As many have pointed out, comedy is always based on misery. Misery is based off of stupidity. Revenge is a stupid thing to do, therefore making revenge hilarious. That is the approach to the best foreign film nominee, Wild Tales: a film of endless joys, but only if you can stomach them. I could and the laughter was inconsolable. The premise to Wild Tales, is its 6 tales of brutal, but hilarious revenge, playing out one after the other, only connected by the common theme of revenge, and the fact that the tones seem very similar. As an anthology film (a film containing short stories) that is something of absolute necessity. If the stories don't match up, if they don't fit together then the film falls apart. Wild Tales is a film that pretty much makes it impossible for that to happen. Why? It keeps stepping up it's game. Each story gets more and more warped as you go along, and this keeps the excitement, intensity, and best of all, hilarity up. With that out of the way, I would like to mention that Wild Tales pulls no punches. It's hilarious, but also brutal, taking both of those emotions and barraging you with them until you have to give into the fun. Yeah, I know that sounds odd, but frankly the movie only takes its first story to do this. The following will contain spoilers. You see the way Wild Tales warps you, is just as warped as its stories. In the first one, "Pasternak" it involves a group of people on a plane who have all gotten prepaid tickets. They start to realize that they have all done wrong, by a man named Pasternak who has as we soon find out locked himself in the cockpit. See, now the stupidity of taking revenge in such a crazy, and over the top way starts to make the entire thing funny. But this is in fact a plane falling from the sky making you in the audience panic. It's the combination of the two that really drives the movie. They create a fantastic rush that the film more than often keeps up. However, this is a hard line to walk. The film could have, at any moment tipped into being mean spirited, rather than being the blackest comedy around these days, but it doesn't. Again the ridiculousness of the stupidity is hilarious, but the work of the actors and crew also make this film shine. The acting especially. Every single story has its big star. I won't revel to much, but in the short time we see these characters we clearly see both masterings of hard drama and physical comedy. These people are putting their all into being ridiculous as well, and the result is invigorating. I would like to make special mention of the music, which had the ability to bring even the darkest scene of the movie up. I am having a hard time describing the great fun that comes from the brutal revenge of this movie. I will assure you of one thing. You won't be bored through any of it, and you'll probably be laughing. I give Wild Tales a 10 out of 10. Reviewed by Stephen Tronicek. Edited by Mia Rintoul
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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. |