Zachariah: "I know."
RV!: Seven Psychopaths (2012) Dir: Martin McDonagh Date Released: October 12, 2012 Date Seen: October 13, 2012 Rating: 4.25/5
I sympathize with Martin McDonagh's hilariously fatalistic perspective, particularly after seeing so many people turn their noses up at Seven Psychopaths. I rewatched it opening weekend and loved it that much more, especially after staying through the end credits. I've read people say that this film's "meta-conceit" is shallow, that the film's all gloss and no substance. But that empty-headed criticism ignores the text of the film. This is a story about an artist that's sick of pigeonholing himself. He doesn't want to be the Tarantino knockoff that many assume he is, but he also can't help himself as that's the story that keeps writing itself. No more conventional gangsters movies, no more being that guy. It's important to note that, as with McDonagh's plays, there are no bosses and no representatives of a higher authority in Seven Psychopaths, just unhappy, amoral people policing themselves. But even that's too abstract a defense: just look at the characters and how they define themselves/are unwittingly defined, ranked from least complex to most complex.
First, there's the women. McDonagh even has his avatar Marty (Colin Farrell) admit his women are accidental to the plot of his story. Which makes it VERY easy to ignore the fact that that's not exactly true. The peripheral nature of the roles that Marty's girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish), Hans's wife Myra (Linda Bright Clay), and Charlie's girlfriend Angela (Olga Kurylenko) respectively play is infrequently undermined throughout. I mean, one of them is the Ace of Spades, one of them is a serial-killing serial killer, and one gets shot up in the rain in a mock-finale. McDonagh knows that these women aren't apparently strong, but I guess admitting that he doesn't know how to intuitively change that block isn't enough for some. Sorry, but the fact that so many people wanted this movie be something that it's not pisses me off. I'm not sure if this is piece is just my way of apologizing, as a McDonagh fan, for loving this film. But the Seven Psychopaths is about a writer that is trying frantically to change his style in spite of his certainty that he can't change. That's what the last scene is: a bleakly funny admission that what we're looking at isn't just a writer dealing with a creative block, but rather a writer that's turned a creative block into a very funny vision of purgatory. Which explains why the cartoonishly airheaded prostitute, the one in the pacifist priest's story, is so funny: she's symptomatic of Marty's greater problems.
