Fantastic Fest 2010 Review: Buried
Buried (2010)
Fantastic Fest 2010
Directed by: Rodrigo Cortes
Starring: Ryan Reynolds
Review by: Britt Hayes
Like most excellent films, Buried is about a man having the worst day of his life. Paul Conroy wakes up in a coffin in the middle of the desert in Iraq. Paul is an American contractor who earns his living driving trucks to deliver supplies and help rebuild Iraq, but his convoy was ambushed, almost everyone killed, and he was buried alive with only a Zippo lighter, a cell phone, and a ransom note.
The plot is incredibly simple: Using this one cell phone, Paul has to figure out how to get the hell out of this coffin in the next few hours, or he will be left to die. He calls family, the company he works for, and the government, and while it sounds like watching a man talk on the phone for 90 minutes would be terribly boring, Buried is far from dull.
From the opening credits to the very end, director Rodrigo Cortes crafts a thriller worthy of Hitchcock comparisons. Cortes finds ways to make a film that takes place in a wooden box go from feeling claustrophobic to endless and dizzying with clever tricks (the most impressive being a shot where the camera pulls up and away from the coffin, making the coffin look very tall inside). Instead of sticking to a simple Zippo lighter for lighting, Cortes creates plot points that feel natural and will give us other sources of lighting, so it never feels like the film is one-note or gimmicky.
Buried could not work without Ryan Reynolds, who gives the performance of his career as Paul Conroy. While there are still shades of the biting, snarky Reynolds we all know and love, there is also a fantastic scale of emotions throughout the film. We as an audience don’t know Paul very well, and we’re never introduced to him before the coffin, but through his actions and his feelings we grow to root for him. The situation continually grows worse inside the coffin, and people on the outside are either of little help or are actively making things worse. Reynolds’ diverse display of emotions and his genuine nature keep us by his side until the very end.
It’s difficult to find a flaw with this film. Buried is just as long as it needs to be for such a simple plot, and any decisions Paul makes as a character can be attributed to his character, and not the director or a poor script. We are supposed to be frustrated when Paul makes a poor decision. This is a film that doesn’t just place you in the coffin with Paul, but puts you in his shoes. What would you do? Who would you call? Would you try to break out of the coffin and risk suffocation by sand, or would you wait for someone to save you?
There’s also some nuanced commentary on not just the government and American politics, but the politics of the world. Cortes tries to break the divide between America and Iraq by drawing simple parallels. Do terrorists set out to be “terrorists”, or are they simply desperate beyond reason for money to save themselves and their family? There’s a distinct comparison here between how we as Americans feel about the Middle East, and how quickly we are to lump them into one category, and how the Middle East might view us: we are all soldiers, we are all at war. Fortunately, Cortes doesn’t beat us over the head with these comments, nor does he say anything derogatory about the Middle East. He only encourages you to ask questions.
Cortes pulls you in and builds a relationship between us and Paul Conroy. We empathize with him from start to finish because he isn’t a caricature or a heightened reality, and Cortes knows just when to pull the punches and which ones will hurt the most.
In the end, Buried is a mean, manipulative film that twists you up inside and doesn’t let go.
