Without Blood
Without Blood
Without Blood: Angelina Jolie has taken a different approach in her fifth project as a director, With Blood, which can be described as a reset or a new beginning for her as a filmmaker. It does not intend to be derogatory but rather highlights the fact that, regardless of global conflicts, many such films have yet to be produced; indeed, making them is extremely difficult even for recognized filmmakers. It is the case even when one considers the numerous conflicts that displace vast numbers of people and are currently populating both historical and cinematic narratives.
It does not assist to have problematic post-war films set in Bosnia (In the Land of Blood and Honey, 2011), or in Cambodia (First They Killed My Father, 2017), or even the Second World War (Unbroken, 2014), only to then try and adapt a short story by Alessandro Baricco from 2002 of the same name. So where exactly are we in this film and what year is it set in? The answer will shock some viewers as it is deliberately ambiguous in nature and styled with only two central characters, making viewers wonder whether they have missed a critical piece but never getting that satisfaction of finding out where they should look.
Salma Hayek Pinault and Demián Bichir are the two faces that are leading these love stories but those who anticipate history about the civil wars in Mexico and Spain may become exceedingly aggravated because the timelines just do not match.
This is nothing but a civil war and as for the specifics of where it has gone down before, it is just an extended introduction setting the stage for the man on horseback lassoing another man, pulling him off his horse and dragging him. As Bichir’s character Tito puts it in a reflective voice over in a movie, There’s a bigger dream that when we first started, there’s a big ambition which made it worth, break the earth we had to cause the separation.”
Tito is not the only figure who dreams of a break through as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven seemingly had a great impact as the viewer looks at a girl, who has been shown by the name of Nina, on the swing. Such tranquility has been effectively shattered as a car pulls up undoubtedly engaging the drama the viewers did not perceive until this point — usually as the viewers must assume set in period always three men step out.
In one breeze, her father asks where she can hide beneath the floor, and instructs her older brother to seek cover as well. One of the three was a young Tito, who was accompanied by his father Salinas and his henchman, El Blanco, who have come to hide and beat Nina’s father, an ex-head doctor at a local hospital with a stick.
He was, some say, a butcher of war, a man called “Hyena” by his friends “who chuckled when they called him that.” Is this correct? We, and Nina, don’t learn it, which is not a spoiler because the outcome is, in any case, the truth which this movie revolves around.
This encounter does not go as expected and ends with a fire that Nina somehow manages to escape. The action, if that is the appropriate term, seems to then proceed forward in time to another time period (possibly the late ‘50s early ‘60s) and a different setting which can be spatially oriented to another country, though this time its more of a city.
An elegant, fashionable women- it’s a dead giveaway that Miss Hayek now plays the more mature Nina — she walks up to a street news agent whose demeanor is that of a modest, ordinary man with the intention of purchasing a lottery ticket. “I understand what you want, and I am sure I have the answer,” Bichir said with confidence. “I know who you are and what you are looking for. You came here to search for me. You found me.”
This is the core of the Without Blood film, as the two travel in order to try to explain the circumstances of their lives to each other; accordingly, each of the books seeks some explanation as to how and why it all happened. Tito tells Nina those of his whereabouts from that day onwards on his theories about her life and she either agrees with him or not.
Like if they are engaging in a cool poker game, nothing shows on their faces and the film somehow reaches a sort of impasse that when one is able to lean into it is dreamlike in its vividness; Nina the avenger with the love of a gun suffocating her handbag and the poor tito looking lifeless as she constantly digs at the guilt that has clawed at him for the longest of times.
It’s a pretty unusual movie considering its finale, which completely overturns the standard expectations: will she spare him or assassinate him? One would be paying a heavy price should they buy that alternative but it does probably clarify why Jolie found the material attractive a little. At least, it is an attempt in searching for ways to circumvent the violence that would otherwise constant civilized societies splinter into wars.
Regarded for shared strains of war, trust Nina saying, “revenge is the only medicine that numbs the pain.” The situation out there at the moment makes this assertion seem overtly simplistic, but that does not reduce its resonance, and – and let us not forget both Hayek and Bichir gave excellent performances – what Jolie has done is considerable. A stylized chamber work though it was, it had an impact on the spectators and reminds us such things did exist.
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- Genre: Drama, War
- Country: United States, Italy
- Director: Angelina Jolie
- Cast: Salma Hayek, Demián Bichir, Andrés Delgado
