THE GREY (Joe Carnahan)

-

THE GREY starts out almost in Terrence Malick fashion, what with all the voice overs and musings and philosophical undertones. As the action is set in motion by a plane crash into the icy wilderness, a group of survivors band together against a pack of wolves who see them as enemies. 

Liam Neeson is John Ottway, who becomes the de facto leader of the group, who knows this and that, but we never really understand why he is so good with this and that and has become the leader. Neeson's husky voice and tall, brooding physique nevertheless helps securing the integrity of his character as a leader figure.

The story concerns itself with survival, and with it constant questions of who's the actual predator, the humans or the wolves? Joe Carnahan, working on his script and Ian MacKenzie Jeffers (which is in turn based on Jeffers' short story) illustrates how man really is expendable, and any minute may be your last. What Carnahan achieves best in THE GREY is making us feel every sinking footstep in the ice, or every chilling intake of breath, or every cry of the wolves nearby. THE GREY is more atmospheric than it is philosophical, and I think the philosophy is eventually drowned out by the onscreen violence and fight for survival.

There is a must-see part later in the movie, where one of the characters cannot make the journey further, and Ottway asks him why, to which he responds he has nothing to come back to. That for me, is classic philosophical catharsis. 

Earlier in the movie, we see Ottway put a shotgun in his mouth, as if desperate to end his worthless life. In an ironic turn of events, the wolves will actually do the job for him, and he is every bit determined not to let the wolves take him. 

Not actually concerned with whether the group survives or not, THE GREY wants us more to share their peril, and learn what lessons they have picked up along the way. Ottway recites in the end his father's poem, with words "live and die on this day", which strengthens the film's focus on the frailty of humanity. 

RATING: 3/5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn...
Read more

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitaliz...
Read more

BIGKIS (Neal Tan, 2014)

-
Image
As an advocacy film, BIGKIS (INTERTWINED) gets its message across. The state of maternal healthcare in the Philippines is downright depressing, with mothers seated on the floor of public hospitals due to shortage of beds, medical equipment and hospital staff. The baby better be gaping through the birth canal before the mother receives serious medical attention.  Such social issue has been featured countless times in local documentaries and even in a feature film (2011's BAHAY BATA), but BIGKIS pushes the envelope further by bridging a connection between mother and child by means of breastfeeding, and in doing so, promoting breastfeeding in the process.  As a drama, the film tends to squeeze too much tragedy from the downtrodden lives of its characters that a lot of the dialogue feels staged for us to feel sorry for their countless miseries. Mariel (LJ Reyes), a teenage mother deals with an unwanted pregnancy and worse, the abandonment of her baby's father (Pancho ...
Read more