Part 2, in which the siblings burst onto the scene like an atom bomb with their directorial debut...
With a
commercially-successful movie under their belts and a handful of impressive
scripts floating around, the Wachowskis found themselves with a newfound career in Hollywood. The project they most wanted to tackle next was an
ambitious science fiction film that would encompass just about the whole of
their interests, but with their disappointing experience on Assassins, the duo decided that this one
had to be all theirs, as they would step behind the director’s seat to maintain
creative control over the final product. The only problem being they had never
directed anything before, and considering their costly sci-fi project had a
script that almost no one who read it really understood, they would first have
to prove themselves ready for such an undertaking by proving they could direct a movie on their own in the first place.
And thus one of the
best films of 1996 was born. Bound is
a movie that’s hard to believe is a filmmaker’s first, in that nearly every
aspect of it is produced with such a fine, clockwork precision. Made cheap and
on the quick, the Wachowskis first movie bristles with a confidence and
assuredness that many filmmakers don’t achieve until well into their careers,
if at all. Bound is a movie made by
people who have been thinking deeply about movies and genre and just what it is
a camera can do to tell a story for a very long time. There are shots in the
movie that at once recall Hitchcock, Scorsese and Kubrick, while at the same
time standing fiercely on their own: the opening shot, the speed-ramped tracing
of the phone lines through the apartment walls, that amazing single-take
sex-scene where the camera swirls around Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly (a
scene choreographed by sex educator Susie Bright. If the film industry had as
many prominent sex choreographers as it does fight choreographers, then surely
the world would be a better place) - each
is a carefully-composed shot befitting of a film with a much higher budget and
with more established filmmakers behind the lens.
Telling a small but
intense crime story, Bound is the
type of movie us film nerds thrive on: a small little ditty that comes out of
nowhere and smacks us right on our asses due to its sheer craft. Because while it is a film noir that
keeps true to the things we love about that genre, it also completely turns
said genre and its typical conventions on its ear. Film noir, at its core, is
all about male emasculation - a post-WWII, last-gasp shriek of masculinity where
any form of compassion (mistakenly believed to be an exclusively feminine
trait) leads to ruination. The isolated, institutionalized man is always led
off to his doom by the woman in noir, and as a character-type, Bound’s Corky is true to form: just
released from prison and trying to stay on the straight and narrow, until a slinky
number in a black negligee comes knocking on the door with an eye for Corky and
a mind for trouble. The only difference being that Corky is a woman herself,
played to wonderfully-blunt perfection by Gina Gershon, and while the plot that
transpires between her and Jennifer Tilly’s Violet unfolds in typical noir
fashion, their blossoming relationship is anything but.
Anytime anyone starts
naming the best LBGT movies ever made, Bound
is sure to show up somewhere on that list, and it is entirely due to Corky
and Violet’s relationship. Despite wearing the appropriate guise of the
down-on-their-luck loser and the femme fatale that the genre requires, Corky
and Violet have a great deal more complexity than any such labels would allow.
Violet especially: her early scenes in the film might lead you to believe that
she’ll stay true to her name, a “shrinking violet” who cries at the sight of
blood and gets lead around by the hand everywhere by her Mafioso boyfriend. But
if you believe that’s all there is to this woman, then “you don’t know shit,”
just as Violet says herself before blowing away Joe Pantoliano’s Caesar.
Violet successfully
recruits the reluctant Corky in a scheme that will see them leave her
boyfriend, his asshole boss and good deal of the Chicago mafia out of
$2,000,000 that one of their associates in turn tried to steal from them in a
small-scale heist with rather large personal stakes. The scenes that follow
display the craft required to build such heightened amounts of tension, but the
most exhilarating part is watching Violet sneakily turn the events to her
advantage. Being a woman playing a man’s game, nobody expects anything out of
her, and she uses their assumptions to win out in the end. Did Violet
orchestrate the whole thing from the beginning, manipulating the poor sap who
stole from the mob originally so she and Corky could get away scott free with
$2,000,000 of mafia money? With this chick, I wouldn’t put anything past her.
Given
the genre, you might also be led to believe that our protagonists will find
themselves dead or betrayed by one another by picture’s end, but that’s another
well-worn rug the Wachowskis use to pull right out from under your feet, as
Violet and Corky not only pull off their score and stay alive in the process,
but also remain true to each other to the very end, driving off into the sunset
hand in hand. Noir traditionally doesn’t have a happy ending, but by taking the
man out of the equation, an ending where the girls get away with the money and
each other is suddenly possible.
With
their first film out of the gate, the Wachowskis start strong by producing
a bonafide masterpiece. As much as I’ve enjoyed their later, more blockbuster-y
work, it is a shame that they never again tackled a smaller-scaled picture, as Bound remains possibly their most mature
work to date. But the siblings are clearly not interested in repeating
themselves, settling for no less than to push themselves and the medium of film
further with each successive work.
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