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Friday, November 13, 2009

BD impressions: Max Manus: Man of War

12:27 AM / BD Impressions / No Comments

Until I saw Max Manus (I refuse to use the "Man of War" subtitle that the UK distributors added, and which gives the impression of a very different film) tonight, I don't think I'd ever seen a Norwegian film before. Then again, I can think of innumerable other countries whose cinema I haven't sampled; this is one more I can cross off the list. I'm a bit of a sucker for spy movies, particularly those focusing on the Second World War, which is probably the period in history that I find most interesting and the point at which espionage as we know it today really came into being. Flame & Citron shed some light on the relatively unknown (outside its homeland) Danish resistance movement, and Max Manus does much the same for Norway. The protagonist, the eponymous Maximilian Manus, achieved something approaching folk hero status thanks to a combination of the audacity of the sabotage missions he pulled off, his own deviousness and sheer luck.

That said, when the end credits rolled, I was left with a nagging sensation that I hadn't got to know who Max Manus really was. The film is gripping from its first frame to its last, but it crams an awful lot of material into just under two hours, and as a result leaves you with the impression that important stuff has been glossed over. Given that the events of five years are condensed into the film, this was perhaps inevitable, but there's something a little unfocused about directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning's handling of the material. A subplot involving the local Nazi head honcho and his romance with a Norwegian woman, for example, is introduced but never fully resolved and has no ultimate effect on the plot, and at least one reviewer astutely observed that the hunter/hunted relationship between he and Max essentially amounts to nothing. There is no meaningful interaction between them, no real impact on the narrative at all. It's slightly frustrating because, when they come face to face towards the end of the film, we get the impression that the directors envisaged this as a momumental event: the moment where two bitter rivals come face to face. Instead, it fizzles out because there is essentially no real conflict between them.

But having said that, I certainly enjoyed Max Manus. It's gripping and technically extremely proficient, with a deeply engaging performance by Aksel Hennie, who looks slightly reminiscent of Steve Buscemi, which in many ways helps him to convince as the awkward everyman turned unlikely hero. And hey, now I know a little about the Norwegian resistance movement, about which I was previously completely ignorant, so I got something of an education out of it too.

Image quality: I have a new condundrum: how to I deal with a film that is not running at its intended frame rate? Should this count against the overall score for video? Max Manus was made for theatrical distribution, and as such originally ran at the standard 24 frames per second. On this BD, however, as with most if not all of Revolver's BD releases, it has been sped up to 25 fps (and, as such, will not work on most NTSC territory players). Speed-up was accepted as a necessary evil for PAL discs in the standard definition days, but now that we have Blu-ray and its native 24p playback, there's no excuse. I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this issue.

Ignoring the issue of the frame rate, this is a very pleasing image. Detail levels are very good and the grain looks natural. However, much of the time, blacks are elevated, which leads to scenes that are supposed to take place in low lighting appear grey and murky rather than truly dark. It's not consistent, though, and some shots do feature pure, deep blacks, leading me to suspect that the fault lies in the digital intermediate rather than the disc itself. Some ringing is visible around the letterboxing, although it looks nothing like the sort of ringing normally associated with filtering, and indeed the way the compression is affected by it almost makes me think the fault lies in the encoding itself. Either way, it's a very minor thing. 8/10

Max Manus: Man of War
studio: Revolver; country: UK; region code: ABC; codec: AVC;
file size: 18.3 GB; average bit rate (including audio): 23.25 Mbit/sec

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