A Public Ransom – Review

16th March 2014

If someone you’d never met were to tell you today that they had kidnapped a child, was threatening their safety and that that child’s life was in your hands, how would you react? You would probably think them mad. Then say this person began infiltrating your life, offering career success and dating your friend. What then? A Public Ransom, a film made by brwc’s very own Pablo, asks this question of a very particular kind of person. The kind of person with nothing but care for himself. More precisely, Steven.

Steven (Carlyle Edwards) is a self-interested, amoral writer, who when out walking finds a missing poster written in a child’s scrawl. From this, he begins to develop his next story and decides to call the number. What he is confronted with is a meeting with Bryant (Goodloe Bryon), a fellow writer and supposed, coldly self-proclaimed kidnapper. Steven brushes this off as some kind of prank, but as Bryant intrudes in his life further and further, including his friend Renee (Helen Bonaparte), how much does Steven truly believe this to be fake, and how much of him doesn’t want to?

Visually, D’Stair and DOP Paul VanBrocklin have a real understanding of the art that is black and white composition. This isn’t merely a last minute choice or something budgetary, but a real aesthetic with specific location choices and camera placement that pays off with some gorgeous shots. The static camera and long takes are reminiscent of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, but instead of showing us the oppressive life of a Belgian house wife, we are shown an episode of Steven’s life as objectively and callously as he seems to interact with those around him.

Steven as the main focus of the film is slightly problematic for me. He isn’t just callous in action but appealing and charismatic, and I understand that we are supposed to dislike Steven, but he’s so easily disliked. He comes across as smug and irritating with no growth or expansion. We know him to be a lying cock from the get go and we then sit through these tedious phone calls that constantly reaffirm that he is, in fact, a total twat. I feel this is, at least in part, down to Edwards’ performance.

While a very good actor, and he is certainly successful in getting across what is necessary for the film, he is miscast something fierce. Steven has to be the glue to hold the whole thing up. Due to the style of the film we should want to follow him and hear what he has to say. The only reason for Steven’s disbelief of Bryant would be if this film were grounded in reality, and the theatrical delivery of every line throws this belief out the window. As Bresson would have said, he is acting and not being, and as such demystifies any naturalism that may have been present, making a slow burning film tedious.

As for the dialogue, there is too much swinging from inconsequential to amazingly well written. For the most part, the unimportant chat is attempting to add the naturalism and realistic tone the film is striving for, but because of Edwards’ theatrical performance style and the slow nature of the film, it just feels jarring. The great dialogue, however, should be performed on the stage. In fact, if most of this dialogue, as well as Edwards, were in a play I would be applauding. When filmed in a living room, however, it comes across and contrived and false. While the back and forth style is very well put together with some excellent turn of phrase, it feels in opposition to the naturalism A Public Ransom seems to aim for.

Similarly, we shoot from the long takes and extended dialogue to a music fuelled montage, creating a real disparity in the pace. The general plot of the film is a great idea, on paper. I would very much like to read the short story on which A Public Ransom is based as it has the feeling of a Raymond Chandler short. It seems there is so much more going on in Steven’s mind that we are either expected to guess or was just never there in the first place.

A Public Ransom is interesting, visually remarkable, yet disjointed. With clashing elements of the theatrical and the natural, all aspects alone are fantastic, but put in conjunction with one another they become cacophonic. In spite of all this, an important thing to note here is that this is a vision. This isn’t a film made by committee or by focus group screenings. This is a testament to the empowerment of the independent film maker and their ideas as well as the democratisation of film as a medium.

The choice to allow the film online for free is a bold one, and I commend the film makers very much. See what you think and find where to watch A Public Ransom here :

http://apublicransom.wordpress.com/

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