The New York Times - USA (2020-07-31)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020 Y C5

Movies

“THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE” is set some-
where in rural Ireland, where the green
land meanders and the blood runs fast.
There, an ex-boxer, Douglas Armstrong
(Cosmo Jarvis), dispenses regular punish-
ment to those who may or may not deserve
it. He’s nicknamed the Arm, because of his
bruising strength but also because he has
one of those label names that convey some-
thing about the character, like the hammer-
ing Mike Hammer.
Douglas is a blunt instrument, a fiction
forged with humanist ideals and a degree of
poetic fancy. He’s the monstrous male, as
large as an oak and presumably just as
thick, the man whose hulking body and
fierce actions define both him and his rela-
tionships, inspiring fear and contempt. That
there’s more to him than primitive strength
is inevitable in movies like this one, which

tries to complicate an archetypal Sensitive

Brute with melodrama, expressive cine-

matography and a sense of grace.

The director Nick Rowland locks your in-

terest in early and firmly with a curious,

seemingly contradictory mix of beauty and

danger, a combination encapsulated by the

delicately blurred image of man’s powerful

hand. The hand belongs to Douglas and will

soon be tightly clenched as it pummels an-

other man’s face. This act of barbarism has

its ostensible reasons: The beaten man is

accused of assaulting a young woman. But

given the savagery of the beating you won-

der if there’s something else, something

bigger, deeper at stake — a man’s humanity,

the soul of a people.

Douglas serves as the muscle for

Dympna Devers (Barry Keoghan, a reliable

complicating presence), a wily runt who

deals drugs for his family’s criminal enter-

prise. The Deverses are the kind of slow-

but-sharp types, all gaping mouths and

dead eyes, who routinely crop up in movies

that they would be unlikely to see. (They in-

variably stare at the TV, mesmerized by

cartoons and bleating game shows.)

Massed in front of the telly like spectators,

the women here are largely indistinguish-

able. The only characters who count, who

do things, are the men, including two un-

cles: Hector (David Wilmot) and the hyper-

violent Paudi (a vivid, disturbing Ned Den-

nehy).

Written by Joe Murtagh, the movie is

based on “Calm With Horses,” a tough yet

lyrical story by the Irish writer Colin Bar-

rett. The filmmakers have attenuated

Douglas’s viciousness, a gentling that

makes the character more palatable but

also more predictable. Even so, there is just

enough ambiguity onscreen, particularly

during the movie’s early stretch, that the

narrative machinery isn’t too conspicuous.

Rowland’s most productive strategy is how

he, with the cinematographer Piers Mc-

Grail, uses visual beauty to soften Douglas

and our perceptions of him, notably by

nestling him in the dusky twilight when the

world hovers at the edge of visibility.

Douglas is the kind of character that’s

raw meat for actors like Eric Bana and

Matthias Schoenaerts, who excel at beauti-

ful bruisers. Jarvis doesn’t have the ma-

terial in “The Shadow” to impress, and it’s

unclear from this movie, at least, if he has

the ability. One problem is that Douglas

never fully makes sense, especially on

those occasions when his eyes and mind

flicker alive. In his novella, Barrett writes

that Douglas has “the knack of detach-

ment” and describes how, even when bur-

ied in “a fight, spun and dizzy and snorting

sputum, his body bright and ringing,” he

could also occupy “a little bubble of lucidity

above it all.” Barrett insists on your empa-

thy without soliciting your pity.

In the movie, Douglas’s moments of un-

convincing lucidity and flashes of wit and

sense mostly just seem like an effort to

make the character seem nicer or maybe

just more forgivable. The voice-over that he

delivers in confessional tones seems simi-

larly calculated to draw you closer to the

character, as does some drama with his ex

(Niamh Algar) and son. The movie tries to

convince you that Douglas is better than his

worst self and can transcend the dehuman-

izing degradations in which he’s mired. But

not even the filmmakers seem convinced,

which may explain why they embrace ba-

roque brutality topped by a dollop of audi-

ence-mollifying sentimentality.

SABAN FILMS

Behold, the Sensitive Brute (Again)

Bloody violence and a bruiser’s

savagery are partly softened by

visual beauty, flashes of wit

and his confessional tone.

MANOHLA DARGIS FILM REVIEW

Barry Keoghan, left, as

Dympna Devers and

Cosmo Jarvis as Douglas

Armstrong in Nick

Rowland’s film set in

rural Ireland.

The Shadow of Violence

Rated R for graphic bloody

violence. Running time: 1 hour

41 minutes. In theaters only.

A DANGER OF MAKING any documentary

about legal challenges to the Trump admin-

istration is that the news cycle will have

moved on by the time the movie opens. At

the beginning of “The Fight,” Lee Gelernt, a

lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Un-

ion who specializes in immigration rights,

praises a federal judge’s January 2017 rul-

ing partly blocking the president’s travel

ban. “The president could not override the

courts,” Gelernt says of the decision. Three

and a half years later, his words sound al-

most quaint.

