I admit to being a sucker for the revenge film as much as anyone. Such films appeal to so many of our baser and higher instincts: e.g., the thirst for violence as well as the desire for true justice. Jeremy Saulnier's film Blue Ruin attempts to both capitalize on those instincts and to critique them. While the film is interesting and works solidly as a mood piece, it does far more of the capitalizing and less of the critiquing than the film tries to let on.
Macon Blair plays Dwight, a homeless man who is living out by the beach in a broken down old Pontiac. He gets word that the guy that murdered his parents is being released from prison. So Dwight decides to get his car started and to seek revenge on the murderer. Only when this hapless vigilante starts out on his path for revenge, he sparks a family feud that spins far out of his control.
Saulnier mostly restrains everything - color, performances, camera work - to try and keep the proceedings as within a corridor of hazy, bruised pain as possible. Dwight is not a man that howls with rage - he's mostly a shy, confused man whose greatest emotion seems to be that he is being denied the quick death that he apparently expected from his suicide mission.
As a mood piece, it certainly creates a level of restraint that is typically missing from the violent revenge fantasy film. Saulnier plainly wants to depict revenge and its consequences as being quietly dirty and filled with pain rather than satisfaction. He also does an interesting job of showing how one man's quest for vengeance often ensnares so many others (willingly or unwillingly). Saulnier has said in interviews that he wanted to build a film where most of the movie takes place after what would constitute the climax of most revenge movies. It's an interesting experiment and lends itself to a sense of dread and tension as we wait to see how Dwight's shaky quest for vengeance will end.
While the movie is solidly worth watching, it unfortunately does not add up to as much as it portends. Saulnier, serving as writer, director, and cinematographer, is unable to add up the pieces into any truly involving character study or commentary larger than "family feuds are not as fun as they seem." Saulnier's attempts to subvert the revenge flick formula seem ultimately half-hearted - perhaps he also loves the conventions too much himself to really tear their hearts out.
While Dwight is hardly the revenge fantasy hero we expect or even want, Saulnier depicts the family he is feuding with as a bunch of white trash trolls. I use the word "troll" intentionally - as in a late scene they stand in a semi-circle around an answering machine somewhat dancing like trolls and practically begging for their comeuppance. When one woman turns around, she has what appears to either be a world-record sleep deficit or a bit too much black makeup around her eyes, distracting from a moment that should not be so comically rendered.
Saulnier draws these people (not just in that scene, but in earlier ones) as complete caricatures. Every now and then he'll briefly nod to their humanity (when one begs for his life or when Dwight picks up the family's photo album), but he immediately then returns to treating them like inhuman monsters. Saulnier can't help but depict this family as a pack of villains rather than as just another side to Dwight's pained coin. Saulnier thus embraces rather than subverts revenge film cliché.
When the film ends, it feels like the film's ambitions are never quite realized. What seemed like it might be an interesting critique of a popular sub-genre ultimately feels a little too married to the formula. It neither feels like a fully formed critique nor a fully satisfactory revenge plot. It instead straddles the line. It does have some twists on the formula, and it definitely creates a different dimension than most films in the sub-genre, but it never reaches far enough beyond the ordinary to be great.
Screened at the theater.
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