Clint Eastwood’s flat, staged, clean style has not benefited him of late. The cleaned up style worked with the rose color glasses Eastwood presented on WWII, but that was mainly because content wise Flags of Our Fathers revealed a sinister exploitation in such glasses and Letters From Iwo Jima was simply too violent and cruel as to rip off the glasses and smash them on the ground. His style seems to work best when he’s subverting it with something, not just playing it straight, but to many that’s all Sully will be. A flatly composited, small effort that doesn’t seem to have too much at stake. This is not quite the case. Sully, about the “Miracle on the Hudson” aka the landing of a airplane on the Hudson River by Captain “Sully” Sullenberger after losing both engines due to birds slyly gives a reason for Clint Eastwood’s almost fake looking composites. It may seem like a backhanded compliment, but intentionally or not Eastwood has stumbled into yet again subverting his own filmmaking style. The key to breaking down the film is how he has actually done that. The records broken in this review when it comes to the description of Eastwood’s filmmaking style in this film. It’s simply a little awkward and unrealistic, but through narrative layering that actually seems pretty intentional. The film is mainly focussed on the investigation in the aftermath of the crash, which overall doesn’t seem to have that much heft to it. The capable drama to pull out of it is minimal unfortunately as not really all that much of true stakes happened. To anyone who actually knows the results of the investigation the dramatic core of the film would probably be ripped out... if this movie were being played as a straight drama, barring any underlying emotions and simply telling the story. Eastwood hasn’t done this. He’s done something better. It become readily apparent through excellent work of the whole cast, mainly from an almost effortlessly excellent Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart, that the aftermath of the Hudson landing is both subtly and unsubtly hazy and dreamy for both Sully and his co pilot (Eckhart). Now this is very easily shown in these big money shot IMAX nightmares that Sully has ie. him crashing the plane into buildings, but it’s also subtly represented in the way that the film stages the aftermath of the event (which is the whole movie) in a way that almost comes off like a miles more serious and subtle version of the parody sitcom in Natural Born Killers, in that the reality that we are witnessing is less true events and more the awkward weirdly skewed dreamlike reality that Sully and his co-pilot having both experienced a near death experience are for the time being stuck in. This stigmatizes the production creating a Rockwellian or even Lynchian tone which becomes the driving dramatic engine for a film that taken simply on it’s own merits would most likely crumble. Honestly, if directed by Spielberg, the film would have achieved a greatness probably in the heart of the character, but this enticing angle might have been lost. As far as the surface material goes Eastwood’s calm creation of the events preceding the crash excellently contrast the adrenaline rush that comes with each time we watch the plane fall from the sky, though this crash never really reaches Flight levels of intensity. Unfortunately, the previously described tone sometimes can’t hold the film up as it continues through such a light story, but for the most part Hanks and the implications of Eastwood’s own subversion of style make Sully certainly worth seeing. Sully gets an 8 out of 10.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |