dramedy tropes and character types through the lens of a genre story.

I definitely don't think this film is the second coming of Indie or revenge cinema either, but the more you say about it, the less I understand your problems with it.

[repeat]

Yeah, maybe you're right - I went off on a tangent there anyway because I got interested in those two loose threads in the Film Comment article and thought I had an insight into why this didn't work for me as well as it seems to be working for a lot of folks. Like I said I don't really have anything against the film as it stands, I just felt there's two possibly more rewarding films in it and for me it was sort of left hanging between those possibilities.

By ironic I meant a mode of storytelling where we're not supposed to actually care for the characters, but merely observe them in a detached way (or at the most be scared with them more than for them), and I got that vibe pretty heavily from this; also I did get the feeling towards the end of the film that it did actually aspire to some air of tragedy or gravitas that, for me, was undercut by that sense of detachment. I don't think I have more to say on this without a rewatch!

[warren oates]

By ironic I meant a mode of storytelling where we're not supposed to actually care for the characters, but merely observe them in a detached way (or at the most be scared with them more than for them).

Though I disagree that it's there in the film, I do think "detached" is a better way to describe your misgivings about the tone than "ironic." But I'm kind of confused by your terms in that parenthetical. Is "scared with" (empathy) as opposed to "scared for" (sympathy) really the downgrade in audience identification you seem to be positioning it as? I've always thought it was the other way around.

[repeat]

Is "scared with" (empathy) as opposed to "scared for" (sympathy) really the downgrade in audience identification you seem to be positioning it as?

You have the terms the wrong way around: "scared with" is sympathy (maybe my "scared for" was a confusing way to describe empathy)! I'm not saying sympathy is universally of lesser value than empathy: "scared with" is perfectly fine if you're making an exploitation film and going mainly for thrills, but the way I see it tragedy and tragic catharsis require empathy, and inducing empathy in the viewer necessitates breaking out of the ironic (a word which I've been using interchangeably with "detached" and "cool") mode of storytelling I'm talking about.

Again that's not an argument against Blue Ruin as it stands, because while I do feel it's in the ironic mode, I don't think tragic catharsis was Saulnier's goal - but there does seem to be a rather superficial attempt to bring these philosophical, tragic elements to the mix (probably an outcome of his desire to make a film that would appeal to genre heads and arthouse fans alike), and I think that's why I found it disappointing: it could've been a really amazing film if it were played out as a straight-faced tragedy, or otherwise a really funny one if they'd stayed with the original plan and gone whole hog for black comedy.