So on Friday, 14 December 2012 I wrote a blog about how I went to the cinema on my own and watched this film with Sam Rockwell. I was sitting next to a couple in the back row who in the crevices of my mind, had a pink puffer coat resting over their knees which were resting on the seats in front of them. If I remember right they used it as a cover for whatever was happening between them which involved a lot of shifting and shuffling.
In my original blog I was thoroughly delighted by the now Oscar nominated Sam Rockwell who I wrote a blog about not very long ago. Needless to say, I still adore the cast. Now I can get excited about the fact that I recognised Harry Dean Stanton as Psychopath No 2 in the recount of his tale. Coincidentally I saw him in Wild at Heart the other day and found myself madly in love with him. In addition Christopher Walken is still (apart from Rockwell) the best part of this film.
Here I am. Watching this film again trying to discern how Martin McDonagh could potentially run away with the Best Picture Oscar tomorrow night. I realised that his style was somewhat perfected in In Bruges. Shifting his sensibilities to America seemed like a good place to make some money and fits his nihilistic view but when you take away Brendan Gleeson (admittedly replacing him with Walken...) you kind of lose the beautiful soul underneath.
Since 2012 a couple of things have happened. I don't go to the cinema on my own half as much and I got a 9-5 kind of job. I also signed up for Mubi which presents 30 films at any given time for streaming. They usually provide a varied array of old and new, world cinema and Hollywood, I like it.
So I watched Six Shooter on there, it was the first film directed by Martin McDonagh it is a short film (just under 30 minutes). It starred Brendan Gleeson getting a train ride home after his wife had just died. It is brutal and the blackest humour, it features a white rabbit and some bloody violence and it featured what I would confidently call McDonagh's first psychopath. I adored it.
In theory, from what I can see, McDonagh works exclusively in Psychopaths. This is his most messy film as (now that I've watched more of his oeuvre develop over the years) it looks like he's just toying with too many ideas and decided to make a film from them. The overwhelming sense of too much going on suffocates this film and prevents it from being a masterpiece. It works because for the most part I get the sense that the 3 main guys, Rockwell, Walken and Farrell are operating as 3 aspects of McDonagh's own ID. They are all voicing elements of his mindset and their core arguments in the second act seem to be dismantling the film's existence itself. But then these arguments are completely disregarded for the violent delights and humour.
The main thing which itches about this film is how long it goes on for. I mean sure, wring out as much insane violence and meta-commentary as you can but you can't make it 30 minutes shorter? It's just a bunch of dudes bickering with guns at the end and that's neither cute nor particularly funny. Walken sells the shit out of it though.
Then there is the way it treats it's female characters. A correction he desperately tries to make in Three Billboards. But as I've said before, Frances McDormand's character could be gender swapped with little issue. I stand by my issue with McDonagh being unable to write believable and remotely interesting females. But he tried... The fact that Woody Harrelson is more torn up about his dog than about his girlfriend is ridiculous but in a funny way, right? It's all one big joke.
The film appears to be warmly regarded due to the amount of humour injected into it. Rockwell's performance makes up the most of this. It has some lovely pensive moments in among the messed up insanity. Plus some ridiculous flights of fancy just for kicks.
One thing I can say with all honesty is that I loved the soundtrack to Seven Psychopaths. It has a winking old school style and a delightful irony woven through. P P Arnold singing The First Cut is the Deepest and some of The Walkmen playing and the Stone Poneys along with everything else. A drink for the music editor!
It's just such a movie, it doesn't even try to exist in any form of reality. Sure the characters have some delightfully human reactions in their acidic exchanges but for the most part nothing happens in any kind of realistic way. We're not in Kansas anymore, we're in the world of Oz where nothing quite makes any sense but everything is engineered to solely entertain. Beautiful women, adorable dogs, charismatic actors with flights of fancy baked in for fun.
It remains, in my mind, not essentially a good film but it's one that prompts much thought. Furthermore at least Billboards went some way to correct the course and work towards something more. I admire ambition and appreciate black humour, therefore I don't think I will ever quite get bored of seeing where McDonagh goes in the future. Plus watching Sam Rockwell indulge in his most charismatic lunacy is a never ending treat.
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