Blue Ruin – Jeremy Saulnier (2014)

 

Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier’s sophomore effort in directing, takes a revenge story to unforeseeable depth with twists and turns that could chill the blood.

Dwight (Macon Blair) is a homeless man, staying away from all of his acquaintances due to unspoken trauma. One day, he learns that the man convicted for murdering his parents has been released. Anguished with the thirst to revenge, Dwight fuels his Pointiac (the ruin of the title). The moment the car revs up, he turns alive and goes on a hunt that sees him more and more isolated from kindness. 

Much like its name, a blend of impressionistic visualisation of a tragic reality, Saulnier’s indie thriller delves into the darkness of the human soul. Though working in triple mission as writer, director and cinematographer, Saulnier has enough confidence in his material that he rarely loses the focus on each aspects. Blue Ruin follows its character closely with a few supporting cast, including Ratray’s excellent of cameo as Dwight’s friend and subsequent weapon-supplier who ultimately leaves him when the action starts to build up. The film employs the cat-and-mouse play into Dwight’s sole quest after Clelands family, but continuously presents Dwight as the mouse himself. From the DIY fort that he builds in his sister’s home, to his planned ambush of the Clelands’ house, the camera keeps the audience at an arm’s length with the protagonist, bringing in the most realistic minute waiting and planning. It stretches each sequences in nearly real time, and so not only freezing the frame as when the fight begins, its slow pace heightening the verisimilitude of waiting and planning, it stretches each sequence, giving the illusion of real time and leaving space for the character to develop on screen. 

Through Blair’s silent but emotional portrayal, Dwight brings, between the gun-fights and interrogations, the relatable confusion of the everyday man out of his depth, which along with each injury, marks him out as a vulnerable victim of anger, rather than a Robocop of justice. 

Blue Ruin is realised in crisp-coloured images but never romanticise the worlds Dwight sees. The pain he takes after his impossible quest is detailed and never omitted, even though Saulnier orchestrates many situations into the darkly comedic rather than indulging in constrived realness. The CGI-assisted blood and gore rather surprising, with a lingering focus on injury, leaving the audience in shock. With such violence added to the minimalistic but expressive tone, the film takes shape from both Dwight’s revenge but also the immutable echo of its consequences. Its ending, recalling the 80s slasher horror with a Tarantino-styled showdown, brings forth the violence but cuts away just in time for the tragedy to be realised in the audience’s mind. 

Using a smart script, and unexpected, enthralling action sequences to tell the protagonist’s simple story, Blue Ruin visualises Dwight’s revenge with a neutral point of view that always keeps the audience on edge. With a solid performance from Blair, the blood-filled procedure leaves more space to linger on what-might-have-been, making its story more humanistic and reflective than entertaining. As much as Dwight comes alive to the idea of vengeance, Blue Ruin suggests the never-ending streaming of blood in human’s blind search for their own justice – indicated through the Clelands’ supreme collection of guns, no less. There will be blood, surely, but spilled on the floor or remains running through a living body, that decision is made in just a flick of the finger and on the very brink of thoughts. 

Originally posted on UEA Concrete 13/05/2014