True Stories Hit Different In 'Society Of The Snow'
#259: "Society of the Snow," "The Equalizer 3," "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead," "Everest"
Edition 259:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
This week: It’s another slow one at the theaters, which gave me a chance up on an Oscar nominated foreign film and one of the most discomforting streaming movies I’ve ever seen. We’ll also talk about Netflix’s film strategy and a movie on Max that I really enjoy. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Dev Patel takes a seat in the directing chair and looks more than ready to impress.
Society Of The Snow
I’ll go out on a limb and guess that you probably aren’t familiar with the events of the 1972 Andes flight disaster. I certainly wasn’t, and yet, deserted island stories are one of the foundational archetypes of our culture, on the big screen (Castaway), small screen (“Lost”), or literature (“Robinson Crusoe”). “Lord of the Flies” is a cultural reference point that has transcended all three. Everyone, at some point in their lives, has pondered what three items they’d want to have or what one movie they’d watch if they were stranded.
What’s different about this movie is, quite obviously, that it’s a true story. And in the case of a true story, the implicit contract with the audience is different. Decisions made by the characters are not made to impress viewers or for maximum drama, they’re made by real human beings furthering their own personal agendas.
That’s important in the context of this story, which quickly introduces us to the roster of a rugby team that boards a plane from Uruguay to Chile only to crash in the Andes mountains. The location is uninhabitable, a glacier with no way out, no shelter, no food. The situation is impossible. It is certain death.
Were this a fictional story, the characters might survive because, well…Hollywood baby. But this actually happened, leaving us as viewers slack-jawed trying to figure out how.
As a movie, it is necessarily plot-driven. Given the immediate and grave danger that the characters find themselves in at all times, it’s impossible to say ok, pause that and let’s do three minutes of straight character work. Or, heaven forbid, any kind of prolonged flashback. Smartly our story chugs right along, not allowing viewers to exhale or relax and instead discover who the characters are by how they react to the course of the events.
That’s not to say the movie is uncaring or impersonal. On the contrary, the claustrophobic surroundings force our ever-dwindling number of survivors to constantly be interacting, and though they are presented perhaps too lovingly (a common side effect in authorized true stories) it serves the story well to see this handsome, healthy crop of young men as caring and selfless. After all, it’s not man vs. man here, or even man vs. himself. In high school English class terms, it’s pure man vs. nature.
You may not think that would be enough to sustain a movie of this length — 2hr24min. You’d be wrong. Within the main impossible situation arise a dozen smaller, even more impossible situations. I’m not in the business of spoilers here, but trust me when I tell you there’s not a single dull moment.
While the movie isn’t a pure documentary, it’s the kind of story that sends you immediately rushing to the computer to research what really happened. And in nearly every case, what happened in real life is almost identical to the movie (you will realize how insane this is after you watch it). If you can’t tell already, I think you should definitely check it out on Netflix.
Something New
The Equalizer 3 (Netflix): Netflix fired its head of films division this week, which could signal (or not!) a rethinking of The Big Red Machine’s movie strategy going forward. If the company is rethinking its current strategy of putting out a massive volume of original movies that all feel half-baked, an optimist might think that means fewer, better movies! But a realist would likely predict something closer to the “Suits” strategy, when Netflix snapped up the rights to an old show and made it into a giant hit. Playing off the increasingly true hypothesis that most people don’t see non-event movies in theaters, it may be a better investment to buy theatrical movies second hand that are already proven to be good, then trust your algorithm to give it fresh life.
Case and point — The Equalizer 3 came out in September…not that long ago! The movie did decent but not earth-shattering business ($90 million domestic and another 90 overseas), features one of the most recognizable stars in the world in Denzel Washington, and as I said in my full review, works as both an action movie and as virtual tourism for Southern Italy’s “la vita lenta.” I promise you it’s a million times better than splashy but terrible Netflix originals like Pain Hustlers or The Pale Blue Eye.
Something Old
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007, Amazon Prime and Tubi): Avert your eyes if you’re the type of person who can’t stand movies where characters continuously dig their own grave with bad decisions and spiraling circumstances. This movie is brutal, and at times devastatingly sad. Given that, for me to still tell you that it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time says a lot.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman co-stars with Ethan Hawke as brothers on the edge of desperation, battling a drug problem and child support and an affair and more bad habits than they can count. They decide to rob their parents’ jewelry store for money, before it all goes wrong.
The story is told out-of-order (Christopher Nolan style!), with overlapping vantage points of the different characters backing up and jumping ahead to reveal new details. While I can find this technique overly manipulative (again, Nolan!), here it’s incredibly effective at flipping the narrative on its head with new information. One minute you think you know what’s going on and the next it’s totally different.
This is the final movie from master director Sidney Lumet — who made 12 Angry Men 50 (!!) years earlier, with Serpico, Network, and The Verdict among the gems in between. Hoffman and Hawke both give unbelievable acting performances, and among the supporting cast are (a very naked) Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney, Michael Shannon, and Amy Ryan.
It’s tense and chaotic in tone but wound tightly in narrative construction, all adding up to a gripping-your-seat thriller that you won’t be able to stop yourself from loving (as hard as you might try).
Something to Stream
Everest (Max): In college, after I’d started getting super interested in movies but before I had my newsletter to work through all my enthusiasm, I remember turning a catch-up call with my mom into essentially a podcast about how much I liked this movie Everest, about the 1996 Mount Everest disaster (the same events depicted in the fantastic non-fiction book Into Thin Air, though not directly adapted from it).
How’s this for an ensemble cast? Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Michael Kelly, Sam Worthington, and Keira Knightley!
The visuals are breathtaking (the movie debuted on IMAX, for good reason), and much like Society of the Snow, there’s a pure thrill to extreme conditions survivalist thrillers. While it’s not the deepest movie, there is plenty to chew on in the subtext of when dedication to one’s dreams becomes vanity and how not all sacrifices are heroic. I’d definitely recommend to anyone looking for an adventure.
Trailer Watch: Monkey Man
What a week for new trailers! We got our first looks at Guy Ritchie’s new movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which basically looks like a cockney version of Inglourious Basterds (in the best way); a Roadhouse remake squaring Jake Gyllenhaal up against Connor McGregor; and Sydney Sweeney’s next project Immaculate co-starring my Italian goddess Simona Tabasco.
But when it comes to excitement level, nothing comes close to Monkey Man. It’s the directorial debut of Dev Patel (!!), starring himself as a kind of righteous vengeance vigilante who’s more Robin Hood than Batman. The really exciting thing is how incredibly stylized the world is, whether it’s the John Wick-style action sequences or visuals of like a neo-retro India cityscape.
I’ve said this before but Monkeypaw (Jordan Peele’s company) cuts trailers better than anyone in the business.