Buried is a film that can detonate in the wide catalog of thrillers that Netflix offers. Exciting in its artistic approach and oppressive in its realization, the film nevertheless leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Explanations.
Deep form
Behind closed doors. A daring cinematographic process consisting of setting one's narrative in a single place. This is the particularity of Buried, a Spanish film by Rodrigo Cortès, which had intrigued the world of cinema with its singular synopsis when it was released in 2010. An American entrepreneur present in Iraq, Paul Conroy finds himself waking up in a coffin, buried alive with a mobile phone as his only way to be connected to the outside world. Anguished by the death that lurks and at the mercy of his battery, the man knows that his time is running out.
Starting from this enticing starting premise, Buried takes advantage of the advantages and disadvantages of his artistic choices. Like Joel Schumacher for the successful Phone Game, behind closed doors taking place in a telephone booth, Rodrigo Cortès uses the telephone as a character in its own right. Catalyst of all the adventures of the film, this object plays a primordial role because it is the survival of its character. The battery of the draining phone is a way of representing the time that separates Ryan Reynolds' character from certain death.
But concentrating an entire scenario in a place as cramped as a coffin can lead to fears of a possible alteration of the film's progress. And sometimes it is. The feature film does not manage to avoid certain lengths. The action of the film progresses as soon as Paul Conroy is on the phone but stalls as soon as he decides to hang up or sees his connection cut arbitrarily. His difficulties in moving in the coffin or his encounter with a snake halfway through do not bring much to the story. Nevertheless, Buried captivates with its technical cutting that makes it immersive. A staging that marries the end-to-end approach: the film invests only one place and focuses on a single character.
On the poster of Deadpool 2 since Wednesday, Ryan Reynolds achieves a real feat of actor in this closed door where his face, filmed in close-ups most of the time, is almost the only one to appear on the screen. Helped by the direction of Rodrigo Cortès, the American actor manages to make the viewer feel the feeling of confinement. A role against employment for him, rather confined to American comedies.
Like a taste of unfinished business
If the form is very well controlled, it is on the side of the bottom that we must look to find the biggest gaps. The film mainly fishes by its speech much too vague. The director seems to want to distill several messages, but his ambition is vain from the start since he does not go to the end of his intentions. For a moment, there is talk of the illegitimate presence of the United States in Iraq, but the subject is too clumsily. Tracks are activated and are immediately put back in the closet. Gradually, the director seems to lose the thread of his story by maintaining a mystery about the reasons for Conroy's presence in a coffin. A mystery that thickens too much.
So, it's hard to really pin down Buried. The concept works quite well and it is a success in itself to captivate an audience with a unity of places and characters, but it leaves the viewer a little disoriented by the proposed speech.We just don't know what the film wants to tell. Remains then a good entertainment that follows without displeasure.
Like its main character, Buried is locked in an obsessive quest for form, but without paying the same attention to it as for the substance. We then find ourselves faced with a very well conducted exercise in style cruelly lacking in consistency.
