This message contains Minor spoilers to “have taken flight”.
Darren Aronofsky is a lot. He has been working as a director in Hollywood for almost 30 years now, going back to his first Breadthrough feature film in 1998 “Pi”. He directed Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”) and Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) to the Oscars. Aronofsky has made some of the most acclaimed and divisive films of the last 25 years, including the “mother!” Which won an extremely rare finemascore F. But there is one thing that Erofsky was almost never as a filmmaker: pleasure.
That is to say so far.
After directing an adaptation of Samuel Hunter’s play “The Whale” for A24 in 2022, Aronofsky decided to seriously change speed for its follow -up, which is now in theaters in the form of “flight fly”. He is a co -crime coper, tense, sometimes sexy led by Austin Butler (“Elvis”) with an excellent surrounding set, including Zoe Kravitz (“The Batman”), Matt Smith (“Doctor Who”) and even the superstar of Bad Bunny music. Most importantly than all of this, Aronofsky, probably for the first time, made a fun film.
He focuses on an ex-baseball player burned Hank Thompson (Butler) who worked as a bartender in New York in the 90s. His life is simple, and he tries to sail in his emerging relationship with his girlfriend Yvonne (Kravitz). When Hank’s neighbor Punk asks him to look at his cat, he involuntarily ends in the city’s criminal belly canvas. Chaos follows.
I previously discussed the “flight captured” fans in my film criticism, but that’s something I felt forced to develop. This is the thing that was most seated with me after having a certain distance from my initial vision. Aronofsky is an undoubtedly gifted filmmaker, but it would be difficult to accuse him of generally having pleasant and / or traditionally pleasant viewing experiences. There is not one for the escape of popcorn. Thus, it is quite remarkable how damn it is good to exercise this muscle fun more than 25 years in his career of realization.
Darren Aronofsky generally makes films that challenge the public
“Requiem for a Dream” is a painful film and one of the greatest in Aronofsky. It is also unshakeable and difficult to look at. It is probably one of these films “I loved it and I will never see it again” for many people. “La Fontaine” is a distinctive epic. Even those who like it could not rightly accuse of being fun in itself.
Then there are pieces of Aronofsky characters. “The Wrestler” is a painful look at the wrestling sport with a remarkable performance by Mickey Rourke. It is also damn depressing. “Black Swan” could be the closest thing to pleasure in his filmography before, but it is more an “Fun for Sickos” exercise for the good type of cinephile. For most viewers, it is a fairly spoiled and intense watch. His films often feel difficult in one way or another.
This brings us back to “capture the flight”, which feels much more similar to a criminal film by Ritchie Guy Ritchie as “Snatch” than anything else in the previous filmography of Aronofsky. Much of this is due to the novel by Charlie Huston on which he is based, the author also personally performing the scenario. It is not as if Aronofsky had never dealt with adaptation before, with “Noah” being his point of view of a biblical epic, but it was the first time that he felt obliged to give life to the material which has a feeling of joy. This lends itself to broader and old -fashioned entertainment because only films can deliver it.
This does not mean that the film is a pure conduct of joy or something like that. Hank crosses it. There is a lot of death and Grizzly violence at the center of all this. There are a lot of personal trauma. There are knotty images. Nor does it glorify violence. But a bit like a Tarantino film like “Reservoir Dogs”, he manages to be violent and shabby, while being a good more traditional moment in the cinema. It is new equipment for Aronofsky, but it is also the one that the public will surely welcome more in the future. Fun Aronofsky is a refreshing change in rhythm.
“Flight” is now in theaters.
