Year:
2013
Director:
Alexandre Moors
Screenplay:
R.F.I. Porto
Starring:
Isaiah Washington, Tequan Richmond, Joey Lauren Adams, Tim Blake Nelson, Leo
Fitzpatrick
Synopsis
is here
It’s an
obvious theme to draw on but identity rears its head so much in Black
African-American lead movies. So many “black” films deal culturally who they
are as people, who they wish to be and of course how White America often
perceives them. What interests me about Blue Caprice is the true story of the DC snipers that inspired the movie. When the story first broke, the suspects of
the crimes we considered to be white gunman, who were army trained. This alone
touches on the depth our cultural perceptions. The idea that the gunmen could
be black seemed almost alien to people.
For me
such institutionalised thought makes crimes like the one dramatised in Blue
Caprice all the more frightening. To think that only some people will commit
certain transgression will only allow the evil to flow quicker and easier. Alexandre Moors’ film toys with the audience
with this information. Hearing of America “striking back” during the Iraq spew forth
from old T.V sets. The murderous plan that slowly uncovers during the film is
full of jihad-like talk and yet it feels more like convenience than a true
“calling”. Even more concreted elements of the plan fall to the wayside once we
begin to follow the titled Blue Caprice which prowls the Washington highways
like a rusted monster. The car takes on a persona of its own with its
ordinariness becoming the most remarkable and threatening thing about it. When we watch, we consider Scorsese's Taxi
Driver (1976). In the same way we wouldn’t suspect the taxi to hide such
malevolence, we wouldn’t think twice about the Caprice.
Blue
Caprice may not be as potent as Taxi Driver, but the comparisons are still
strong. Caprice shows us lonely, confused men, hurt by the women in their life.
We see a mother who selfishly care only
for herself and another (unseen) ex-wife and mother who does what she can to
keep her children away from their father. We have an unfortunate boy with no
parental figure and a father who only seems to create misfortune, by the way of
kidnappings and restraining orders.
These men with no outlets for their repression meet through an
unexpected circumstance and begin a relationship forged on their hurt. They
blow off stream with shooting practice and wrestling in the woods.
At first we pity the films youth; Lee
(Richmond), as he like so many young black men is left with little guidance
from his own parentage. As John (Washington) enters his life, he also enters
his mind. Clouding it like the overcast weather that inhabits Washington DC.
John’s behaviour reeks of deception, he mutters about his old neighbourhood as
ghosts who ousted him once his relationship ended yet flitters around Lee (and
the frame) like a malevolent apparition. Speaking to his protégé with an eerily
calm yet forceful tone. At first their conversations never sound dangerous.
Like the Caprice there’s an anonymity about them that shades the villainy.
Blue
Caprice constantly hides in the grey and the shade, chilling the bones with its
quietly tense nature. It’s the flecks of blood that creep you out more than the
full act. The killings are non-descript and never gratuitous, their victims
just seem to disappear or drop down dead. The fear hangs in the air like a foul
smell. Any sadness we felt about the plight of the two swiftly melts into
horror and frustration. It sympathy was felt, it will definitely be lost by the
final frame.
But
that’s if we had any to begin with. Moors’ film may feel a little too
“sundance-like” with his shallow depth of field shots and remind one of Gus Van
Sant’s Elephant with much of its blocking of Lee. But from its opening it
craftily foreshadows the characters demise with its Hitchcock like framing of
characters behind gates and bars. The film's use of light and shadow often obscures the faces of the lead, particularly in the beginning.
The film keeps us at distance. Already making sure these people remain
“unknown” to us. The last line is a question posed to a person of authority and
us ourselves. It burrows to a depth we need from such a drama. Despite having some of the screenplay’s
weakest dialogue, it is far more open ended than you think on first glance, but
plays into so much of what I’ve mentioned. When the question is asked, we
wonder too. Because we realise what identities broken or missing can cultivate.
