This past weekend…I made the time to catch BLUE RUIN on iTunes VoD (frankly, one of the better things ever invented). I had read quite a bit about the movie, and was intrigued by its (primarily) Virginia setting – I went to both undergrad and law school in Virginia, and consider it my second home. Kentucky, the place where I was born and raised, was also named-checked in the movie (Have you ever been to Kentucky?), so that was a clear bonus as well.
As I Tweeted earlier – run, don’t walk, to catch the movie. The premise is simple – a man seeking revenge for the murder of his parents (and to give away more undermines the story’s real power). Elegiac and lyrical, it’s a slow-burn thriller that works in scarcity – composed of empty spaces, shadows…silence. It’s a great example of powerful and assured storytelling where less is more – evoking, suggesting, hinting – and in doing so, reveals a far deeper narrative than any of the more recent, overstuffed, blockbusters. The violence – fast, ugly, unavoidable – is a blood-stain on a black and white photograph. I’ve often said that I like to write about fundamentally decent people struggling with the consequences of really bad choices, and BLUE RUIN’s Dwight (Macon Blair) is that sort of character. Neither hero nor anti-hero, Dwight is simply human – he’s us. Flawed and following a moral compass long broken by grief (and according to his also suffering sister, weakness), Dwight’s arc of vengeance is neither liberating nor satisfying, and isn’t meant to be.
It is however, utterly compelling.
BLUE RUIN was directed by Jeremy Saulnier, on a $38,000 budget, but there’s a reason Hollywood doesn’t make movies like this – it can’t afford to. BLUE RUIN is a hard movie to box, to package. It’s demanding and takes its genre conventions for a ride – inviting the viewer behind the wheel of its blue, bullet-damaged Pontiac Bonneville. From some of the interviews and stories I’ve read, Blair and Saulnier grew up a lot like I did, roughly same time period, devouring more than their fair share of 80’s action and genre movies. Their collective vision and love of those movies, and their willingness to subvert our expectations, bleeds through their entire film, right through to the final frame.
Earlier this year I was a vocal fan of Nic Pizzolatto’s TRUE DETECTIVE (and his novel, GALVESTON), and BLUE RUIN is another masterful example of authentic storytelling. It knows what it wants to say, and at every beat, picks pretty much the perfect word/image to say it.
As a fiction writer striving to tell the most authentic, evocative stories I can, I loved BLUE RUIN. And the biggest compliment I can give? Wish I had written it.
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