For Those in Peril (2013, Paul Wright) (Patreon)

52/100

Movies about grief fall, at least for me, into two distinct categories: conventional and bizarro. Conventional depictions tend to bore me, because the emotional palette conforms so closely to what you'd expect; it takes Lonergan-level genius to find naturalistic notes that haven't been played a thousand times before. As a consequence, perhaps, I often flip for movies that filter profound loss either through mania (much of early Egoyan but especially Exotica; also Vertigo, though obviously I have some company there) or through elaborate, absurdist enforced coping mechanisms (The Game; Truly, Madly, Deeply). Straddling that divide, as For Those in Peril attempts to do, doesn't really work. Basically Ordinary People in a Scottish fishing village (minus the therapy, thankfully), with a young man experiencing crippling survivor's guilt after his beloved brother dies at sea, the film just kind of wallows for a good long while, serving up such morose "favorites" as the Karaoke Breakdown (performed by Kate Dickie, who at least gets to play a more supportive mom than Mary Tyler Moore did). There's a potentially interesting dynamic between Aaron and his late brother's girlfriend, who at one point encourages him to "play" his brother à la Alps; Wright doesn't burrow into this, though, instead having the girlfriend's father assault Aaron. Even Aaron's conviction that the five lost fishermen might still be alive (the bodies weren't found, and he himself somehow survived whatever befell the boat, though he can't remember how) plays like straightforward denial—credible, but not terribly compelling. Peril screened in Critics' Week at Cannes '13, and had I seen it there I'd definitely have bailed after half an hour.

Of course, sometimes I miss remarkable developments by doing that. Turns out this is a bizarro grief movie after all, with an ending that, while perhaps not quite as WTF as Enemy's, hits all the harder for seeming to arrive out of nowhere. (In truth, it's repeatedly foreshadowed, but I'd perceived those interludes merely as the film's controlling metaphor, not as a harbinger of insanity.) Does this delightful bugfuck flourish recode everything that precedes it? Alas, no—it's more as if someone made a fairly banal movie about Gregor Samsa's life as a traveling salesman that concludes where "The Metamorphosis" begins. Now you need to be Arthur Miller as well as Kafka. Tall order. Plus I find George MacKay a singularly bland screen presence*, which wasn't an issue in 1917 (where he's essentially just our tour guide through the spectacle) but makes Aaron frequently come across as more generically glum than electrifyingly distraught. So this is still not a film that I much enjoyed overall, or that I'd ever voluntarily choose to watch again. But it is a film that I'll remember with a certain grudging fondness, which is not what I'd have expected halfway through. Doesn't appear as if Wright has yet made his true sophomore feature (I'm not inclined to count a found-footage documentary), but I'm likely to be at least a little curious about it, in the same way that I happily checked out Memento at TIFF 2000 despite having been mostly unimpressed by Following. There's something here that might develop, given further opportunities. 

* Screen acting is a mysterious animal. It's not necessarily that MacKay isn't talented; there's nothing in particular I can point to that he does wrong. I think he might simply have a face that I don't "like"—not because he's unattractive (that can often be mesmerizing), but because he's...indistinct, to my eye. Somebody I'd readily confuse with dozens of others. My gaze often drifts elsewhere. Not an opinion I expect others to share; in fact it's not even an opinion, really. More of a reflex. Like I said, mysterious.