Red Lights
From the current issue of Clash.
Rodrigo Cortés’s previous film Buried made quite an impression, despite his resources amounting to little more than Ryan Reynolds and a box. This time around, he’s spoilt for riches with a sizeable budget, star names (Robert de Niro, Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver) and some rising talent (Elizabeth Olsen, Submarine’s Craig Roberts).
Murphy and Weaver lead as two physicists who investigate the so-called paranormal workings of fraudulent mediums. They can easily discredit most cases until they’re faced with the long-awaited return of the enigmatic psychic Simon Silver (de Niro).
So far, so X-Files? It sure sounds so. Yet Cortés skillfully weaves metaphysical intelligence, swathes of atmosphere and lashings of comedy (from a nerdy pun about Occam’s Razor to the frankly hilarious sight of a young Silver, which is effectively a visual parody of de Niro’s famous expressions) to intensely cerebral effect.
As with Buried, the conclusion will prove to be particularly divisive: is it an ingenius narrative leap, or does it simply sell-out the film’s prior integrity? It’s immensely difficult to judge, but it takes little away from the brilliance of what preceded. If Cortés can tighten up his finales, this growing master of highbrow mainstream movies could well become the next Christopher Nolan.
To suggest that Cortes might be the next Christopher Nolan is something of an insult. Nolan makes puzzle-box ego-exercises that are long on bombast and hideously short on characterization and humanity. Might Cortes not be the next Malick, Coen, Scott, or even McTiernan instead?
blip
June 22, 2012 at 9:25 am
In my experience, most people in film will happily accept a comparison to someone who is hugely respected and commercially successful even if they don’t agree with the precise reasons why. So I can’t imagine Cortes would be insulted by the comparison. In the UK at least, his bigger problem would be that most of the major reviews for Red Lights consider it to be mediocre.
I would agree that Nolan’s films aren’t exceptionally strong in terms of depth of characterisation or what their statements about the human experience. But on the whole neither do they need to be. From his first eight films, three are part of the Batman series which he has successfully resurrected, but it would be unreasonable to expect too much of those traits in a super hero flick as action will always rule over characters. From the others, Following, Memento and The Prestige work intellectually rather than emotionally by prioritising mystery over empathy for the characters. That leaves Insomnia, a remake, and Inception which I would agree ticks most of the points that you make. That said, the budget of Inception means that it needs an element of the bombastic to make it a viable commercial proposition.
Similarly, on the basis of Buried and Red Lights (I haven’t seen The Contestant yet) Cortes also makes broadly mainstream films which provoke talking points but in which characterisation is again secondary. In Buried, the interest is created by the horror of Conroy’s predicament rather than any particular connection with the character himself. In Red Lights, Buckley’s pursuit of Silver is interesting because of the uncertainty about the physic’s talents and the wealth of possible red herrings rather than because of what happened to Weaver’s character. I would however agree that the issues Red Lights poses – mankind’s need to believe in something, the skilled manipulation of emotion by intelligence – is a little weightier than we’d find in an average Nolan film.
Cultural differences apart, I also don’t think it’s a huge leap of faith to consider Red Lights and Following to be films that Nolan and Cortes respectively could’ve made early in their careers. Similarly, if another big franchise needed a fresh director to reinvigorate it, Cortes should surely be in the running.
As for the comparisons with those other directors, I’m still of the viewpoint that Cortes is closer to Nolan. But I would love to hear your throughts behind them, especially Malick.
Ben Hopkins
June 23, 2012 at 9:00 am