Madness, chaos, rage, insanity swirl together in Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Bronson to create cacophony of nihilistic delight. Watching Tom Hardy as the stolid and unpredictable Charlie Bronson, I cannot help myself but stare, my mouth gaping in an hypnotic daze. This is the second time I’ve seen this film and none of its nuances have diminished in the slightest. hypnotic is really the key word here, the film seems to lull you into a slow, baroque craziness that grows in intensity as the film develops. There is something indescribably beautifully in the mise en scene in this film: a series of portraits, displayed in a dialectical montage to establish an almost classical sense of convention, surrealism bubbling just under the surface of every wide eyed grin and every punch.
Refn is a director who knows how to let his shots breath so to speak. Like aging a good piece of meat or bottle of wine, the images, even when lacking motion, speak for themselves. The composition of the figures on frame, the length of the each shot creates a perfect impression on the brain, the images become memorable. You may be sitting at your desk or in your car or wherever, when suddenly you will see one of these images dancing in your mind. You may forgot where it was from, it may be totally out of context but it’s there. The film does this not by being abundantly strange like say Holy Mountain or Eraserhead, but with the simplicity and beauty in which each shot represents. The constantly oscillating rhythm of the film add to this haunting quality as well, switching from fast-paced montage to long mobile takes, the feeling is maniac, by-polar and by all accounts quite unstable. But how pleasurable this insanity is! How perfectly it flows with Charlie’s unstable unpredictable mind!
Continuing Refn’s theme of loving the eighties, the soundtrack is very....well eighties. But not singularly so, the film also has a strong classical background, as well as a kick ass sequence which features lip synching, a soul son and footage of the actual Charlie Bronson starting a prison riot all by himself. The sound in general is spectacular in this film, the opening song is slowed down slightly giving the already expressively light sequence a uneasiness about it, a great introduction to the mad boxer.
The film is one that works on a premises of isolation, more specially, social isolation. Most films about a criminal focus on the semantic elements of their lives: where they grew up, were they rich or poor, bullied or bullies, loved or unloved, angry or calm etc. This is done in an attempt to explain or at least justify the latter actions of the criminal. So when Mesrine begins his legacy of crime and flirtations with revolutionary violence we can say it was due to his troubled relationship with his father or it was a product of the general social upheaval of the time etc. This simply does not occur in Bronson. Instead, the film takes a total subjective stance: we see and hear through Bronson’s ears and eyes alone. The two first acts of the film are in a way, Bronson’s side of the story, as he addresses the captive audience in his mind telling us step by step what he was thinking feeling. This internal monologue (visualized literally by an audience sitting before Bronson on stage) is strong at the beginning of the film wanes a bit for a simple thematic reason: The basic paradox of Bronson’s character is brought to a breaking point. Throughout the film, Bronson says over and over again that he always wanted to be famous, and that he can’t sing can’t act so might as well be England’s most violent prisoner. This label changes throughout the film from most violent, to most expensive and finally resting on most famous. Later on in the film, for various reasons, an opportunity arises for Bronson to garner celebrity beyond just being a badass with a mustache, and he turns it down. The question is this: is Charlie looking for fame or violence? Is his lust for fame just an excuse to violence or vise-versa. When given the choice, Bronson chooses violence and in one of the better scenes of the film, in his internal monologue, he turns away from the audience looks down and walks away. There is nothing left for him to explain.
It would easy to pin some sort of half assed bland thematic statement to Bronson, like “it’s a critique of society’s infatuation with fame” but this I think would render the film a great disservice. Refn’s work is not a that simple, as Bronson does not have hordes of adoring fans and in fact the film is so focused on him that we have hardly any indication of anything else. Throughout the film, we rarely see other prisoners and never see Bronson in gen pop. This film is a character portray of a violent man. As such, it cannot be so easily pigeon holed as some sort of Oliver Stone morality tale. The film, like Bronson himself, is a contradiction. A contradiction I enjoy every time I see it.
