Monday, May 28, 2012

Thoughts on The Grey...

...One of the most harrowing, and most brilliant, films I have seen in a long time. Scary, spooky (spookier than The Blair Witch Project, and that's saying something), the biting cold, the wilderness. Nothing supernatural. Man versus Wolf. But that's enough to make you sit by the edge of the seat, fingers intermittently pressed into the ears. The camerawork adds to the chilly effect, zooming in on the encounters with the beast, or on a steep fall off a cliff, or a sordid drowning. Liam Neeson is rock solid as the lead, ably supported by a cast that includes Dermot Mulroney (of My Best Friend's Wedding) and Dallas Roberts. But more than anything else, the film, based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, inquires into several questions: the meaning of life, our loves, what it means to survive a tragedy that's killed many and continues to kill others one by one, the importance of faith (and questioning it). And how, finally, when one does not have an option, to stare death in the face.

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