Alex Cox is mostly known for just one film, his first, Repo Man. But in fact, he has been making superb, innovative films for two decades now, mostly outside Hollywood, and without access to Hollywood funding. Many of his films are not well distributed and hard to see, but among the ones I’ve seen, I certainly think that Sid and Nancy, Walker, and El Patrullero, at the very least, are major works. To their number can now be added Cox’s latest work, Revengers Tragedy. This film is a contemporary (or rather, near-future) staging – set in a postapocalyptic, grimy Liverpool – of the Jacobean play of that name by Thomas Middleton. Murder, rape, incest, fratricide, suicide, revenge, venality, corruption, and grotesquerie (poisoned skulls!) are the order of the day; Middleton’s vision translates well to a contemporary world of grimy slums and fashionable clubs. Cox’s direction is always visually inventive, with fluid camera movement, odd framings, and unexpected cuts and inserts. The soundtrack is mostly pounding dance music, together with a wide variety of modes of speech, from Middleton’s blank verse to British working-class slang to the formal, standardized language of media and political pronouncements. The film as a whole is both kaleidoscopic and subtle, and it really does manage to convey the tone of the play, at once grimly nihilistic and absurd.
Revengers Tragedy
Alex Cox is mostly known for just one film, his first, Repo Man. But in fact, he has been making superb, innovative films for two decades now, mostly outside Hollywood, and without access to Hollywood funding. Many of his films are not well distributed and hard to see, but among the ones I’ve seen, I certainly think that Sid and Nancy, Walker, and El Patrullero, at the very least, are major works. To their number can now be added Cox’s latest work, Revengers Tragedy. This film is a contemporary staging – set in grimy Liverpool – of the Jacobean play of that name by Thomas Middleton. Murder, rape, incest, fratricide, revenge, venality, corruption, and grotesquerie (poisoned skulls!) are the order of the day; Middleton’s vision translates well to a contemporary world of grimy slums and fashionable clubs. Cox’s direction is always visually inventive, with fluid camera movement, odd framings, and unexpected cuts and inserts. The soundtrack is mostly pounding dance music, together with a wide variety of modes of speech, from Middleton’s blank verse to British working-class slang to the formal, standardized language of media and political pronouncements. The film as a whole is both kaleidoscopic and subtle, and it really does manage to convey the tone of the play, at once grimly nihilistic and absurd.