Amerikansk ros til Hamer og Refn
Bent Hamers Factotum hadde amerikansk premiere i slutten av forrige uke, og anmeldelsene ¿ som denne typen uavhengig film er så avhengig av ¿ var gjennomgående positive. Filmen fikk solide kritikker fra helt sentrale New York-publikasjoner som New York Times og New York Press. Men også i de andre store byene tok de viktigste anmelderne fram lovordene, som Kenneth Turan i Los Angeles Times.
I The New York Times hyller både sjefskritiker A. O. Scott og kritiker Manohla Dargis rolletolkningen til Matt Dillon:
¿Mr. Dillon, now 42, has grown up into one of the most resourceful character actors in American movies¿, skriver Scott i sitt skuespiller-portrett av Dillon ¿Mr. Dillon plays Chinaski without romance or irony, but rather with a stumbling, soulful weariness. He¿s generous, drunk, mean, noble, confused: all of those ordinary qualities that only an extraordinary actor can make real.¿
I sin filmanmeldelse skriver Manohla Dargis:
“Like the film itself, Mr Dillon’s performance works through understatement. Factotum is a film about the horrors and occasional comedy of work, as well as gutting through life on your own terms, which in Bukowski’s case meant turning both that horror and that comedy into literature.”
Kenneth Turan i LA Times kaller Factotum for “a surprisingly satisfying film, true to Bukowski and itself, a work that manages to make the man and his profane world more palatable without compromising on who he was and what he stood for.”
En rekke skribenter på nettstedet Reverse Shot har på sin side ¿kryssanmeldt¿ Factotum og en annen Bukowski-adaptasjon, Barfly. Resultatet er engasjerende og vidt forskjellige oppfatninger av disse to svært ulike tilnærmingene til Charles Bukowskis litterære verden.
På Greencine.com undrer journalisten seg over europeiske filmskaperes interesse for Bukowski, og konstaterer at det i Hamers tilfelle nettopp er hans fremmede (norske) blikk som gjør filmen så annerledes (NB! du må scrolle nedover):
“Hamer’s sensibility is distinctively not American, and maybe that’s what makes this askew look at rumpled dignity in a most undignified existence come through with a subdued, modest grace.”
Mens Hamer får positive anmeldelser, opplever hans danske kollega Nicolas Winding Refn å bli hyllet for sin Pusher-trilogi. Michael Atkinson i Village Voice mener Pusher-filmene er unike og rå:
“Your first impression of this five-hour-plus underworld trilogy is that director Nicolas Winding Refn is an engineer of epic scale and structural ambition, and that the tiny kingdom of Denmark is apparently a snake pit of narcotic squalor and homicidal chaos. But the Pusher movies play less like features than like the nastiest hit TV series HBO never made.”
Særlig bloggerne er entusiastiske. Martha Fischer på Cinematical kaller trilogiens første film for “an enthralling combination of the shocking, the sensational and the matter-of-fact…. Refn directs his film with a remarkably assured hand, exercising self-control that will drive the legion of state-side Tarantino devotees mad. Instead of pumping up colors, violence and personalities, Refn takes the opposite approach, rendering his most tension-filled moments so subdued they’re almost deadpan.”
På nettstedet Twitch er man ikke i tvil:
“Yes, we’ve been talking about these films forever, but let me say it again anyway: Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher films may just be the best trilogy of crime films ever made.”
