Reserved American an Existential Throwback
Jack (George Clooney) is a quiet man. He’s come to Italy to lay low after leaving behind a mess in Sweden, inadvertently befriending a small town priest named Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) in the process. Not wanting to be at the center of the action anymore he takes a job building a specialized rifle for the mysterious Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) while at the same time having relations with the beautiful prostitute Clara (Violante Placido), their affair forcing him to reconsider the choices he’s made in his life.
George Clooney is a quietly dangerous man in The American © Focus Features
The very Jason Bourne looking trailers aside, not much really happens in director Anton Corbijn’s (Control) sophomore effort The American. Based on the book by A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth and working from a screenplay by Rowan Joffe (28 Weeks Later, the upcoming Brighton Rock), the film is very much an existential throwback to the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Claude Chabrol or Bernardo Bertolucci, the film moving at its own measured pace and is interested in the countryside as it is in the characters populating the narrative.
I enjoyed this picture quite a bit. The mood is spot-on right from the start and I found myself very intrigued by Jack, curious to discover his methods and interested in knowing if he would be able to escape his past. Like Alain Delon’s Jef Costello or Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul he is a quiet man who walks his own specialized path, an eternity of living in the shadows making him an increasingly cautious and paranoid figure unsure of both himself and all of those who surround him.
As things progress it must be said that there are only a few ways for this particular story to go, and as much as I was enthralled by what was going on I was sort of resigned early on that the final product would offer up little in the way of surprises. There are some unintentionally clunky bits, especially in regards to film’s few action-slash-suspense sequences, a central moonlit chase through the Italian town particularly silly and unbelievable. I just didn’t buy that a man as supposedly skilled as Jack would let himself be drawn into such a pedestrian situation, especially one that in real life would have been traced back to him in a heartbeat, all of which thusly made the entire sequence more than a tiny bit laughable.
Yet I do not care. Clooney nails this character while the supporting players around him seamlessly match him. His growing hunger for Clara is palpable and I fully believed that this reserved and emotionally closeted man would let down his guard to be with her. Their scenes crackle with frank sexual honesty, the intimacy blossoming between them as naked as their bodies lying atop a freshly mussed bed.
I was also quite taken with the film’s subtle debates on faith and spirituality. The conversations Jake and Father Benedetto have tend to speak volumes, each man’s mutual failings allowing for insights into religion and belief that otherwise could not have happened without them. Their duality is striking, the road leading one to God and the other away from him a stark treatise on how life choices can come to define a world view as well as how difficult it is to start down a new path once the old one has become beaten down.
The picture is beautifully shot by Martin Ruhe (The Countess), his images matching jack’s interior journey just about perfectly. It is also superbly edited by Andrew Hulme (Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974), the final product’s pacing and design just about as perfect as they come. Corbijn for his part handles just about everything magnificently, only a clunky, ill-defined snowy hillside shootout early in the film’s prologue not feeling as controlled or as intimately staged as it probably could have been.
My favorite moments came near the end, and while I can’t take about them in great detail to say that they reminded me quite a bit about a signature driving sequence in Jules Dassin’s heist classic Rififi wouldn’t be false. Even though I knew what was going to happen I couldn’t stop the tears from starting to flow, Clooney’s almost effortless performance bringing me so close to his side I didn’t want his drive to a secluded river to ever come to an end.
In many ways that is The American in a nutshell. For audiences interested in character over explosions, in substance over style, in subtlety over bombast, what Corbijn pulls the trigger on is a direct shot to the brainpan that’s a cathartic rush to the cinematic senses. Even with its faults and missteps this is a quietly invigorating thriller that will undoubtedly age like fine Italian wine, the grapes giving it life so ripe and appealing I can’t wait to revel in their taste again.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
