By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Alexandre Moors
Starring: Isaiah Washington; Tequan Richmond; Tim Blake Nelson; Joey Lauren Adams
Country: united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 92
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2027064/combined
Kyle says: “Every year in late March, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art co-sponsor a festival called New Directors/New Films. Films screen at the FSLC’s Walter Reade Theater, and at MoMA’s Ray and Niuta Titus Theaters, from March 20 to March 31. Because of the widely acknowledged unpleasantness of film attendance at MoMA, mostly due to poor people skills on the part of staff, cineastes invariably choose the much more pleasant and professionally administered Lincoln Center venue for their screenings. Opening Night screenings and receptions were held at MoMA this year, so a positive mental attitude was advisable. Fortunately things went well.
“A knockout feature film debut by director Alexandre Moors, BLUE CAPRICE is based on the Beltway Sniper rampage of October 2002 in Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland. The incisive screenplay by R.F.I. Porto focuses on two characters, a Persian Gulf War veteran and a teenage boy from Antigua, with emphasis on speculative events leading up to the killing spree, as well as moments of occasionally banal character interaction. Gradually the audience comes to understand that the older man is a psychopathic lunatic, and that the teenager is in thrall to emotional forces he neither understands nor controls. Although there are numerous moments of victims being stalked and murdered, the violence is a manifestation of an inevitable progression of events, none of it gratuitous. And the manipulative older man, eloquently portrayed by Isaiah Washington, requires that no more explanation be given than, ‘There are some evil people in this world.’ Lefties like me will see this powerful work as a cry of anguish for America’s obsessive gun culture and lack of mental health resources; director Moors calls his film ‘a requiem for the state of he world.’ That requiem is spine-chillingly evident in a scene of the blue Chevrolet Caprice (which must be dubbed the scariest automobile since the title character of Stephen King’s Christine) on its way to selection and execution of arbitrary victims, while ‘Beatus Petronius’ by Estonian classical composer Arvo Pärt is heard on the soundtrack. The ominously appropriate original music by Sarah Neufeld and Colin Stetson prepares the audience emotionally for the carnage to come, allowing us to attempt an understanding of events that ultimately are incomprehensible. Special praise must be given to actor Tequan Richmond, who plays the teenager with a preternatural stillness that is absolutely horrifying. 4 cats
“Wednesday March 20, 2013, Opening Night of New Directors/New Films at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.”