Now, with the A.C.L.U. facing off with fed-

eral agents in Portland, Ore., “The Fight”

offers an almost retro look at four of the or-

ganization’s legal fights from the past few

years. The cases concern the separation of

immigrants from their children; the abor-

tion rights of an undocumented teenager;

whether the federal government would be

permitted to include a citizenship question

on the 2020 census; and the administra-

tion’s ban on the participation of most trans-

gender people in the military.

There is no question that the directors,

Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman and Eli De-

spres, have a fondness for the A.C.LU. and

share many of its goals. Nevertheless, the

movie is concerned not with simple boost-

erism but with showing the inner workings

of building a case: how potential clients are

identified, what arguments get made, how

lawyers prepare for court appearances and

how arcane matters of law affect real lives.

Although the focus is on the lawyers, we

meet some of their clients. In Tijuana, Gel-

ernt interviews a Guatemalan asylum

seeker who describes being separated from

his son after arriving at the United States

border. Joshua Block and Chase Strangio

confer with Brock Stone, a longtime trans-

gender officer in the Navy.

“The Fight” briefly acknowledges that

the A.C.L.U. has also defended less sympa-

thetic clients. Jeffery Robinson, a deputy le-

gal director, says there were tough discus-

sions within the organization after the vio-

lence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when

the A.C.L.U. had pressed in court that the

white nationalists had a right to rally. On

other matters, lawyers read aloud their

hate mail and play nasty voice-mail mes-

sages for the camera.

If the filmmakers succeed in wringing

drama from decisions that have already

come down, their efforts at character devel-

opment are hit-and-miss. Showing people

struggling with everyday technology has

become an inane documentary motif, and

Gelernt’s apparently chronic difficulties

with keeping his cellphone charged add

more cutesiness than texture. On the other

hand, it is bracing to hear audio of Brigitte

Amiri, a lawyer who works on reproductive-

rights cases, parrying with then-Judge

Brett M. Kavanaugh when she argued be-

fore him at the United States Court of Ap-

peals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It

is especially invigorating to watch Dale Ho

prepare to present the census case to the

Supreme Court. It’s the first case he has ar-

gued there, he says, and an opportunity he

didn’t expect.

The directors film Ho in a hotel room

practicing his opening remarks in front of a

mirror and flubbing them, hoping he won’t

do so the next day. (He didn’t.) Later, when

the court rules, we watch him reading the

complicated decision at the same time the

rest of country does, and his dawning real-

ization — after initially thinking he has lost

— that he won.

BEN KENIGSBERG FILM REVIEW

The A.C.L.U., Making Cases

The filmmakers focus on

lawyers, including Dale

Ho as he prepared to

present a case to the

Supreme Court.

A documentary shares an

organization’s goals but goes

beyond boosterism.

The Fight

Rated PG-13. Images of

detention centers.

Running time: 1 hour 36

minutes. Rent or buy on

Google Play and other

streaming platforms and

pay-TV operators.

THE MOST DEVASTATINGLY cinematic im-
ages in “Rebuilding Paradise” arrive in the
first 10 minutes. This documentary, directed
by Ron Howard, opens with (mainly first-
person) footage of the November 2018 wild-
fire that ravaged Paradise, Calif. We’re told
it’s morning, but the sky suggests the dead
of night. Traffic backs up. Horses run free.
The low, tonal rumblings of the score — by
Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe — add to the
sense of watching an apocalypse, or per-
haps an alien invasion.
While the subsequent visuals aren’t as
striking, the drama scarcely ebbs. Howard
keeps the focus on the residents of Paradise.
Several are introduced in detail as they
grapple with how — or whether — to return.
Nearby homes are scarce. The water is con-
taminated. The school district’s superin-
tendent says eight out of nine schools were
damaged or destroyed. (We see makeshift
classroom space in a mall.) And the resi-
dents, while navigating the civic complex-
ities of reconstituting the town, and while

living in a place that still poses hazards (a

pyrogeographer says that controlled burn-

ing will make the woods safer and less

prone to spreading fire), also need to care

for their health.

A film like “Rebuilding Paradise” could be

made about other climate-change-driven

catastrophes — a notion that the closing

montage makes explicit. But this particular

movie has a special timeliness: Watching

Paradise’s high schoolers graduate at their

athletic field — something initially thought

to be improbable — inevitably raises the

question of how the district will fare

through the pandemic. Though it might

seem generic in some respects, “Rebuilding

Paradise” resonates with the moment.

BEN KENIGSBERG FILM REVIEW

A scene from the documentary “Rebuilding Paradise,” directed by Ron Howard.

PETE MULLER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

From the Ashes, Some Hope

Rebuilding Paradise

Rated PG-13 for terrifying fires and PTSD.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In select

theaters and on virtual cinemas:

films.nationalgeographic.com.

BD