It has been almost two decades since the until then actor Tom McCarthy caught everyone’s attention with his feature film debut, the unforgettable ‘Vías crossed’. The film, in addition to triggering the career of Peter Dinklage, became a favorite of fans on that side of independent cinema.
With ‘Question of blood‘(‘ Stillwater ‘), presented at the Cannes Film Festival and already in theaters, McCarthy confirms that it is one of the indispensable filmmakers of the new Hollywood and offers Matt Damon the opportunity to shine like never before.
Father of the year
In the vein of its Oscar winner for best film (and best screenplay), ‘A Matter of Blood’ is a moving thriller-tinged social drama. Come on, a title that attracts viewers looking for a story with a background above the form. Five years after ‘Spotlight’, McCarthy is relieved to have been able to shoot this project matured for years. That relief in some way is also intuited in the final result.
He does it thanks to sensational work by Matt Damon, an actor who had evaded McCarthy’s offers for years. The director, an admirer of the star, could not get it for his journalistic drama, although the actor insisted that he continue to send him scripts. We were there when the script arrived, written with Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain (‘A Prophet’) and Noé Debré (‘Dheepan’). With a practically complete shooting in the city of Marseille, ‘A Question of Blood’ has united a director and interpreter in a remarkable film. The claw of the Europeans can be seen in the film. Much.
Widowed, sober and out of work, a disenchanted father travels from Oklahoma to France to try to help his daughter, in prison for a murder that he claims not to have committed. The synopsis might as well have been a new action vehicle for Liam Neeson, or even Damon himself, but McCarthy knows what he wants, and that’s exactly the movie. A painful parent-child drama around the world. A world that, Although it may not seem like it, it does not stop changing. Surely for the worse.
From hurricane debris to soul crumbs that still remain within its protagonist, everything in this ‘Stillwater’, a title that responds to the hometown of Damon’s character, is material of emotional demolition. In a good way, of course. Never before had Damon been so human, so vulnerable. A doomed parent who tries to get it right in the worst possible way.
The star of the Jason Bourne saga, now over 50, offers the most touching interpretation of his career and becomes candidate to receive all the awards of the season with his Bill Baker born and raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a beautiful and desolate land, a landscape marked by oil wells and ravaged by tornadoes.
A geographical and human landscape with much in common. Despite the drama, ‘Matter of blood’ keep the tension going with some amazing sequences, like that of the Vélodrome. McCarthy writes a film that is almost always right, despite its length, and continues to show that we are dealing with an excellent and very classic storyteller. Although Amanda Knox didn’t like it.
Is there only one truth? In “Stillwater” coexists those of a Catholic oil driller from Oklahoma, that of an actress and single mother and that of the imprisoned daughter of the protagonist. Between these confronting realities, there are endless nuances and secrets that will help achieve a redemption in search of one of those endings that only happen in the cinema. Fortunately, the nuances of those goals have long been they also question on the big screen.