Review of Da 5 Bloods (2020)
Seen in 2020.
Promising concept, increasingly Brechtian execution. Lee returns to his usual style following the more illusionistic Black Klansman (2018). For once, the most Brechtian scenes, of Paul wandering alone and speaking directly to camera, are the best ones. The other breaks with illusionism, such as shifting aspect ratios, leading capitals in every word of the subtitles, and colour (for “gold”) in the subtitles, are just distracting. Paul quoting KJV, getting bitten by a snake and being forgiven by Norman as Jesus are all pretentious tricks.
Lee directs dialogue well, but not action. The action scenes are also marred by poor sets and poor CGI to the point that I can’t understand why they’re so long. The excessive musical score, like the mise-en-scène, serve in part to allude to earlier, better movies about the war. Most seriously, the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense. In a country with over 300 people per km², 37% urban, there’s nobody around to see the main characters digging for gold for hours in open terrain apparently suited to agriculture, but when two different guys almost simultaneously step on mines, three white people led by hot white saviour Mélanie Thierry immediately turn up, evidently at work disarming this minefield with unsuitable equipment, critically understaffed and without even having marked the field in any way, and these people have all met before by sheer coincidence. That’s not even Brecht, that’s just bad writing. I expected more scenes getting to know the locals and coming to understand the impact of the war. There’s a little of that, but not enough.