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| Image Courtesy of The New York Times |
Written and directed by Jeremy
Saulnier, Green Room follows the Ain’t Rights, a punk band on the last leg
of a long and unsuccessful tour. They are about to pack it in when they are
offered one last gig at a club in backwoods Oregon. The club, which is patroned
entirely by Neo-Nazis and decorated with swastikas and confederate flags, isn’t
a place anyone wants to find themselves, but after the band witnesses something
they should not it becomes a deathtrap. The Ain’t Rights barricade themselves
into the green room as the white supremacists plot their deaths outside to
cover up their crime, led by the terrifyingly meticulous Darcy in one of
Patrick Stewarts most menacing performances.
Although very jarring to
see Patrick Stewart play the leader of a gang of Nazis, he brings the role to
life like nobody else could. Darcy spends much of the film planning the band’s
demise, controlling every aspect to try and deflect suspicion from himself or
any of the leadership in his organization. His attention to every detail of the
crime makes him a terrifying villain.
The band’s precarious
situation begins before they lock themselves in, and paints them as very
serious group. From the beginning of the film they are broke, syphoning gas
from a parking lots to make their gigs, and eating whatever leftovers they can
find wherever they crash. When they sit down for a college radio interview,
they answer every question as a stereotypical hard punk band should, but
stumble when they are asked to name their desert island band. The fun whimsical
questions meant to get the conversation going end up being the hardest ones for
them to answer. This sets the stage for a tense, well calculated face off
between the very serious Neo-Nazis and the also serious punk rockers.
This movie impressed me
with its internal cohesion, and density. This is a movie where so much happens in
the 95-minute run time that you have to pay attention to the details, or risk
missing something. The quieter moments of dialogue in the movie are full of foreshadowing
and setting up devices that pay off later. So many things reappear that after
my second and third watch I was still noticing new connections that eluded me when
I was too rapt in the gruesome violence to notice much else.
And gruesome it was. As a
horror movie junkie, there is little that causes me turn my head from the screen,
but there were scenes in this film that had me watching between my fingers and crawling
in my skin. Saulnier does not shy away from using extremely well devised shots
to show the intense violence that becomes one of the hallmarks of the film. All
things considered, this is a gorgeously shot film with a well-mixed soundtrack
that adds to the feeling of intensity. The music, specifically when ambient
music overtakes the scene sounds signals a moment of rest between the intense
conflict.
This is also a film that
takes its subject seriously. White supremacist organizations are and always have
been extremely violent groups that use terror to control and harm people of
color. The film’s treatment of these groups as nothing other than hateful helps
to create strong villains, while not serving to normalize the presence of hate
groups as other films featuring neo-Nazis tend to do (think American History
X).
This film is a ride from start to finish, and would highly recommend a watch for this 31 Days of Hell.
-Patrick Bernas
