Denis Villeneuve
Sicario

[Contains plot spoilers]

Denis Villeneuve has not yet broken into Italy: his previous film Enemy wasn't even distributed. But the Canadian director is one of the big rising names in recent years (he will direct the sequel to Blade Runner) and the Cannes showcase must have helped our distributors decide positively. Moreover, it was received in a lukewarm manner at the French festival, but I sincerely struggle to understand how one could criticize a film of this quality.

The plot itself is certainly nothing new, but Villeneuve's execution gives the storyline a remarkable series of merits. However, I want to clarify that the script is far from mediocre as well. The character writing is truly mature, surgical in outlining traits without necessarily pushing them to extreme consequences: the returning Benicio Del Toro is a dark avenger, but kills only if necessary for his plan, he is icy but not gratuitous. The same goes for Brolin, symbolizing the cynical and almost indifferent modus operandi of the CIA, who is portrayed with balance, without overplaying. Overall, I think the greatest merit of Sicario in terms of content is the choice not to provide answers: a conflict is exposed, a clash between opposing yet equal forms of violence, but there is no attempt to claim that the CIA is terrible, quite the opposite. The ambition is to objectify a searing paradox of human action: to stop those who do evil, one must in turn commit that same evil. In this gruesome scenario, the ultimate objectives of the counterparts are almost eclipsed, with a sole focus on the method.

The characters are well written and even better portrayed: Emily Blunt is the perfect face for this kind of film, and the hope is that she can appear in many more. She knows how to be expressive even in the frozen immobility of her Kate.

But what elevates the value of the film is the entire aesthetic component, which in its austerity manages to intoxicate the viewer, it narcotizes with its dark, twilight taste. Villeneuve gets everything right: his shots seem to look at things with new eyes, highlighting every time the physical and material component of the sequence. Automatic and distracted enjoyment is thus avoided: things are rediscovered.

There's a splendid work on photography (Roger Deakins) and chromatics: it's easy to cite the tunnel raid sequence, but the one with Del Toro in the car with the corrupted police officer is even better. Darkness reigns almost unchallenged.

Villeneuve's aesthetics do not need to show blood to convey violence: many murders are not framed, but the horror emerges strongly from other elements: Emily Blunt's expressions, the colors, but also Jóhann Jóhannsson's frightening and booming music that introduces us to the scenarios with a deep sense of unease. Villeneuve succeeds in giving meaning to sequences that would otherwise be insignificant: the car chase at the Mexico-US border does not present many elements of violence for long stretches, but it is rendered almost terrifying by the director's eye and his continuous probing of the protagonist's emotions. This cinema oozes meanings but does not flaunt them in a crass manner: the corrupt policeman is introduced from the very first scenes, but when Del Toro takes him out, there's no room for emphatic underlining, a very brief shot of the lifeless body on the road suffices.