DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
John Hillcoat’s 2006 Aussie Western opens with an aurally shocking shootout in a ramshackle Outback brothel, bullets puncturing the wood and corrugated metal walls allowing new rays of lights into the dim shack. It’s a fittingly gripping opening to one of the best (and most criminally overlooked) films of the ’00s, and one that, for my money, tops even Unforgiven on the list of the best modern westerns. Guy Pearce plays Charlie, one third of the Burns Brothers gang, a group of outlaws known across this section of the newly settled Australia of the 1880s for the shocking brutality of their crimes. His younger brother Mikey is a simpleton and obviously just along for the ride. His older brother Arthur is the psychopathic and soulless mastermind. When a small town captain catches the younger two following a particularly heinous rape and slaying, he tells Charlie he’ll spare them both the gallows if he brings him the head of his oldest brother.
As Charlie seeks out his brother, wrestling with himself and how to play this hand, the captain is dealing with townspeople that want Mikey’s blood, and want it now, all while trying to shield his wife (Emily Watson, in an amazing performance), who is not quite the shy retiring flower he treats her as, from all the ugliness of a land he’s determined to civilize. The script, by Nick Cave (who also contributed to a pitch-perfect soundtrack), is no rock star vanity project; Cave imbues this story with the sort of nuance and complexity (as well as bloody violence) of his finest murder balladry. His story was hailed in Australia for being one of the most accurate (and, as it follows, disgusting and upsetting) depictions of the colonization of the continent and subjugation of its Aboriginal peoples ever filmed. As for Hillcoat, if anyone doubted whether he was the right choice to direct the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, let this serve as more than justification enough; the director has a particular eye for finding beauty in the bleak, and tiny rays of hope amid the most soul-crushing despair.
View the trailer.
Tonight through Saturday, and Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, at the AFI. Tonight’s screening includes an introduction by University of Maryland professor Torey Liepa.
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In conjunction with the National Gallery’s continuing exhibition, Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans”, the museum is presenting a month long film series dedicated to the photographer and filmmaker. The series includes many of Frank’s more recent short films, a collection of avant-garde shorts by other filmmakers reflective of the spirit of Franks’ work, and documentaries from various points and perspectives throughout his career. This weekend’s program falls into the latter category, a brief half hour video documentary (Fire in the East) from the mid-80s that features interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Emile de Antonio, Jonas Mekas, Rudy Wurlitzer, June Leaf, and John Szarkowski.
Fire in the East screens tomorrow and Saturday at 12:30 p.m. in the National Gallery‘s East Building Concourse Auditorium. Additional Robert Frank Programs will be shown throughout April. See the schedule for details. All programs are free of charge.
