Denis Villeneuve is one of those directors whose films require a certain type of attention.
I feel that whenever you want to watch one of his movies, you have to make the time to
be focused on what's on the screen, you can't just watch it as background noise if you want
to enjoy it.
You have to have a certain mindset, because you know that what follows isn't a disposable
type of entertainment.
It's not fast food.
It's a full-course meal And once the film is done, it stays with you
for some time while you digest what you've just experienced...the interpretations, the
revelations...
Every carefully crafted bit must be savored: the performances, the writing, the cinematography,
and most of all, the characters.
Denis Villeneuve often examines his characters' lives and motivations by placing them under
extreme pressure.
By pushing them to their limits.
Everyday stressors change us over time, like water slowly altering a stone foundation over
the years; but there are some situations that, in an instant, confront us and force us to
question our core beliefs, treasured values and our faith.
Much like an elastic, being stretched out to its breaking point but once it's released
it can never recover its original shape.
In today's video, we will be looking at three of Denis Villeneuve's films and how he portrays
people being pushed to their limits and the consequences that come from it.
-Please go or I will call the police -Go ahead call the police, what are you going
to tell them?
[laughs] -What are going to tell them man?
One of the first things Denis Villeneuve does to his characters is to take them out of their
comfort zone.
He achieves this by dropping them inside of a mystery.
This puts them at a disadvantage (along with the audience) as they go throughout the movie
trying to solve the mystery and we see how it transforms them by the end.
In Enemy, the mystery starts when the main character discovers he has doppelganger.
While watching a movie, he notices one of the actors looks exactly like him.
It unnerves him and he feels the need to discover who this man is.
He finds out where he works, where he lives, and his curiosity pushes him to want to meet
his double.
-Who is this?
-That's crazy [laughs] That's amazing!
Your voice is just like mine.
Do you hear my voice?
When he finally does, he realizes that there's more than just a physical resemblance.
-This was a bad idea...I think I made a mistake here...
They are not two separate people.
On the surface, Enemy may seem like a confusing mess of a movie but when you dig deeper, you
come to realize that the film itself is an allegory for duality.
A visual representation of an inner struggle.
Both doubles are the two sides of the same coin.
On one side, we see Adam a bland university professor with a slightly vacant life and
a girlfriend he's not that interested in.
On the other side, we see Anthony, a moderately well-off actor that appears to be hiding his
penchant for infidelity from his pregnant wife.
He often visits a secret erotic club to satisfy his lust.
The story is of a man's subconscious conflict: infidelity vs remaining faithful.
His inner conflict is such that he's created two personas whose worlds are colliding now
that his commitment to his wife is tested by the impending birth of his child.
The film's spider iconography shows us how trapped he feels.
The wires and cables from the streetcars serve to symbolize the web Adam is stuck in.
The spiders represent his relationship with women.
He feels cornered by them in a moment when above all else, he desires to be in control.
-Every dictatorship uhm...theirs always one obsession and that's control, they want to
have control over the people.
-In other dictatorships they have other strategies.
This is an ongoing struggle.
At the end, even when everything seems to have been resolved...his cheating-self dies
...and he decides to stay faithful to his wife, but Adam is presented with another choice.
He's been handed a new key to the secretive underground club we saw at the start of the
film.
Once again, the temptation presents itself.
He has the same dilemma that defines him.
Infidelity or faithfulness.
Life's hard choices don't suddenly stop after you've made the "right" or "responsible" decision.
It's a battle that never ends.
Anthony and Adam represent the moments where we are forced to fight between what we want
and what we feel we have to do.
And in that moment, he chooses to go back to his old ways, seeing his pregnant wife
as something that's trying to control him.
[spider wincing] [sighs]
-forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
In Prisoners, what pushes the characters is a life altering event.
We are presented with Keller, a man driven by his faith, his principles and his family.
From the beginning of the film, we see the little details that show us what kind of person
he is, and it establishes the kinds of values we expect such a man to have.
But on Thanksgiving, both his and his friend's daughter disappear, and they are left questioning
what happened.
The film shows us how Keller, his family and his friends deal with the horrific situation.
With every passing day he feels he's failing as a father because he was supposed to keep
her safe.
-She's wondering why I'm not there to fucking rescue her!
-Alright...
-Do you understand that! Me!
Not you!
But ME!
As any person confronted by such a harrowing set of circumstances, he's desperate to do
anything that might help bring his daughter back.
When the police release Alex, one of their prime suspects, Keller decides to take matters
into his own hands.
He follows the man, kidnaps him and invites the other father, Franklin, to get information
out of him.
-We hurt him until him talks or they're going to die.
That's the choice.
Franklin is in the same boat as Keller.
Although he doesn't agree with his actions, he finds it difficult to stop him and neither
does his wife.
