Her insight is that audiences care most about relationships,
and the positive resolution of those relationships, not whether the main
character achieves their stated goal.
I really love that phrase: “the positive resolution of
relationships.” That truly is the magic nectar of good storytelling, isn’t it?
Casablanca is often cited for its bittersweet ending.
Bogart loses Ingrid Bergman, but he resolves his relationship with her in the
most positive way imaginable – “we’ll always have Paris” – and goes off to
fight Nazis with his true soul mate, Claude Reins. That’s not a bittersweet
ending. That’s a sweet-sweet ending. And it’s because all the relationships get
tied up positively. All of them. The Nazi Colonel gets shot – I can hardly
think of a more positive resolution for a Nazi – and even romantic rival Victor
Laszlo shakes Bogie by the hand and declares, “Welcome back to the fight. This
time I know our side will win.” Woo hoo!
Bogie gets his bar taken from him, loses the love of his
life and goes on the run as a fugitive behind enemy lines. And it’s the
greatest ending of all time. “The positive resolution of relationships” indeed.
Which brings us to The Grey and that damned ending.
The Grey is a primal tale about man versus nature. It
follows the grim adventures of Liam Neeson (character name irrelevant and
undesirable; we paid for a Liam Neeson movie, dammit), a sniper who protects
oil pipeline workers in the arctic from the predation of local wolves.
Neeson’s whole life is grey in the wake of his wife’s death,
and he’s on the verge of suicide when his arctic tour expires and he’s sent
home on a charter plane.
Well, almost sent home.
The plane crashes somewhere in the arctic waste, sparing
only half a dozen of its passengers. Gathering survivors and assessing their
situation is a task that must be quickly achieved, because there are wolves in
these here parts, and they come calling sooooon.
This strategy has its detractors, and leads to a struggle
for dominance within the group that makes the six men resemble their
adversaries quite closely.
But hey, Neeson is Neeson, and before long our guys are headed for those trees. The wolves follow along, and the rest of the movie consists of homo sapiens getting their asses handed to them by canis lupis.
All the way to the end, it’s good to be a wolf and bad to be
a human. And that’s the problem with the movie. It eschews a Hollywood happy
ending – and the usual Hollywood heroics throughout – in favor of a grim
artsiness, but whatever was achieved by abandoning the standard
ingenious-humans-dig-deep-and-beat-the-odds scenario feels lost in the end,
when Neeson finds himself in the very den of the wolves, a place he can’t – and
doesn’t – survive.
Presumably Neeson achieves some transcendent self-knowledge,
and peace with the memory of his father (yeah, lots of dead family members
intrude on the action) in his last few moments, but I don’t think this was
worth two hours of feeling cold vicariously. And the reason I don’t think it
was worth it is because it’s too self-directed. It’s all about Neeson, and not
about his relationships with others.
If Neeson were with even a single companion, and they
achieved an understanding of each other, or appreciation of each other, in the
moments before their death, that might have made for a satisfying finale. No
suspension of disbelief would be required, but at least we would feel that something
worthwhile transpired onscreen.
Instead, we’re treated to the best day the wolves have had
in years. It’s like a pizza party from the perspective of the pizza.
The Grey is what would probably happen if a group of guys were
dropped into the arctic near the den of some ravenous wolves. But realism doesn’t
necessarily illuminate, nor does it necessarily ennoble. What The Grey could
have used is a little color.
Oh, that’s awful. I’ll change that ending next time I peruse
these reviews.
I promise.
SCORE
How Accomplished: 61/100
How Much I Enjoyed: 63/100
0 comments:
Post a Comment