A Most Violent Year

JC Chandor's third film as writer and director is about as far removed from his second as is possible: where All Is Lost was a one-man show with barely any dialogue set in a single location (more or less), A Most Violent Year boasts a tremendous ensemble cast, a dense, layered script and hops effortlessly around the industrial edges of New York. Both films, though, are about one thing: survival, and what must be sacrificed to achieve it. At least in this story, thankfully, nobody is forced to contemplate the consumption of their own wee.

Ambitious businessman Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac, sheltering beneath a towering quiff) owns and runs the Standard Heating Oil Company (named, presumably, after Isaac's character in Drive). Operating in a shady grey area somewhere at the limits of the law and aided by his aggressively determined missus (Jessica Chastain), he's on the verge of sealing a deal that will finally put him on the map, if only mysterious external forces wouldn't keep sabotaging his business. If any of that - plus the film's early 1980s setting - sounds familiar, then yes, you saw a suspiciously similar story when Bob Hoskins tried to redevelop London's Docklands in The Long Good Friday. But whereas that film predicted Thatcherism and the ruthless ambition of '80s England, A Most Violent Year is very much an American tale, concerned primarily with three of the USA's foremost preoccupations: oil, money and guns.

Morales' situation is small-scale in a film that feels like it should have a more epic, Godfather-y scope. Maybe that's down to his more-than-physical resemblance to Michael Corleone (not to mention fellow immigrant Tony Montana; if Isaac becomes this generation's Pacino, as is entirely likely, film historians will point to A Most Violent Year as the most obvious correlation), but in fact what we're watching is The American Dream in microcosm. And parts of it are more relevant to the present-day US than many of its citizens might comfortably admit.

It's a canny move by Chandor to address gun control as he does here: Morales' trucks are being hijacked by pistol-packing thugs, but he's determined not to allow his drivers to arm themselves - despite pressure from their union - for fear of escalation of violence. The wider societal parallels are blinding, but at the same time the situation works to further exacerbate Morales' problems: he needs money from the bank to buy a new production facility, the bank need him to be clean. His wife Anna, meanwhile, has no intention of allowing a little thing like the law stand in the way of her husband's success.

Anna is played, in true Lady Macbeth style, by a lip-smacking Jessica Chastain. She's mad as eggs, but her desperation for wealth is all in the detail: she dresses like she thinks rich women dress but only has about three costumes throughout the whole film, and her obviously fake nails are a cheap attempt to cover the metaphorical dirt on her hands. Chastain's scenes with David Oyelowo's inquisitive District Attorney bristle with defensive animosity, and her chemistry with Isaac is almost perpetually on the edge of explosive.

A Most Violent Year is surprisingly unviolent; not just in terms of on-screen savagery but in its general demeanour. Chandor doesn't let the leads showboat, and there's only one scene that looks like it might have given the studio's purse-string holders cause for alarm. What it lacks in pizazz, though, it makes up for in smart dialogue and a steely performance from Isaac, with classy support from Chastain, Oyelowo, Albert Brooks and Elyes Gabel as one of Morales' put-upon drivers. In an effort to replicate the muted browns and greys of the era, Bradford Young's cinematography is perhaps the weakest link in the chain, occasionally threatening to drown the film in a wave of dull, flat beige, but this is a minor quibble; A Most Violent Year is further notice of JC Chandor's intention to build a formidable filmography, and also happens to be the best Oscar Isaac film out this week.

All Is Lost: The Eight Ages Of Cap'n Bob

Batten down the hatches, there's a metaphor blowing in

Hopefully by now you've seen All Is Lost, a perfectly reasonable film starring Robert Redford as a wrinkly, sea-bound equivalent of Sandra Bullock in Gravity. If not, why not give it a whizz? It's the tenth-best film I saw at last year's London Film Festival, and only nine films in existence can honestly say they come with a higher recommendation than that.

That said, it is lacking something. It's the tale of a man in a boat who, through sheer circumstance, has to fight for survival against the elements. Maybe he succeeds, maybe he doesn't: the ending's fairly ambiguous - or at least it was to me. But perhaps I needed that ambiguity, because everything I'd seen in the preceding 100 minutes just seemed too... straightforward. We learn nothing about Redford's character (which is, frankly, a preferable approach to Bullock's crowbarred and clichéd dead kid backstory), so All Is Lost becomes purely a conflict between man and nature. Nothing wrong with that as such, but I needed more. I just couldn't believe someone would make a film like that and not have something else to say.

