Screengrab editor emeritus Bilge Ebiri reports from the frontlines of Park City.


Aka I Beat, Therefore I Am. Nicolas Winding Refn’s explosive, beautiful, hilarious, and infuriating Bronson is one of the best films about self-actualization I’ve ever seen. It could have easily been directed by its subject: Charlie Bronson, nee Michael Peterson (Tom Hardy, in one of those bulked-up, electrifying performances I’ll be telling my grandkids about), Britain’s most violent inmate and a man who has spent 30 of his 34 years in prison in solitary confinement, largely as a result of his fondness for kicking the living shit out of prison guards and pretty much anyone else who happens to cross his path. This is no grim and grimy prison film, however. Instead, Refn films in a vibrant, operatic style that tries to approximate the sublime joy Bronson gets from his confrontations. Utilizing lush cinematography, bursts of Verdi, Wagner, and the Pet Shop Boys, along with Hardy’s transformative performance, Bronson works its way towards repeat crescendos of violence; where other prison films might ladle on the triumphant music when their protagonists break free of their captivity, Refn’s film does so whenever its hero gets in a fight. It amounts to pretty much the same thing.

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