Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times film critic and frequent television personage, gave the film a four-star tribute.  Ebert's favorable review has been used to help promote the film.

Having visited Bruges, and having written a travel article praising this historic city of such charm and beauty, I naturally was eager to see the film, anxious to recapture the thrill of marveling at a gem of an historical city, perfectly preserved for people to enjoy.  

Instead I was horrified to see what In Bruges had to say, and how it desecrated a famous  European city known for its aesthetic charms.  Offbeat playwright Martin McDonagh used a splendid city to stage a shooting gallery featuring dope-crazed hit men, who had begun their horrifying tale of murder in London.  

The British mastermind of the killing insisted that his two performing hit men make their getaway, escaping to a seedy Bruges hotel.

At this hotel they were to await further instructions from the master planner, who was ensconced in luxury quarters in a London flat with his wife and children.  While awaiting instructions the hit men had different personal agendas.  

The older, overweight, tired hit man, played by Brendan Gleeson, sought rest while the younger, punk hit man, played by Colin Farrell, was eager for adventure, hunting for accommodating prostitutes as he belted down beers and picked fights to display his macho-killer instincts.

Now and then the camera displayed the beauty of the Bruges canals, the white swans gliding serenely in the water, and the medieval magnificence of the medieval structures.  

Farrell, the younger hit man, enters a stunning Catholic cathedral, smirking at the sacred art on display in sculptures and paintings.  He goes to the confessional and glibly admits he is a murderer.  The priest listens quietly, and then asks why Farrell has chosen to murder people.

With a sardonic smile Farrell boldly declares his murder motive, exclaiming, "I did it for money."  Suddenly, gun in hand; he points the weapon at the priest.  He kills him with gun blast after gun blast, the shots echoing in the sacred silence of the cathedral.

To show that the hit man has a "conscience" he bursts into tears after learning that he has accidentally killed a young child who was praying in the cathedral.  The rain of gunfire added a second victim, which makes Farrell cry over the thought of killing a child.  There is never a thought over the contracted death of the priest, who had never previously met the hit man, much less done him any wrong.

Manchla Dargis in his New York Times review calls In Bruges "an amusing trifle from the potty-mouthed playwright Martin McDonagh ..." This is an interesting comment from a viewer of what is called "America's paper of record."  

Then again, some New Yorkers might appreciate this film, such as those who stood in freezing conditions, risking pneumonia to observe a Brooklyn "art" exhibit featuring a four-legged creature's defecation near a cross.  

Such individuals might well find common cause in a blood-drenched film featuring the exploits of a trio of hit men, one of whom, Farrell, takes frequent verbal pot shots at Bruges' Medieval classical art.

This "amusing trifle" of a film causes the Bruges main square to become a sea of red from the blood of the various victims before we reach fade out in this the film directorial debut of McDonagh, who sprang to fame in London with his play The Beauty Queen of Leenane.  

That play earned him the honor of London's most promising new playwright.  He followed that up with the black comedy The Pillowman that featured, among other forms of death, smothering via pillow, hence the title.

McDonagh in fact has become such a heralded presence on the London stage that, according to the Seattle-based newspaper, The Stranger, the playwright in 1994 had "four plays running simultaneously ... the first writer to accomplish that feat since Shakespeare."

McDonagh's feat can perhaps be better understood within the monopolistic current status of the once proud London stage scene, where one producer, Bill Kenwright, not only makes his mark repeatedly in that city, but has reached double digit production status on the world scene.  

It is easy to see that with fewer voices to be heard, a few voices such as that of McDonagh will be more than represented with stellar hosannas.  McDonagh represents a gigantic drop from the universal greatness of Shakespeare.

Brendan Kiley in his capsulated summary in The Stranger, concludes, "But In Bruges is strangely less violent, dark and funny than McDonagh's plays - because the pacing of movies doesn't suit McDonagh's gifts."

William Arnold in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called In Bruges "a perfectly titled and thoroughly engaging - if at times gleefully violent - black comedy ... "

While it is to be conceded that in "black comedy" the dark rather than bubbly side of life is being depicted, one wonders about a reference to "gleefully violent" within the framework of "thoroughly engaging."

By the time that the film crests with Ralph Fiennes, the London boss of the two Waiting for Godot style paid killer types albeit hapless bumpkins as well, the sea of red overpowers the once lovely, classically medieval, definitively historic Bruges.  Even the great Flemish art represented there is slammed by Farrell, whose character appears to be half borderline retard, half drug and liquor induced violent creature.

The film also received praise from Mark Rahner of The Seattle Times, who called In Bruges "The best crime comedy since the great Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ... a bloody, unpredictable action spectacle that never loses its heart.  And it's got a coked-up, racist, American dwarf."

Is the appearance of a racist dwarf a selling point for a film?  To many Americans this would prove to be a very sore point at a time when Barack Obama is receiving "Swift Boat" treatment from racists attacking him for allegedly being a Muslim.  While Obama's Christianity is a part of the public record, his racist detractors mention that his full name is Barack Hussein Obama and gleefully exploit this fact.  

To hear the audience burst out in laughter as the sick film raced on with its death and killing spree was more sickening than the ugly film itself, culminating with a blood bath.  

Didn't the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, in which six people were killed and a dozen injured, make enough of an impact in that city?  The question that must be asked is why now a four-star rating for In Bruges in the Chicago Sun-Times?

The laughter from certain audience members during the Saturday afternoon viewing I attended of the film at Capitol Hill prompted me to recall the real life recent tragedy of seven people being killed by a crazed assassin's gunfire at a party in an apartment within walking distance of the Egyptian Theatre.  

Even more recently an idealistic young woman working in the environmental rights field was brutally stabbed to death by a deranged killer, also within easy walking distance of the Egyptian Theatre.

We also recall the Virginia Tech shooting massacre as well as the recent episode at Northern Illinois University.

So now we applaud Martin McDonagh's movie debut and refer to it as a "comedy hit"?  Just how sick have certain segments of the American public become?  Have we become this de-sensitized to violence?  Is McDonagh a prophet of a bold new age such as that depicted by Stanley Kubrick in Clockwork Orange?

Carina Chocano, the Los Angeles Times movie critic, in her review of In Bruges wrote the following:

"The city plays straight man to Farrell's outrageous buffoon, silently rebuking his endless monologues about how paintings in Groeninge Museum are just `rubbish by spastics,' or how he'd be impressed with Bruges if he hadn't grown up in Dublin on a farm and was retarded.  Then again, there's something irresistible in the idea that a town criticized for being a living museum would have Russian gun-runners and pretty drug dealers dashing about, selling ketamine dwarfs on movie sets."

I must ask the L.A. Times film critic if she finds it "irresistible" that it is a known fact that drug dealers are plying their deadly trade all over the U.S.A., including, it must be sadly added, on movie sets and among the cinema crowd.  Is drug dealing the grist for comedy?

I would like to call attention to those applauding McDonagh's work to a vital segment of a letter published in USA Today on February 22 from Tom Seaman of Mill Hall, Pennsylvania in response to the recent Northern Illinois University shootings:

"This is a wake-up call to the video game industry to re-evaluate the amount of violence in games.  The evidence is clear.  Children gain dangerous shooting skills by playing video games.

"This is a wake-up call to parents to better screen what movies and TV programs their children watch.

"How many more school shootings before we wake up from our apathy?"

In conclusion, to paraphrase the evaluation of Bruges' beautiful masterpiece paintings, stated in the words of one of Martin McDonagh's screen characters, I will apply his own words to aptly describe his movie monstrosity as "rubbish by spastics."