The Killing

Saw The Killing, a heist film by Kubrick. It has his usual brilliant shooting and clever plot. The film jumps forward and back in time, nervously and obsessively detailing the characters' movements. They are attempting a very complex robbery of a racetrack and twice they walk by the track's spectators who are gazing with open mouths at the race, almost as we viewers are staring in wrapped fascination at this film. This is a sort of joke on us viewers, I think, but it's so damn clever that I don't mind it a bit. There's a more obvious, but more clever pseudo-joke involving a horseshoe that I don't want to spoil, but it's brilliant.

The imagery of characters behind bars is repeated so many times, it's a motif unto itself. Chain link fences, rungs of a staircase, the crossbeams of a window, venetian blinds, a bird in a cage, even the habitual plaid shirts of one of the conspirators. All of the conspirators are locked into this scheme in some way. The film even opens by explaining via (a very disdainful sounding) narrator that one conspirator feels he is as responsible for his actions as a puzzle-piece is responsible for the image it produces (another bit of locking in but with an added bonus-promise of a puzzle to be pieced together.)

One man's wife needs an operation, one man needs money to get married, one man needs it to make his shrew of a wife happy. This last wife is a prominent character. Tellingly, she owns the fore-mentioned birdcage and about her bed is a collection of oriental ornaments. Like a concubine, she exploits sex to manipulate men into doing her bidding. Her husband is put in the painful position of having two masters.

The cinematography is flawless. When the conspirators conspire, they are always lit from directly overhead, making them look nervy and claustrophobic. They are often shot from below and against black, making the characters seem remote and sinister and yet kind of lost. When the money is being stuffed into bags, it's loose and unstacked, making the cash spill everywhere in great plumes, demonstrating its great abundance. Two characters bookend the words "The End" in the final shot, a perfect little diorama to end this little Swiss watch of a film. Very clever, very subtle, and a lot of fun to spot little trends and cute flourishes (even if, as I freely admit, some of those flourishes perhaps exist solely in my own head.)