Bastards

Bastards is indeed a hard film to love. It’s wicked, painful, and soul-sick. It’s also the best new release I saw in 2013… More than anything else it’s that moral distinction between despair and sorrow that makes this a Lynchian film. Darkness, nihilism, anxiety — these are relatively easy conditions to reproduce on screen. Lynch has an innate and uncanny talent for expressing the transcendent loss that inevitably accompanies violence and human tragedy. That is what Denis taps into here.

Though less formally opaque than Denis’ 2004 feature, The Intruder, its terseness and sustained forward momentum will surely create questions in the minds of even the most seasoned filmgoer. While everything in this half-noir, half-Greek tragedy will be explained, Bastards is a film that begs for — and is worthy of — multiple viewings.

This puzzle of a movie… evolves into an ugly realization, an impossibility of catharsis. We drown together with the fate of the lead, and the finale (wonderfully shot in digital) overwhelms us with the realization of what we have just seen. Les Salauds is a difficult film, but an ultimately satisfying experience that puts Denis far beyond her contemporaries, a unique view still standing strong.