Screengrab editor emeritus Bilge Ebiri reports from the frontlines of Park City.
Aka I Beat, Therefore I Am. Nicolas Winding Refn’s explosive, beautiful, hilarious, and infuriating Bronson is one of the best films about self-actualization I’ve ever seen. It could have easily been directed by its subject: Charlie Bronson, nee Michael Peterson (Tom Hardy, in one of those bulked-up, electrifying performances I’ll be telling my grandkids about), Britain’s most violent inmate and a man who has spent 30 of his 34 years in prison in solitary confinement, largely as a result of his fondness for kicking the living shit out of prison guards and pretty much anyone else who happens to cross his path. This is no grim and grimy prison film, however. Instead, Refn films in a vibrant, operatic style that tries to approximate the sublime joy Bronson gets from his confrontations. Utilizing lush cinematography, bursts of Verdi, Wagner, and the Pet Shop Boys, along with Hardy’s transformative performance, Bronson works its way towards repeat crescendos of violence; where other prison films might ladle on the triumphant music when their protagonists break free of their captivity, Refn’s film does so whenever its hero gets in a fight. It amounts to pretty much the same thing.
The film had a lot of buzz coming into the fest thanks to an early critics’ peek, but it’s proven to be a lot more divisive after its screenings here. That’s because its guiding spirit is not the ultra-violent dramas of recent years like Chopper and Fight Club (which some were expecting) or even Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (which it explicitly references), but the far more complicated European art cinema of the ‘70s, which isn’t exactly in tune with the sort of stuff that usually shows up at Sundance. (Another critic friend compared it to the work of Derek Jarman, which was always kind of an extension of that…and I can’t imagine the average Jarman film going over too well at Sundance either.) Necessarily fragmented, even downright bipolar, it denies us the easy pleasures of traditional narrative – most of the time, we don’t even know why Bronson is locked up. Scenes of his family life are opaque and inconclusive. Two love affairs flash by without any resolution. In other words, you won’t actually learn anything about Charlie Bronson from watching this movie.
Instead, Refn offers up a repetitive, almost rhythmic, structure composed largely of situations that end with Bronson flailing away at small armies of cops and/or guards. It seems like a Sisyphean endeavor – each fight sends him back into solitary – until we realize that this is how Charlie Bronson breathes. The man seeks violence the way we seek oxygen. Stripped down to his birthday suit, head shaved, and ready for all comers, each fight is a rebirth, because Bronson at rest is a void (a notion that the film’s final two shots make explicitly clear).
Of course, the film does progress towards some kind of redemption, but it’s not the kind of I’ve-changed-my-ways style bullshit one might expect. Charlie Bronson today is also an artist, but he creates work that is just as brutal and damaged as he is. The film’s third act brings together Bronson’s physical confrontations and his discovery of art in an explicit way, resulting in a climactic scene that represents one of cinema’s most effective portrayals of the violence of creation. This is extraordinary filmmaking at the highest level, and I can only hope that someone is brave enough to make sure the rest of the world gets to see it.