'Heartless' Review

Originally published at filmspotting.net

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Heartless

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Friday, 21 January 2011 11:30

By Alex Wilgus Heartless is an imaginative film that tells the story of Jamie, a young man with a disfiguring birthmark on his face that prevents him from having a “normal” life. It is at once psychological thriller, Faustian fantasy, horror, gangland tale and Hallmark channel family drama. Jim Sturgess (Across The Universe) plays the lead role capably, though it’s sometimes hard to believe his face wouldn’t get him any dates even with a big, red scar layered over it. Still, Sturgess’ take on the psychologically tormented loner manages to pull off an affecting level of inner anguish without dominating his co-stars. The performance belongs right up there with Jake Gyllenhaall’s Donnie Darko. Jamie’s search for inner peace leads him into a dark world where inner demons are made real and violence threatens everybody. Heartless is a nice reminder of what fantasy should be. Fantasy is not just escapism--it confronts reality with representation, and real problems with humanity’s most powerful weapon: imagination. The film is bathed in its setting, London’s East End. The neighborhoods and graffiti-covered walls and tunnels are filmed richly, with the shadows inspiring both fear and a strange comfort. From beginning to end, Heartless is a movie about cities and the people who inhabit them, but it’s a film that any human being can resonate with no matter their environment. Director Phillip Ridley doesn’t confront violence as such, but rather the spirit of violence. The devil (referred to as ‘Mr. B’) gives Jamie a deal: He will grant him his heart’s desire in return for a “piece of chaos”, which is just one little act of violence or anger or rebellion. The film’s narrative supposes that urban violence begins not with socioeconomic conditioning and behavior patterns, but with desire and choice, fundamental human emotions and actions that everybody can relate to. This Faustian choice is a refreshingly simple way to depict urban violence. People who join gangs want good things: family, protection, love and safety. They acquire these good things but deal out violence in return for them, a pattern which threatens to destroy peace and civility. It’s a two-dimensional portrait, but that’s what makes it so compelling. Most impressive perhaps is Ridley’s gumption in dealing with a subject as heavy as gang violence within a fairy tale (a very dark fairy tale, but a fairy tale nonetheless). By bending reality into fantasy, human emotions and motivations incarnate themselves into characters, and inner demons take on solid forms. Heartless is not a subtle venture, but that’s not a bad thing. When someone asked Flannery O’Connor why her characters were so exaggerated, she answered that when writing for the near-blind, one must draw large, simple caricatures. Heartless is a film for people who are in a predicament. There is a consistent sense that there is a message embedded in the plot that needs to be heard, understood and taken to heart. Often, there is little time to paint an intimate character study when dealing with big issues like violence, in the same way that a drowning man doesn’t have the time to consider the make of the life-preserver he’s thrown. This is not a lack of quality, but a lack of complexity. Sometimes, simplicity is an artistic choice in the way that Matisse would opt for painting in solid red instead of Monet’s multichrome palette. Not every film needs to have Aaron Sorkin layers of irony and double-entendre to be meaningful. Heartless is full of the kind of thick, juicy metaphor one gets from a folk tale or a fable. Its villains are toothy demons in hoodies and jeans; its heroes (or ‘victims’, rather) are doe-eyed mothers and kindly fathers. The film’s imagery is both familiarly archetypal and just weird enough to be wholly unique, exhibiting a stark originality in a time of meta-fiction, recycled characters and homages to other films (which often skirts dangerously close to artistically acceptable plagiarism). This is a movie that attacks its theme with all the boldness of Oliver Stone or James Cameron without inducing any eye-rolling. Heartless is a truly original fairy tale that contains the kind of vitality and love of filmmaking that is fun to watch. Whether or not the film’s particulars succeed in supporting its vision is debatable (I stuck with it), but unlike so many high concept fantasy and genre films these days, the spirit is willing.