This scene hangs around as a joke among the friends who I dragged to see In Bruges (2008). Going to Bruges myself on July 15th, reason enough for me to watch the film. Hopefully I won’t be too fat to climb the windy stairs of the Belfried, or too skeptical of any Irish tourist sitting next to me on the canal tour.
I don’t care that some thought the sightseeing scenes were boring, or that the medieval dream setting was corny, I really enjoyed the movie. It satiated all my guilty pleasures: foreign location, gun shootings, romantic twists and very witty lines. The leading characters include 2 professional hitman, a midget, a prostitute, a drug-dealer and a potty-mouthed boss. The film is rather dark (my favorite kind), but I thought the point of the film is that there are so many things wrong with the world, it’s awful and sometimes you can’t help but laugh at it.
Half of the conversations probably offend just about everybody, dwarfs, fat Americans, and even the Belgian locals. However, it’s got unmistakable sincerity which sets In Bruges apart from the Eurotrip kind of mindless goof-offs. The jokes got me jumping from my seats (figuratively speaking), but the evocative questions of sin and redemption string them nicely together to give a deeper reason to watch the movie. It is also left open to interpretation, how the playwright-turned-director Martin McDonagh intends it to be. I will spare you the discussion on the spiritual experience of purgatory here, and maybe you won’t even find the movie anything more than comedy of words. But it definitely is not one of those movies that try too hard to make a political statement. Besides the light-hearted amusement and haunting contemplation about death and such (only for the few with suitable hearts), I found the music incredible, Brendan Gleeson very endearing, Ralph Fiennes very sexy, and Colin Farrel very expressive eyebrows. I also got thirsty from watching them drinking Belgium beer.
Ken crawls to the edge of the stone bell tower, a trail of blood coagulating behind him. The fog hypnotizes the sky of this 15th century little town and completely isolates Ken from the crowd below. Christmas lights on the streetlamps illuminate wooly. Snowflakes grace the rosy cheeks of the children. Lovers rush home in each other’s arms. All you hear is the crystal clear sound of coins dropping on cobbled streets…well, I wont’ ruin the movie for you. As this point I was crying uncontrollably (the only other times being reading The Kite Runner and watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
