Dog-eat-dog; Hold The Dark is perhaps the most faithful adaptation of this simple phrase. Jeremy Saulnier's latest film, produced by Netflix, takes place in the extreme cold and has revenge as its watchword: between the blood-stained snow and the heavy silences plays out a scenario that unfortunately does not go very far, and that leaves us on the sidelines.
In the extreme cold of Alaska, wolf specialist Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) knows how to do it; So when a resident of a small village in the region, Medora, asks him to find her missing son taken by wolves, Russell puts on his boots and goes out to face the freezing desert. Humanism or selfishness of a frustrated father, the motives of this gesture will remain unclear for a long time; what is certain is that he finds in Medora Sloane (Riley Keough, the mysterious woman of the recent Under the Silver Lake) a company of misfortune, and a closeness of mind that becomes almost magnetic. Hold The Dark is a clever mix between cold humanity and boiling ferocity.
Under this white varnish so silky and calm hides a very violent metaphor, but without much originality: the rapprochement between man and wolf follows throughout this icy epic, as well in images as in words (and silences). Yet, behind the commonplace, there is a sumptuous staging, cold and audacious, which allows Hold the Dark to stand out without a doubt from other Netflix productions.Jeremy Saulnier's lights delve into the darkest corners of the characters, to find the flaw that makes all their humanity. This humanity is often paradoxically akin to an innate and unheard-of violence, revealing bestial characters.We can think, for example, of this remarkable shooting scene, stretched in time and surprisingly long, which takes the role of the crisis at the climax of the film: cruelty increases, the gun in hand, but benevolence also emerges although painfully, in a furious frenzy that sucks and spits out feelings one by one.
But the great flaw of Hold the Dark is nevertheless linked to this scene: paroxysm of the film, it quickly becomes practically a final scene as its scope is felt until the end. The revenge cools, and Russell's purpose becomes increasingly obscured, even though he is a key figure in this story. Between paternal guilt and passive spectator of this destructive violence, the journey of this hero is ultimately quite unmemorable ; A weakness that unfortunately prevents any identification, and detaches us in spite of ourselves from a plot yet attractive.
If the direction is practically irreproachable, and the actors give a seductive soul to Jeremy Saulnier's latest film, Hold the Dark struggles to develop a real narrative outside the clichés, and does not transport us enough to the far north of animal revenge. A half-hearted success, which is still positioned as one of the best Netflix productions of this year.
