Francis Lawrence is approached by the relatively late film director, after dominating the golden age of music videos. And if the older ones of us may remember it for Me are legend or Constantine (for which I admit to having a weak point), the general public knows it mostly as the director of the Hunger Games series. On this tour, Lawrence returns to the theatres with The Long March, adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, to the cinema from 23 April.
The long walk: chi si ferma è perduto
In the U.S. alternatives dominated by a totalitarian regime in crisis, every year the whole nation remains with its breath suspended for the Long March. In this television event, fifty young people (one coming from every state) compete in a very simple competition. Turn, day and night: those who descend below 5 km/h receive a warning; those who pass the third warning are executed on the spot. The last to survive receives a fabulous prize in money and the possibility of fulfilling a desire — the only way, in this world, to hope for a ransom from the misery that afflicts the nation. Ray Garraty has been drawn to represent the Maine, where he is holding the March; little sportsman and especially devoid of blood silk that seems to fill other competitors, Ray has however personal reasons to try to win, reasons that go far beyond fame and money..
Fenomenologia del film spiacevole
Why, as a species, do we decide to watch movies that are according to all possible metrics unpleasant experiences? To tell some stories through the bad, the painful, the horrible is ineludible — to make sure that a message has a weight, to give strength to light at the bottom of the tunnel, to get to that anesthetic sense of catarsis. The long walk suffers from an increasingly common syndrome among the films, which we might call pretentiously “cathartic compensation”.
That is: the film is an extremely unpleasant experience. Beyond the obvious cruelty of the march itself, it deliberately showcases all the most visceral aspects of the horde, from extreme fatigue to corporal functions, from the rapid psychological deterioration of the characters to the physicality of the execution of the weakest.
And above all, when the end comes and we ask ourselves “but I, why have I endured all this? “, he doesn’t know what to answer. There is no attempt to say something relevant, there is no emotional message to be placed, there is no counterweight to unpleasantness. And then it becomes difficult to evaluate the film in every other aspect, because the experience sounds empty. The sin is that technically the film works, does what it has to do, strong of good performances and a final different from that of the book and honestly surprising, but that is not enough to save a set that turns out less than the sum of its parts.
Il cast
Cooper Hoffman is Ray Garraty, a competitor for the state of Maine, who is participating in the Long March for more complex reasons than he does not show. David Jonsson is Pete McVries, a young orphan who makes friends with Ray during the March. Tut Nyuot and Ben Wang are Art Baker and Sam Olson, two other Marchers who together with Ray and Pete form the group of “mosketers”. Garrett Wareing is Stebbins, the rugged favourite of this edition of the March, while Charlie Plummer is Gary Barkovitch, an erratic and dangerous element of the group. In the cast also Judy Greer in the role of Ray’s mother and Mark Hamill in that of the Major, dictator of the nation on his knees.
L’articolo The long walk, the film review from Stephen King’s book proviene da Dituttounpop.it.
