Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard and Dakota Fanning are eco-activists in Kelly Reichardt's skillful drama set in a world of slippery loyalties and questionable ethics
• Full coverage from Venice
• Hadley Freeman meets Jesse Eisenberg in July
Josh is an intense and intelligent young man who has learned his craft and cut his teeth and now feels ready to create a masterpiece. "It's gotta be something big," he says. "People are gonna start thinking." What Josh wants to do is pack a boat with explosives and run it into a hydroelectric dam in the forests of Oregon. Josh is an eco-activist and is portrayed with a clenched and cold-blooded urgency by Jesse Eisenberg. The Oscar-nominated star of The Social Network appears to have cornered the market in playing corn-fed American fanatics.
Josh has a girlfriend, Dena (Dakota Fanning), who he treats more as a junior partner than a love interest, and a mentor, Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), who once served in the marines. It is Dena who convinces a skeptical feed-store owner to sell her the sacks of ammonium nitrate fertiliser which will be used to make the bomb. "You said that no one would get hurt," she reminds Josh and Harmon, but who can give such a guarantee when a dam is coming down and the woods are full of campers?
Are we meant to see these activists as heroes or villains? Tellingly, writer-director Kelly Reichardt elects to remove the usual moral signposts and let us figure that out for ourselves. The trio's concerns may be legitimate, but their plan proves misconceived and hazardous. By the same token, the film's token authority figures are depicted as decent, well-meaning professionals, even if they are the tools of corrupt and corroded industrial culture.
Reichardt (the talented director of Old Joy and Meek's Cutoff) takes this volatile story and handles it with care and precision, as if transporting unstable nitroglycerin. Night Moves, on balance, is the perfect name for a film that walks in shadow; a hushed and coiled thriller in which the characters struggle to find the line between civilisation and nature, conviction and crime. The final act arguably pushes the tale into more conventional, even lurid genre territory. But no matter. This director, in the past, has shown herself to be an ace with the teasing, hanging ending and Night Moves saves the best for last. Josh, Deena and Harmon long to light out for the wilderness, to shake the sick modern world from their shoulders and live free in the forest. When the dam falls down and the net closes in, flight – not fight – may be their final resort.
• Full coverage from Venice
• Hadley Freeman meets Jesse Eisenberg in July
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/01/venice-film-festival-night-moves-review
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