Survival of the fittest
FILM
A Most Violent Year (MA15+) 4 stars
Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, Albert Brooks
DIRECTOR J.C. CHANDOR
REVIEW MARK NAGLAZAS
After his riveting David Mamet-influenced debut Margin Call earned him an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and in his sophomore feature All is Lost he drew from Robert Redford one of his greatest performances, J.C. Chandor would seem to be the embodiment of the American Dream.
But, when Chandor went to write Margin Call in 2009 he’d spent a decade trying to put another film together (his backer withdrew weeks before shooting) and was so financially embattled he got a real estate licence. But he rolled the dice and it paid off.
So it’s hardly surprising the theme of risk and survival binds both Margin Call, a thriller about a mad scramble to save a Wall Street company during the GFC, and the lone sailor adventure All is Lost as well as being the lifeblood of his latest, a Godfather-inspired drama about a Latino striver struggling to establish a heating-oil company in New York circa 1980.
When A Most Violent Year opens, Chandor’s hero Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) is meeting with a group of Orthodox Jewish businessmen who are selling him a derelict shipping and loading facility on the East River in Brooklyn he believes will let him expand his fledgling company.
Morales hands over two suitcases of cash and promises to pay the balance in a few days (if not, the deal is off). The problem is Morales’ operation, which he runs with his hard-as-nails wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), is under assail from competitors, who have been hijacking his trucks and terrorising his drivers and salesmen.
He is also being investigated by a dogged FBI agent (David Oyelowo) for shonky practices overseen by Anna, who comes from a mob family and has few qualms about cooking the books in order to allow Abel to realise his dream of running a legitimate business empire (a dream he shares with The Godfather’s Michael Corleone).
The impact of this pressure and controversy is to send Morales’ investors fleeing, leaving him with days to put together alternative financing for his venture at the same time as protecting his family from those willing to use violence to undermine his ambitions.
While a dispute about heating fuel during a period of rampant crime and corruption in New York would seem a flimsy basis for a two-hour drama Chandor’s own story of risking everything to be a filmmaker and sticking to his guns even when things look grimmest infuses A Most Violent Year with compelling urgency and universality.
When one of his potential investors asks Morales why he’s so determined to own the East River facility even through the sharks are circling he answers “When if feels scariest to jump that is exactly when you jump, otherwise you end up staying in the same place your whole life”.
Chandor does a splendid job of recreating the New York of the early 80s, with its graffiti- covered subway cars, its roads crammed with gas guzzlers and its funk-infused soundtrack. But the film is best when hard-boiled characters bathed in shadows, Godfather style, talk money and power and how to get things done in a city where the real string- pullers are nowhere to be seen.
Indeed, money is Chandor’s central concern, which is not surprising since his father was a Wall Street stockbroker who gave him plenty of insights while writing Margin Call (and even Redford’s lone sailor in All is Lost is one of those Masters of the Universe reviled in the GFC).
“It’s not that money is the root of all evil, it’s that it’s the root of everything. The film business is an interesting place to start. It’s ‘how do you make a living and support a family while telling stories you get to control’,” says Chandor, whose next movie is also about the fallout from rampant capitalism — Deepwater Horizon, about the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
A Most Violent Year probably moves too slowly and steadily for those weaned on Martin Scorsese or Michael Mann-style crime flicks. What keeps us riveted even through its longueurs is the rich performance of Isaac, the one actor today who has the dreamy matinee-idol good looks paired with the slow-burn power of the brooding young Pacino.
Chandor doesn’t reference the Godfather movies specifically. A Most Violent Year has been more often compared to Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City and Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. By dressing Isaac like a Wall Street banker and have him carefully consider his every word and gesture he evokes the contained ferocity of Pacino in the Coppola mob classics.
The superb Chastain has none of her husband’s idealism about business and the American Dream of building an ethical empire and constantly reminds him the only way to compete in a corrupt world is to fight fire with fire. She has a point and so does he, with the film deepening from a story about money, power and corruption into a moving study of modern marriage.
While A Most Violent Year has a deeply sombre mood, and cynicism is the default mode of everyone except Morales, in the end it is an optimistic movie that celebrates America as a land of opportunity (it’s why one critic dubbed it “the anti Godfather”).
“If you’re a garbage man in Wichita, making $32,000 a year or in securities making $30 million a year and living in Greenwich, as long as you have full-time employment and live above the poverty line, you have it better than 60 per cent of the people on Earth,” Chandor says.
A Most Violent Year opens today.