And so it was that, mid-way through the film, I began to see a metaphor emerge, along the vague lines that the entire story was an allegory of a human life from conception to death and possibly beyond. Whether it was writer / director JC Chandor's intention to imply subliminal meaning, I don't know. I haven't bothered to find out, because if it wasn't then the film really is just about a man on a boat and I'll be disappointed. I'm pretty sure the metaphor I had in mind wasn't planned though, for two reasons: one, it falls apart like a child's fib under the lightest of scrutiny, and two, when I outlined it to The Shiznit's Ali Gray in a post-screening chat he looked at me as if I was speaking Hindi and then laughed at me. It's fair to say the idea hadn't occurred to him.

But more on that guy later; allow me to outline my hypothesis. As I say, it's idiotic and incomplete, but bear with me. Also, be warned: this bit contains spoilers up the wazzoo.

The Eight Ages Of Cap'n Bob 1. Conception Cap'n Bob's journey across the ocean / existence, at least as far as we're concerned, begins with penetration. A large, firm container forcibly inserts itself into the fragile outer skin of his boat (the Virginia Jean, which, er, sounds a bit like 'vagina'), spilling its load. Shortly afterwards, Cap'n Bob emerges from his vessel and our protagonist's story begins. So far, so "seriously?", I know, but stay with me. And don't forget that the chances of any given sperm fertilising an egg are astronomical; probably about the same as a container crashing into your boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean. 2. The plain sailing of youth I seem to remember an early stretch of All Is Lost in which nothing much happened. It was just like the carefree days of childhood, or something. Alternatively I may have nodded off. 3. Direction and education We all need direction in our formative years, and Cap'n Bob is no exception. He attempts to find his by fixing the navigation systems on his boat, while simultaneously schooling himself by reading about celestial navigation. 4. Adolescence What's that on the horizon? Why, it's The Tempest Of Puberty! Things are about to get stormy, and everything is going to change. There'll be lots of tossing, which is a cheap joke on my part for which I apologise, but basically Cap'n Bob's about to enter a maelstrom from which he can only hope to emerge stronger and better prepared for whatever the future has in store. 5. Leaving home When Cap'n Bob's first home becomes unsuitable for his needs (because it's basically matchsticks), it's time for him to move out to a smaller, cramped abode where he lives off meagre food rations and drinks the juice from baked bean cans. This is a time of survival, when he must fend for himself: if only he could find another human being to help him face a cruel world and wash his underpants. 6. A need to belong Cap'n Bob masters a skill: he learns to operate a sextant. With this he aims to propel himself towards international shipping lanes, a blatant (i.e. tenuous) metaphor for business and the constantly-moving stream that is working life. Only by joining in can Bob hope to live like everyone else. Heh, "Bob hope". But wait! There are sharks in the water, predators who want to bring him down for their own selfish reasons. Welcome to adulthood. 7. Failure Cap'n Bob's grand plan fails for reasons both within and beyond his control, so he writes a letter. This is clearly representative of the part of life where we fuck everything up and start a blog because nobody will listen to me us. 8. Senility and death Like an old man losing control of his faculties and behaving in an increasingly irrational manner, Cap'n Bob rather stupidly sets fire to his own life raft. Death comes for him, and while he struggles against it for as long as he can, eventually he gives up. In the film's final moments, he's either saved or drowned, depending on how full or empty your glass is. Personally I think he's hanging up his sou'wester in Davy Jones' Locker.

So there you have it. Shakespeare proposed the seven ages of man; I went one better. IN YOUR FACE, 'THE BARD'! I fully expect and deserve ridicule for it, but let's be honest: films are as much about what we bring to them as they are about what they bring to us. Ali liked All Is Lost and didn't need to endow it with a load of subtext in order to enjoy it, and that's fine. I found it lacking, so filled in the blanks for myself - I didn't do it deliberately, my brain just went looking for more than it could see and found stuff that may or may not be there.

I forget the point I was trying to make. Maybe you can make one up and retroactively apply it to this post yourself.