Lock, Stock and Fast Talk: Sundance opener In Bruges delivers more than warm ale and cold comfort
Appeared in Hour, 2008The advertising for In Bruges suggests that it’s another of those lock, stock, fast talkin’ U.K. gangster comedies – the kind of movie where everybody drinks a lot of warm pub ale, watches football on the telly, calls each other “fucking twats” and brandishes guns out the windows of very small cars. And in some ways this genre-defying dark comedy, which opened the Sundance Film Festival a couple weeks back, fulfills those expectations. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play a couple of bickering hit men sent to the quiet medieval town of Bruges, Belgium, to await “instructions” from their foul-mouthed boss back in England. When word arrives, chaos ensues and a lot of people get shot – all against the backdrop of narrow cobblestone streets and ancient church towers.
But there’s a core of humanity at the centre of this funny, violent and strangely moving gangster pic. Even its nastiest characters inspire a feeling of sympathy when they are challenged by the moral dilemmas that come with the job. “That’s the main thing I wanted to explore – what happens when a dark character does something so horrific that it affects [them]?” explains writer-director Martin McDonagh, relaxing after opening night in Park City, Utah, at a cozy slope-side hotel.
“I wanted to set up one of those archetypal gangster hit men-type situations, but then take it to a different place,” he says. “It’s more about real life and experience and sadness – despair, I guess.
“When you write any character you want to make
them as human as possible,” he continues. “I think it was Arthur Miller who said you must love even your most evil characters.”
McDonagh is an Irish playwright (he was born in London but spent formative childhood years in Galway) whose most famous plays – including The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara, as well as his Academy Award-winning short film Six Shooter – are dark, violent, terse works wavering on the line between tragedy and comedy.
“In some ways [In Bruges] is a black comedy. It has all those elements. But we’re dealing with dark subject matter – killing people. There isn’t a tremendous amount of violence in the film, but when it comes, I thought it should be quite dark and impactful. When the very first violent thing happens, I wanted it to be as repugnant as possible,” he explains, noting the special attention that he devoted to the SFX makeup design for the film. “I love makeup artists because they get so into the details of it. I love details.”
McDonagh also cites filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs) as a key influence in the way he chose to depict violence in In Bruges. “There’s something quite sad and dark about the violent places Peckinpah goes to… [he] had been through the war – he’d seen what violence is like and he wanted to go against the grain of the typical shootout scene where you don’t see blood, and a person falls down in a nice, pretty heap. There was a reason behind his madness – to show people just how shitty it is.
“I wanted to capture some of that in my film too.”