¦ dialling in from Sky Bunker ¦
00:12 GMT, just past midnight so technically Wednesday (18th March) although it’s still Tuesday to me. I’m revelling in the wake of creative brilliance. I took a solo trip to the cinema tonight, drawn to see The International for no reason other than the fact it had Clive Owen in it. I’d not seen much advertising. I was delightfully ignorant regarding storyline. I sat down, waited for the lights to dim and savoured the opening chords of the musical score….opening credits…
This could be any old thriller, right?
Wrong.
The film starts in near silence. The tension is immediate. And it just gets better with every moment that passes.
I can't recommend “The International” enough. Tight. Soooooooo tight. A brilliant script, dialogue was first-class. The actors were given vast space to... well, act... and generate superb character development. It’s very much a character driven story: you got a real sense that events were unfolding with the natural cause and effect paradigm of decision and consequence. Twists aplenty. At one point I was actually sitting with my hands near my face, almost biting my fingers in apprehension. Then the film starts to draw towards a standard Hollywood ending, somebody caught, the truth about to be squeezed out… but then… the plot takes a sharp left turn and the whole film relaunches… it becomes epic, and I can recall sitting there in the cinema, aware I was grinning broadly like a kid as I realised there was sooo much more to watch. I didn’t want the experience to end. Whe it did end I sat right through the final credits even as most people had left... I wanted to savour those final moments.
I came home and bought an MP3 of the film soundtrack: I’m listening to it now. Bliss.
Watching The International was like discovering Bourne Identity again for the first time.
Of course, when you then discover the film's creator, Tom Tykwer was the man responsible for the German masterpieces such as Run Lola Run, and The Princess and the Warrior... it all fits into place with an "ahhhh" sound.
The malefactor of the story couldn’t be more appropriate in the current climate of financial meltdown caused by the greed and irresponsibility of the banking system. “Banks strive to shackle us to debt,” is one line from the film. Look at the origins of banking, the Medici family for example, originally a bunch of Florentine thugs who became respectable by avoiding the Catholic laws on usury. Forget Islamic Fundamentalists and South American drug cartels as the bad guy: banks are the new blackguard of corruption. What’s really interesting as a storyline, is that whereas not many of us can have direct access to terrorist and machine-gun toting cocaine producers, all of us can have access to banks… they’re plugged into everything from government to grannies. So as a malign network they are literally omnipresent. How do you fight such a Devil?
I will definitely go and see it again.
Djr