Bad Day at Black Rock

Bad Day at Black Rock is the best western I’ve seen in ages.

It’s the 1950s.  A one-armed man (Spencer Tracy) gets off a train in Black Rock, a dusty town somewhere in the Mojave Desert.  It’s the first time anyone’s gotten off the train in Black Rock for years, and people there don’t cotton to strangers.  Lee Marvin doesn’t like him.  Ernest Borgnine doesn’t like him.  Robert Ryan doesn’t like him.  They invite him to leave.  He declines.  And away we go.

Bad Day at Black Rock succeeds because it’s a slow burn.  It works a quiet tension between Tracy and the people of the town, one that winds more and more tightly as Tracy penetrates to the town’s mysteries, learns just why he’s not wanted.  As the film progresses and we learn more about Tracy and Black Rock, we find ourselves shutting out our world and plunging into its.  The film is so immersive, so fascinating, so tense that we lose track of time.  It’s brilliant.

There’s more going on here than another good thriller, however.  Nevertheless, I’m going to keep mum about it.  If you don’t know Black Rock’s secrets, I don’t want to give you a hint.  If you do, well then, you know.

Ripley's Game

John Malkovich is an absolutely outstanding Tom Ripley in Ripley’s Game.

Thirty, maybe forty years on from the unsure young Tom Ripley of The Talented Mr. Ripley, this Ripley is a man in full. He lives the live to which he aspired in Talented: a fabulous Italian villa, a sophisticated and respected lover, and all the amenities of the arriviste American in Europe. Here’s a man who has long since made peace with his sociopathy. He is who he is, and he won’t cause you any trouble - unless you piss him off.

This Ripley still improvises. He still trusts to Providence. He’s just been doing it so long and been lucky so long that he’s become a master. But he’s still a fraud, and John Malkovich captures this sense of the classy, smooth operator who, in some vague way, is not quite right. We’re never comfortable around Malkovich, and we’re never comfortable around Ripley. Even when he seems to be on our side, we’re pretty sure he’s on his own side and that’s that.

So when he gets down to work and the dominos begin to fall, it’s ever so much wicked fun to watch Ripley be Ripley. Here’s a guy who starts someplace beyond where everyone else stops, a guy so secure and powerful in his sense of self that we can’t help but root for him and glide along with him. If you enjoyed Matt Damon in Talented, I think you’ll love this older, wiser, colder iteration of the character in Ripley’s Game. It’s a great role, Malkovich is great it in it, and Ripley’s Game is a whole lot of wicked fun.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Now we’re talking.

In THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, we meet a man with Locked In Syndrome. A stroke has taken away his ability to move, his ability to speak, his ability to feel. He can communicate by blinking one eye. That’s it.

So how do you make a movie about an immobile mute? You tell the story of his book, which he wrote with the assistance of the world’s most patient woman. She spieled off the letters of the alphabet in most – to – least – common order, and he blinked when she got to the one he needed next. Sometimes she’d leap ahead and guess, and he’d tell her when she guessed correctly by blinking twice for yes and once for no.

Sounds uplifting, right? Well, here’s the thing: Jean-Do (played by Bond Movie Villain Mathieu Amalric) is too self-aware for uplift. He was something of a shit before the stroke that stole his life away, and he realizes that he’s still something of a shit (though a more pathetic shit) after this enormous change. And that, boys and girls, is the difference between world-class cinema and the Hallmark Channel.

His shittiness makes him an interesting character. It makes us wonder how he’ll react in a given situation, either in the current moment or in flashback to an earlier, normal, time in his life. It makes us grieve over some of his choices and glory in others, which leads us to consider our own choices and the ways in which we respond to the challenges, temptations, and duties of life. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY may be about Jean-Do (a real man and former editor of Elle magazine), but it’s also about us.

And that’s why it’s the good stuff.