Dir: Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/Norway/Ireland/Hungary, 2010, 83 mins, English/Polish/Arabic with subtitles
Cast: Vincent Gallo, Emmanuelle Seigner, Zach Cohen, Iftach Ofir
Review by Dave Hall
This extraordinary and uncompromising film is directed and co-written by veteran filmmaker Skolimowski, yet is almost like a calling card movie in its rawness and confrontational style. It broke the rules at the one-award-per-entry Venice Film Festival by picking up the Special Jury prize and Best Actor award for Vincent Gallo, and it’s easy to see what the jury got excited about: visually and psychologically it’s difficult to imagine a more vivid cinematic representation of what it takes to fight for survival against impossible odds.
The action opens in an Afghani desert where three American troops are sweeping for mines. Suddenly, shockingly they are killed by a rocket launched grenade fired by lone Taliban Mohammed (Gallo), though it’s made clear that the weapon isn’t his. From then on we follow Mohammed as he is captured, waterboarded, and transported to Northern Europe where he manages to escape his captors. Alone, thousands of miles from home, and tracked through a harsh snowy wilderness by well-equipped search parties, all he has left is the urge to stay alive.
This is a film where you are compelled to identify with a character who is driven to unspeakable extremes, including one act that is jaw-dropping in its taboo-breaking desperation; the alternative is simply to stare at the scenery. As Mohammed’s world closes in, so the film’s style shifts from realist to expressionist, and by the end we’re unsure if what we’re seeing is actually happening or a hallucination. It’s always been Skolimowski’s way to defy genre pigeon-holing and blend the real with the surreal. Here, after the comparatively conventional opening, he abandons the action and suspense signposted by the Seagal-like title, and immerses us instead in the stress and panic of Mohammed’s moment by moment existence.
Gallo’s commitment to the role has to be seen to be believed. In the past, he could have been accused of self-indulgence, but not here: he can rarely have looked less prepossessing, and apart from a few grunts and whimpers he never speaks. Is his muteness an in joke, perhaps (the same director’s The Shout was about a man whose potency came from a voice that could kill), or is Skolimowski making a philosophical point? Whatever, the result is something close to pure cinema, with only sight and sound to orientate Mohammed and, by extension, us.
Adam Sikora’s cinematography finds the alien in both desert and snowscape, and even Mohammed’s flashbacks to his domestic life are veiled and vaporous; the sound design conspires to cement the dislocation. If some of the killings seem far from essential, each incident also signals a shift in the film towards the otherworldly; as his humanity is stripped away, Mohammed becomes more akin to wounded animal than man. Somehow, implausibly yet fittingly, the film ends with an image drawn from fairytale. Disney this isn’t, but essential viewing it is.
