Joe Carnahan’s The Grey is macho, brutal poetry, a film that wears its bruised, wounded heart on its heavy-flannel sleeve. This is a force of nature cinema experience that leaves me crushed every time I experience it. Quiet, oppressively cold, and deeply introspective, this is an intense, Jack London-esque tale of machismo in the face of all-but-certain-death. Had this movie been released at the end of 2011 the Oscar nominations would have been different, as Liam Neeson’s towering performance would surely have been recognized with a nomination. Jumping into this project almost immediately after the death of his wife, he couldn’t have known how real life would have informed his aching, forceful work in The Grey. When the final 10 minutes of this film arrives, there’s a major twist, and it makes the entire film even that much more moving and powerful. I’m aware of the fact that many meat-head audience members were near riotous over the fact that The Grey wasn’t some sort of WWF-style smack-down between the guy from Taken and a pack of rabid wolves. With certain movies, the job of Hollywood marketing teams seem to be to hoodwink potential ticket buyers into thinking they’re lining up to see one type of movie, and this is what happened when people saw the ads for The Grey – they saw guys running away from wolves and Neeson throwing up his dukes so they expected a near constant wolf-brawl. Yes, some of this stuff does happen, just not in the way you’d think it would happen. Carnahan wasn’t going for the cheap and easy with this unflinchingly emotional piece of work. And when things do get rough, they’re believably rough, with chilling consequences. And besides, the wolves in this movie are as much metaphorical creations as they are living manifestations of animals; to literalize every single thing we see in a feature film is to do a disservice to the artists who are asking more of us as viewers. Carnahan is a 70’s influenced filmmaker, and in this film, he was deeply interested in character as much as bloody action. His eclectic output over the years has been interesting to observe and as a filmmaker he’s hard to pin down; my guess is that he likes it like that. I’ve long felt that he’s a filmmaker constantly at odds with the money-guys, as he’s always seems interested in digging beneath the surface of things, no matter the genre or aesthetic style. He’s due to have that film that truly blows him up and I can’t wait for that day. With The Grey, I was not prepared for how still and patient the filmmaking would be one minute, and then how visceral and violent it would get the next. It’s a gut-punch type movie, a piece of work that will likely haunt anyone who encounters it. Featuring one of the most harrowing depictions of a plane crash ever captured on film and ending on a note of tremendous ambiguity and narrative power, The Grey isn’t a film for the weak stomached or weak willed.
Podcasting Them Softly 