Within a box, a man awakens,
Buried after being taken,
Held for ransom in the ground
With little hope of being found.
In frenzied calls, he pleads for aid
From people grueling to persuade
And wonders if he’ll ever see
The light of day, above and free.
In fear and anger and distress,
He yields at times to hopelessness.
He hopes a savior can prevent
His grave from being permanent.
_______________
It’s amazing how an ending can ruin the movie experience.
MovieRob recommended this film back during his Latin-directed Genre Grandeur month, and I was intrigued by the concept. It’s very simple but, in this case, very well-executed. Ryan Reynolds is utterly convincing as Paul Conroy, a truck driver in Afghanistan who finds himself trapped in a buried coffin with only a phone, a lighter, and a few other items. His panic is palpable, and as he places desperate calls to his wife, his employer, 911, and a hostage specialist, he evokes a rollercoaster of emotions. At times, he’s a bit hard to like as he cusses out the people who (we assume) are trying to help him, but in all honesty, I don’t know what I might say in his incredibly stressful situation, though I’d definitely be praying more.
As the film’s claustrophobia set in, I realized that I wasn’t just watching a man in a box; I was in there with him. The camerawork is brilliant, using every possible angle of Paul’s trapped body to keep the scene contained, with only sparse distant shots to reinforce his isolation. Considering the film’s limited setting, I was surprised at the amount of tension it could create with phone calls and in such a confined space, particularly when Paul gets an unwelcome visitor.
Despite the above praise, the film’s strengths are sadly undercut by an ending that I found to be deeply disappointing. [Spoilers for the rest of the review]. After all of Paul’s psychological torment, after everything he went through, the filmmakers apparently wanted to take the unexpected route and pull the rug out from the audience’s hopes. Surely the greatest expectation for a survival film is for the main character to survive. It doesn’t matter what horrors they go through, whether it’s cutting off their arm or their finger; there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel. In Buried, the filmmakers taunt us with that light, only to pull a psych-out, a false hope that leaves poor Paul Conroy dead and follows up his death with a bizarrely happy-sounding song during the end credits.
By the end, I was left with this disillusioned, empty feeling. What was the point of having sat through an hour and a half of claustrophobia? Should I have learned some lesson? I suppose the filmmakers were attempting to make some sociopolitical statement about the costs of war and illustrate how people in desperation often don’t find the help they need, how hostage situations often end in tragedy, but I’ve grown to despise films whose only ultimate message seems to be that things sometimes just don’t work out (i.e., 5 Centimeters Per Second).
It feels odd to complain about a film not having a happy ending since many of my favorite films end in grief (Grave of the Fireflies, Somewhere in Time, The Green Mile), but in all of these cases, there is either some silver lining or the film’s tragedy is clear from the outset. Buried is a survival thriller, one which puts its character and audience through the ringer with no satisfaction of being released. Some may enjoy that, but I certainly don’t. Sorry, Rob.
Best line: (Dan Brenner’s last words to Paul and maybe everyone watching) “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m so sorry.”
Rank: Dishonorable Mention
© 2015 S. G. Liput
314 Followers and Counting
Brilliance lies within John Nash,
Whose confidence avoids a crash
With economic innovation,
Just the thing to make a splash.
As he savors acclimation,
Mathematics his vocation,
Two new ventures enter in,
Demanding love and dedication.
Undercover jobs begin;
A woman’s heart he learns to win,
But when the two get too entwined,
His sanity is spread too thin.
Some parts of life, he’s shocked to find,
Are only in his gifted mind.
Within his mind, the struggles start
Before he’s forced to be confined.
Discernment’s more than being smart,
And though the phantoms won’t depart,
The measure of a brilliant man
Lies in the constant of the heart.
_______________
Love begins across a room
With eyes that lock and smiles that bloom
But will not leave the stricken pair
When time to end the brief affair,
For love endures a year apart,
And patient is the waiting heart.
They love their spouses too in spite
Of seeking yearly to unite.
For love endures for decades too,
The changes they must suffer through,
And even when it nears its end,
It will not leave a lifelong friend.
_________________
(Can be sung to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”)
Travolta went down to Houston,
He was lookin’ for a job to take.
He was young and dumb, just a country bum,
And he was waiting for his big break,
When he came across this young girl
Dancin’ round in a honky-tonk,
A promised land of beer and band
With a metal bull or bronc.
When the misfit pair were married,
Things at first were going well,
But some stubbornness made a jealous mess
And the marriage quickly fell.
While the two just boozed and pined away
And rode that bucking bull,
I began to think that this movie stinks
And was near unbearable.
__________________
The earth is getting dusty,
And our crops are less than trusty,
And our history is rusty,
And all life is soon to end.
Farmer Coop is in frustration
Till suspicious gravitation
Sends him to a NASA station
To encounter an old friend.
Dr. Brand suggests spacefaring
On a certain wormhole bearing
Will reward the pilots’ daring
With a new potential Earth.
Leaving son and loving daughter,
Coop departs to be the spotter
On new worlds of ice and water,
Where time carries greater worth.
Though he carries on with yearning,
Many dangers are concerning.
Complex choices stem from learning
He may not end up returning.
______________
A lonely hotel is a dangerous thing,
At least in the works of an author named King,
For no one can know what occurs in the mind
When volatile men are annoyed and confined.
They say, like Jack Torrance, the winter caretaker,
That past tragedies are no sign or deal breaker.
He’s simply too sane for such things to occur;
His wife is the same, and he’d never hurt her.
But get them alone in a desolate maze
And watch them get worse with the passing of days
And cringe as the dread and the wickedness weave,
For those at the Overlook may never leave.
__________________
Rhyme and Reason 