Dick Laurent is dead If the first film of the director of the drama “Lonely Man” about a depressed professor who lost a loved one, was a kind of “American Beauty” in the scenery of the sixties, it will be difficult to find something similar to “Under the cover of night”. The only association close in spirit is David Lynch’s Highway to Nowhere. Here and there, a married couple appears before us, the relationship in which is far from the former sincerity and sensuality. In Lynch’s film, the characters receive a videotape of their own home in the mail, and an unfamiliar voice on the phone tells them that “Dick Laurent is dead.” Ford’s family “idyll” is invaded by a parcel from her ex-husband Susan, with an offer to meet and a manuscript of his new novel “Nocturnal Animals”, as the original name of the film. In both films, these mysterious events and the discovery of unexpected premises lead to the same shots – the flight of the camera over the night desert road, which will lead the characters to the most incredible endings and dead ends. And someone, maybe, nowhere. On the same night highway, the director, diligently peering into the darkness, saw a completely new, unknown road and drove his own way, which does not intersect with other authors. There is, of course, in the picture of Ford and the uncompromising Coens, and the unpredictability of Hitchcock, and the blurred line between reality and fiction, as in Bergman, but in general “Under the cover of night” – the film is completely original and original.
The film is based on the little-known, albeit twice published in Russia, Austin Wright’s novel Tony and Susan, and when writing the script, Ford did not depart far from the original source, preferring to accurately convey the spirit of the original work. And here and there is the story of how a woman can not break away from the gloomy and cruel affair of her ex-husband, noticing in each event and character the similarity of the manuscript with her own destiny. The director went even further than the writer and with the help of cunning techniques available only in film art, firmly connected the events taking place in reality and the history of the novel. Gradually, swallowing page after page of the manuscript, the heroine realizes that her ex-husband purposefully created a metaphor for their relationship, a kind of novel about a novel, which is transmitted with filigree accuracy with the help of editing glues, smoothly flowing from the real scene to the fictional. But despite all the saturation of events on the screen, any viewer should turn away from what the narrator of this story allows himself. The character of the manuscript, Tony, is experiencing severe suffering and the blows of fate, and the director at the same time selects rather anti-aesthetic shots, thereby creating a test for the eyes and mind of the viewer. No wonder Tony looks exactly like Susan's ex-husband. With each blow to the face of the character, it is easier for us to take on the heartbeats that Susan inflicted on her husband in the immediately demonstrated flashbacks, which will allow after the open finale everyone to take the side of the hero whom the director sympathizes with. If, having drowned the excitement and suppressed emotions, the viewer suddenly manages to break away from the contemplation of the picture at least for a second, the message laid down by the author will become completely clear. Why do we have to worry about the characters in the movie? Any movie. After all, even from the screen, they persistently try to prove that we are observing not just a fictional story, but a story about a fictional story. But for some reason, the suffering of someone invented a character causes a storm of emotions even if it does not exist, and therefore the events of the tape lead to conclusions completely absurd. At the same time, there is no surrealism in the picture - only a harsh reality, which with each frame becomes increasingly difficult to perceive calmly.
A non-standard film should assemble a non-standard team, and therefore it is quite logical that the picture was created by amazing people. It has already been mentioned about the extraordinary director, so it would be fair to devote a few lines to the actors. Jake Gyllenhaal is surprised that he has not yet won a single Oscar nomination, although he annually shows a variety of acting images, proving that he can play anyone. Amy Adams is amazing that with her completely far from perfect appearance, she has amazing charm and sophistication. It is interesting to watch how in her latest films she easily beats all the men in the frame, without much effort taking all the audience’s attention to herself. Michael Shannon is charismatic as ever, managing even to bring devilish notes to the role of a positive character, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson generally played his best role at the moment, portraying a mad and dangerous scoundrel, confident in his impunity.
Thanks to the open finale, the number of interpretations of the events shown is limited only by the imagination of the viewer. We can assume that Ford again shot a piercing drama about loneliness, or you can call the picture pretentious postmodern kitsch. In any case, like every creator, the director first of all tried to show how art affects reality and is intertwined with it. Whether it upsets you or shocks you, charms you or angers you, this film will somehow be impossible to erase from memory, and for someone it can and will become that very unexpected manuscript in the mailbox or the phrase from the phone tube that Dick Laurent is dead.
8 out of 10
Original