-Let him do what he needs to.
-We don't know about it anymore.
Desperation can cloud anyone's judgement.
In Keller's eyes, Alex in not human anymore, he's just a punching bag made of flesh that
sometimes speaks.
The moment that best explores what boundaries Keller is ready to cross to find his daughter
are shown in the extremely tense hammer scene.
Both fathers have Alex pinned to a wall and Keller threatens him with a hammer while Franklin
is unsure of what will happen next and neither does the audience.
We don't know if Keller is ready to go that far and if he did, we don't even know if he
captured the right guy.
Denis Villeneuve purposely puts us in this ambiguous situation where there is no clear
answer.
-Your doing this to yourself.
[Breathing deeply] -Just tell us.
Tell me...
The cinematography shows how physically and emotionally cornered the two characters are
and how the camera doesn't cut away and just stays stuck in this tense scene.
By the end all three characters are just left exhausted and empty.
The horrific event serves to test the characters and show us who they really are underneath.
To show us how far they're willing to go to protect the ones they love.
Denis Villeneuve stated that Keller had within himself a darkness and ugliness that we all
have but whose presence we don't want to acknowledge...but under the right circumstances, we might get
to see.
-Nothing will make sense to your American ears...and you will doubt everything that
we do...but in the end you will understand.
In Sicario, we see how Denis Villeneuve uses context to test what a character is made of.
If their values will hold up in a world they don't know.
We are introduced to Kate.
She's a by the book FBI agent in Arizona that is seeing and experiencing the casualties
of the drug war closer to home.
Her initial mission has her going into a safehouse to save hostages.
Instead of what they were expecting, they find dead bodies lining the walls of the house.
She's offered the chance to join a special joint task force with the intention of finding
the people responsible for the incident.
Immediately, she starts noticing that things aren't what they appear to be.
She's being deliberately kept in the dark as to how the mission will be carried out
and if what they are doing is legal or even right.
As soon as she begins working with Matt and Alejandro, Kate begins to learn that not everything
is black and white.
The cinematography helps reinforce the ambiguity, by playing with the lighting, the contrasts,
showing the harshness of the brights and the oppressive darks.
It's a metaphor for our perception of what is good and what is evil.
We are meant to see the film through Kate's eyes.
How she struggles with the morality of what they are doing to fight the cartel.
The score is meant to keep us on edge...It's the very embodiment of the threat...the
monster that will swallow up Kate whole.
Even the way we follow the main character traveling from Arizona to Juarez is supposed
to isolate her from what she knows to be normal and safe.
Kate's journey begins with moments of intense tension and it doesn't stop.
She's visibly shaken.
She doubts herself, tries to stand her ground but she sees that to obtain the justice she
wants, she must stomach methods she doesn't agree with.
-This is the future Kate.
Juarez is what happens when they dig in.
-What am I doing here?
-What your doing here is your giving us the opportunity to shake the tree and create chaos.
That's what this is!
Imagine working and living according to a defined set of rules, never straying because
if you do, you become like the criminals you hunt.
Until one day, you're thrust into a world where your rules are more of a hindrance than
anything else.
The world Kate walks into is one where no one is clean, there is no room for innocence.
-Your not a wolf...and this is the land of wolves now...
If she wants to survive or even thrive, she would have to become someone like Alejandro.
He used to be a prosecutor, a man that might have shared the same principles of justice
that Kate has, but when the cartel murdered his family, it transformed him into the hitman
he is now.
The scene that shows what he had to become is the dinner scene at the end.
He finally finds the cartel boss that ordered the death of his family.
He interrupts their peaceful meal and holds a gun to their heads asking them to continue
eating.
The cartel boss asks him to not kill him in front of his family.
But Alejandro shoots his sons and wife instead.
It's cold, unflinching, but thankfully off camera, showing how the act is of no importance
or consequence to him.
He lets the cartel boss take in this horrific sight and then puts him out of his misery.
Alejandro had to become a monster to deal with monsters.
This is something Kate is not willing to become, but like Alejandro said in the beginning,
she understands why he exists.
We easily identify with Denis Villeneuve's characters because they're just normal, flawed
people thrown into a difficult situation.
They each have their strengths, weaknesses, which rise to the surface when put under extreme
stress.
Denis Villeneuve explores their intrinsic contradictions, ambiguity and duality to show
us how real they are...and by extension, makes us empathize with them.
He doesn't just give us heroes or villains; but makes us decide for ourselves which of
their qualities we would praise as heroic or resist and consider villainous, because
in the end, none of us are entirely good or bad.
Each one of us is the hero of our own story and might very well be someone else's villain.
We all share the same two-sided potential within us.
Thank you for watching our video.
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Until next time.