This 35mm presentation is part of the 'Cinematic Jukebox' season at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find the details of the season here.
Multiglom website review:
When The Counsellor was released in 2013, the reception was overwhelmingly negative. “The worst movie ever made.” “Very disappointing.” “A huge misfire.” “An ugly, ugly picture.” “Blah bloody blah.” “A boring mess.” And so on. And indeed it is a hard film to like, the opposite of feelgood, and doesn’t bother trying to make its audience feel comfortable on any level whatsoever. I hated it on first viewing, but here’s the thing – I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards, and not only because it contains one of the most shockingly explicit onscreen murders of a character played by a major Hollywood star that I’ve ever seen. And then I thought about it some more, this time trying to work out why I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A second look, this time at the director’s cut, convinced me I was wrong – it’s one of the best films Ridley Scott has ever made, his world-building skills providing the perfect visual complement to Cormac McCarthy’s loquacious screenplay. All sunlight, no shadow, nowhere to hide. Elements I loathed the first time around – stereotypical characters (the protagonist’s girlfriend, too pure for this world, exists solely to get kidnapped and butchered), the portentous speechifying (surely nobody pontificates like that jefe), the relentlessly downbeat but hardly eye-opening message that going into business with criminals can ruin your life – clicked into place once I’d realised that neither characters nor dialogue nor plot were intended as in any way realistic. As Outlaw Vern wrote, “Everything is over-discussed and under-explained, that’s the approach.” It’s not a thriller in which you identify with a protagonist as they go to hell and back. It’s a grim fable, nearer to McCarthy’s oft-cited but so far unfilmed masterpiece, Blood Meridian, in which we observe from a distance as the protagonist goes to hell, and is condemned to stay there, because there’s no way back, and that’s how it is. No clever sleight of hand, or long con double-cross, or cathartic shoot-out can save him. In other words, the world of The Counsellor is McCarthy World, the same way that Brian De Palma’s films are set on Planet De Palma – a place with its own set of rules, but with a kernel of truth at its core: the world is crueller than you can ever know, and the boundary between your own life and that cruelty is a wisp of a thing that can be blown away in the blink of an eye. All it takes is one bad decision, bad luck, or bad people. Intellectually, we’re already aware of this, but The Counsellor rams it home with a vengeance, and no mollycoddling, so that you feel it on an emotional level as well. At its dark heart this is a horror movie, because for all the stylised dialogue, it contains truths so unpleasant that any halfway realistic dramatic admission of them would simply be unbearable.
When The Counsellor was released in 2013, the reception was overwhelmingly negative. “The worst movie ever made.” “Very disappointing.” “A huge misfire.” “An ugly, ugly picture.” “Blah bloody blah.” “A boring mess.” And so on. And indeed it is a hard film to like, the opposite of feelgood, and doesn’t bother trying to make its audience feel comfortable on any level whatsoever. I hated it on first viewing, but here’s the thing – I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards, and not only because it contains one of the most shockingly explicit onscreen murders of a character played by a major Hollywood star that I’ve ever seen. And then I thought about it some more, this time trying to work out why I couldn’t stop thinking about it. A second look, this time at the director’s cut, convinced me I was wrong – it’s one of the best films Ridley Scott has ever made, his world-building skills providing the perfect visual complement to Cormac McCarthy’s loquacious screenplay. All sunlight, no shadow, nowhere to hide. Elements I loathed the first time around – stereotypical characters (the protagonist’s girlfriend, too pure for this world, exists solely to get kidnapped and butchered), the portentous speechifying (surely nobody pontificates like that jefe), the relentlessly downbeat but hardly eye-opening message that going into business with criminals can ruin your life – clicked into place once I’d realised that neither characters nor dialogue nor plot were intended as in any way realistic. As Outlaw Vern wrote, “Everything is over-discussed and under-explained, that’s the approach.” It’s not a thriller in which you identify with a protagonist as they go to hell and back. It’s a grim fable, nearer to McCarthy’s oft-cited but so far unfilmed masterpiece, Blood Meridian, in which we observe from a distance as the protagonist goes to hell, and is condemned to stay there, because there’s no way back, and that’s how it is. No clever sleight of hand, or long con double-cross, or cathartic shoot-out can save him. In other words, the world of The Counsellor is McCarthy World, the same way that Brian De Palma’s films are set on Planet De Palma – a place with its own set of rules, but with a kernel of truth at its core: the world is crueller than you can ever know, and the boundary between your own life and that cruelty is a wisp of a thing that can be blown away in the blink of an eye. All it takes is one bad decision, bad luck, or bad people. Intellectually, we’re already aware of this, but The Counsellor rams it home with a vengeance, and no mollycoddling, so that you feel it on an emotional level as well. At its dark heart this is a horror movie, because for all the stylised dialogue, it contains truths so unpleasant that any halfway realistic dramatic admission of them would simply be unbearable.
Anne Billson
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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