John Michael McDonagh’s directorial debut The Guard is one of the most intelligent, creatively designed, funniest films I have seen. Brendan Gleeson invests the character of Gerry Boyle, middle-aged, overweight, rural Irish policeman, with a dead-pan acknowledgement of life’s grit and a serious dedication to its pleasures, wherever he may find them. The film has won several awards, including Best Debut Film – Honorable Mention, Berlin Film Festival; Coup de Coeur, Kodack Award for Best Cinematography, Silver Hitchcock, Dinard British Film Festival; Audience Award, Sarajevo Film Festival; it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival, and was recently screened at the Haifa International Film Festival in Israel.
An amazingly entertaining art film/cop film hybrid, The Guard plays off the conventions of the genre with scintillating yet understated wit, and deeply satisfying saturated hues. No one behaves quite as one might expect, including the camera. Visually, the film is elegant and playful. Color is a dominant element, contradicting expectations with the walls of the interrogation room a rich blue, the Irish grass at the hospice where Boyle’s mother is spending her last weeks is an almost psychedelic green, and the pudgy, whoring, beer-drinking Boyle wears magenta striped socks with his uniform. The sense of place is moodily established with despondent gray skies, rain, and a mid-film 360 pan that leaves no doubt that this is, indeed, the middle of nowhere.
The soundtrack is wonderfully allusive, recalling crime films, westerns, and on one delightfully incongruous occasion Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe (recorded in 1967) comes into the mix with the sound of slurping milkshakes and an attempt to silence Boyle with a bribe – all in a perfect retro fantasy of a shiny red diner, complete with slightly bruised hooker.
Defying and surpassing all expectations is Boyle, whose placid delivery of brutally inappropriate comments is riotously funny. The familiar cop tropes are all here: McBride, the new enthusiastic cop; the interrogation scene; the expert outsider and squeaky clean FBI agent Wendell who seriously underestimates the locals and his own blithe ignorance of them; the drug-trafficker as intellectual manqué; and the ill-matched partnership of Boyle and Wendell – all given hilarious treatment. Brendan Gleeson is a hero of our times, navigating the treacherous terrain of the absurd with rough humor, stoic nonchalance and stubborn independence. He’s backed up by a terrific cast of characters, one of this writer’s favorites was Eugene Moloney (Michael Og Lane), the strange audacious boy on the pink bike with an inside angle on almost everything. The dialogue is so well-written; one could even imagine listening to this film as a radio broadcast. The swift of hearing will even catch a Ned Kelly (McDonagh wrote the screenplay for the 2003 film starring the late Heath Ledger) reference.
See it, see it, see it. I’ve seen it twice, and may yet go for another round.
The Guard (Ireland 2011) is currently showing at Cinema City in Glilot, Ramat Hasharon and other theatres throughout the country.
