Like all the best dramas about undercover operations, Night Moves is extremely good on the matter of procedure, work, getting the business done. Once decisive actions are set in place, everyone’s operating in the dark-you can never know what their results will be, or where they’ll leave you. Here, it’s the boat that the trio set out in to plant the explosives at the dam, but the gist of the film is that their moves literally and figuratively take place at night. Reichardt’s film, co-written with her regular collaborator Jon Raymond, shares its title with Arthur Penn’s 1975 film-one of the peaks of the Seventies American paranoid cycle-and, as in Penn’s film, “Night Moves” is the name of a boat. One discussion, after the act, goes: “I’m not interested in statements, I’m interested in results.” “You don’t call that results?” “I call that theater.” Killing all the salmon just so you can run your fucking iPod every second of your life.” As in so many dramas about political activism, the question of an action’s real or symbolic value, or futility, is naggingly worked over. That operation is to blow up a hydroelectric dam, one of several that’s been erected on an Oregon river, and the intention is as much symbolic as anything: as Josh says, “People are going to start thinking. The characters are Oregon eco-activists: Josh (Eisenberg) and Dena (Dakota Fanning), who live and work in agricultural collectives, and an older, more experienced contact, an ex-Marine named Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), the man with the plan for their operation. It could be summed up, if you wanted to, as a psychological thriller: some people perform a criminal act, and it takes its toll on them. Night Moves is the nearest Reichardt has come to a traditional narrative format since her 1994 debut River of Grass. Her historical drama Meek’s Cutoff (10), about a caravan of pioneers losing their way in 1840s Oregon, was a different way to articulate the pessimistic feeling that, geographically or politically, America will punish its outsiders in the end. Old Joy (06) mused on the questionable possibility of individuals reconnecting with the Thoreau back-to-nature ideal, and Wendy and Lucy (08) showed, with economically tragic incisiveness, how the decks were stacked against itinerant outsiders like the film’s heroine. Over several films, Reichardt has proved to be one of the few genuine alternative filmmakers in America, in the sense that she’s interested in people who embody a lifestyle outside the norm-even if they’re not necessarily threatening to the status quo that they’re opposed to. Even before the decisive act, one of his co-conspirators tells him he’s getting paranoid, but adds: “It’s healthier that way in the long run.” Eisenberg’s poker face is ideal for this, but the character’s strangled tones and trigger reactions belie his deep rattled anxiety. He plays one of a trio of eco-militants who commit an act of sabotage, then have to live with the repercussions-and above all, walk around afterwards as if nothing significant had happened. What I’m basically describing is Eisenberg’s teasingly minimalist performance in Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves. Eisenberg is turning out to be the kind of actor who’s brilliant at internalizing trauma, and I imagine his performance would be tuned tantalizingly a few notches above zero-the strangely placid face would barely flicker, the eyes remain fixedly trained on a thought, and perhaps there would be just a hint of cold sweat in the shininess of his skin. He’d be a terrific Raskolnikov-but I suspect you wouldn’t get mad eyes, raging, the full trembling-hand routine of haunted, hunted anxiety. Now it’s surely time for him to go the full mile and get himself cast in Crime and Punishment. Jesse Eisenberg recently appeared in a Dostoevsky adaptation of sorts: Richard Ayoade’s claustrophobic, Gilliam-esque take on The Double.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |