Bronson (Saturday, October 10, 2009) (145)

The best way to explain the beautiful and weird movie Bronson is a line from the movie, where protagonist Charles 'Charlie' Bronson says to us, 'I'm not bad bad'. This sums up well his very cheeky and interesting persona and is both a lie and an understatement, but also rather spot-on with how we feel about him. This biopic is a fascinating and operatic appraisal of a interesting and compellingly violent character.

Charles Bronson, ne Michael Peterson, was never a really terrible person. He is known to this day as Britain's most violent prisoner, who went to jail in the 1970s, in his early 20s, for a bungled robbery (he still lives in British prison today). Once he got to prison, he began a bizarre and obsessive string of violent attacks and actions against other prisoners and mostly against the guards and prison administrators. He would organize elaborate kidnappings (into his cell), fights with other prisoners, fights with guards, stabbings and muggings and riots with lots of fires set to the facilities. As a result, he has spent something like all but four years in custody in solitary confinement - and of course, most of his life there.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn does a beautiful and unorthodox job with material that could be rather banal. The film is incredibly stylized and seems almost thematically Victorian - as if Bronson himself is a Victorian hero - like Sherlock Holmes. Bronson has a wonderful bald head and a fabulous thick handle-bar moustache.

The chronology of his life is intercut with sequences where Bronson is on a stage in an opera house dressed in a suit and sometimes in clown makeup explaining situations and giving some commentary on the events we're watching. This actually is a very interesting technique as it shows Bronson as a showman trying to capitalize on his notorious caché (these sequences are very reminiscent of the later scenes from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, where Ford goes on tour re-enacting his fantastic but cowardly betrayal of his friend) but also rather intimate, as at times, he speaks directly to the camera - to us - about what is going on.

Tom Hardy does a wonderful job in the lead role. He's charming, funny, appealing and handsome. He is as bald as a newborn baby (at least a bald newborn baby) and his amazing moustache gives him a 19th Century boxer feel - which he basically was (his name comes from his days as a bare-knuckle boxer in East London when the promoter wanted him to have a strong, movie-star name like the star of Death Wish). This is a man who is clearly insane - but he's so compelling that you want to be his friend.

It's hard to watch the film not think about Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange - and Malcolm McDowell as Alex. Both films fetishize 'ultra-violence' and both romanticize fist and knife fighting as an artform. The characters see their physical appearances including their clothing and makeup as part of a persona that helps them do their bloody work. One unusual thing about Bronson's fights is that several times he stripps down nude and paints his entire body, possibly as a defensive move (it's harder to wrap up a man who you can't grab hold of) but largely as a creative touch. The imagery is striking on screen.

This film is as much about the choreography, the ballet, and the swelling operatic moments of climax as it is about the narrative per se. The style is a tremendously important device that lures us in and makes disgusting things less sickening.

This is a fascinating film that sounds rather dull when you explain it ('it's about a guy who goes to jail and gets in lots of fights while he's there') - but is in fact beautiful and evocative and tragic and, in the end, sublime.

Stars: 3.5 of 4