It's like a f*cking fairytale

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2015)

The first thing you realise about In Bruges is that it's a very good tourist advertisement for the city. It's almost too easy for the set designer; lavish old churches amongst medieval architecture, cobblestone streets, gorgeous canals, a dainty market square. Beneath the beautiful setting is a dark and twisted comedy that manages to say quite a lot. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's dialogue is at times reminiscent of Pulp Fiction's, being snappy, cynical, often irrelevant. But it's very important in establishing the relationship between two hit men in Ray and Ken.
Farrell gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as the younger of the pair. The opening narration tells us of his cardinal sin in murder, but it's much later that we find out that he also accidentally killed an innocent young boy in the process, and that it was his first contracted kill. Farrell manages to portray these without ever explicitly telling the audience. His performance is one of great range and character; on the surface he is bored, impatient, brutally dismissive, honest (that American did have a heart attack at the top of the tower), and cynical. But there's also moments of innocence and wonder and childhood that he exhibits which makes it more clear the gravity of his situation and sin. At heart Ray is not a bad man, simply one on the wrong path.
Ken (Brendon Gleeson) is the only one who recognises this. There's not too much in common with the pair; snappy exchanges showcase the very apparent difference between the two's idea of a good holiday and just a waste of time. McDonagh manages to give a visually breathtaking and interesting tour of Bruges all while establishing the relationship and the plot. They discuss heaven, hell and purgatory at the art museum, a thin veil for the hit men's pondering of morality, and clash when Ray refuses to go up and see the view at the bell tower while Ken pays his 5 Euro. Each scene of the tightly knitted screenplay is crucial to the climax of the film, every last detail significant.
There's a running motif between the criminals of the film in the pair and their boss, Harry. Ralph Fiennes plays a calm but unbalanced mob boss, unflinching in his duty but all the same possessing a moral compass like the other two. McDonagh expresses this with humorous dialogue which is driven purely by character. Both Harry and Ray are impulsively violent when need be but in sight of the pregnant Marie, their softer personalities come out. It's a clever and almost exasperating scene which wouldn't normally be in a film, as they time the start of their action sequence in unison. There is clearly a line that even these men won't cross. Ken reaches this with the realisation of Ray's impeding suicide, despite initially agreeing to kill him as a result of his debt to Harry. It's a wonderfully ironic twist which again is driven by wonderful acting and dialogue: "I'm not allowed to and you are? How's that fair?" All three characters possess an underlying complexity beyond just the simply criminal life of killing people. Ken doesn't even commit any murders in the entire film; in fact only killing himself in an attempt to save Ray. His life debt, trust and integrity to Harry is undone when he realises that the reasonably untainted Ray has the capacity to be something better. No more prominent an example of the code that they possess is Harry's suicide at the end which hammers down the main thematic virtue. The sort of innocence and purity that is symbolically represented in the boy and seen in glimpses of Ray must remain clean of bloodstain and ruin. Harry kills himself when realising what he's done; ironically the victim is the very opposite of the ideal, a drug addicted dwarf who hires prostitutes. The significant act is in Ray, who frantically tries to correct this act and spare Harry even as he is dying by his hand.
Ray's characters progression is complex, foreshadowed and consequential. Even whining endlessly at the beginning at being stuck in Bruges for two weeks, he shows no real purpose, desire or destination. His ambitions are simple and sensual in nature: chasing after a beautiful women and stealing drugs. This aimless perspective is marred by the sincerity of the guilt at the back of his mind, showcased sparingly but in raw and genuine moments of emotional regret by Farrell, like when he breaks down at the playground. In the ambulance he finally decides on a goal: to find the mother of the boy and accept her punishment. It's the first time in the entire film we see resolve to live and it's the culmination of the hints of moral goodness that we know Ray is possible of. The ending is purposefully ambiguous on whether he does manage to reach that goal, much better than the one in the original screenplay which has him contemplating suicide once again only to hesitate when Chloe rings him. For Ray, the fairytale city of Bruges is a complete nightmare. It's a 2 week purgatory which constantly eats away at his conscience and reminds him of his guilt. One way or another, he must escape.
In Bruges manages to deftly balance the light-hearted humorous side of the situation and of the characters with the subtext of self-hatred, anguish and cardinal sin. It's a thematically complex character study filled with stark juxtapositions of the poignant and the absurd. Most will find it as charming as the fairytale city that it is set in.