Red Road

First time director Andrea Arnold makes a remarkable impact with her debut film, Red Road. She sets herself up outright to be a purist voice in cinema that is as uncompromised and authentic as a filmmaker could be. Technically, Red Road is a thriller, but it unfolds in such precise rhythms and with such brilliant ambiguity that it’s hard to really group it together with the uninspiring dud action movies calling themselves thrillers these days. It’s much more of a beautiful, melancholic, and utterly chilling character drama than anything else.

Kate Dickie leads the film with a stoic, strangely moving performance as Jackie, a woman working in a 24 observation booth that tracks the every movement of citizens on the streets of Glasgow, a place naturally Orwellian enough to seem like a sci-fi parable without exaggeration. Political observance is merely subtext here, though. The principal plot, which I will spoil as little as possible since the film savors its ability to withhold information, focuses on Jackie’s process of grieving. She is a withdrawn observer, connecting in fleeting moments with people she watches on her monitors as she recovers from mourning the death of her family. One day she spots a man from her past on her screen and feels compelled to confront him. She slowly begins to make her way into his world and the film proceeds to explore her actions and the emotional damage they represent, leading to a hopeful bit of satisfaction on her behalf.

Dickie’s most astounding quality is the way she gives nothing away throughout the film. She doesn’t express for us any obvious signs of what she intends for the mysterious stranger. We watch her knowing nothing, and expecting that anything could happen at any time. It’s also refreshing to see a film bravely make its heroine somewhat dour and unlikable while characterizing the presumed villain (you’ll get there eventually) as perhaps not all that horrible. There are a handful of sluggish moments here, but the technique involved is deeply precise and not at all lethargic without reason. It eases slowly into territory as rich and dark as anything I’ve seen of late.

Grade: A-