THE SUNSET LIMITED
US, 2009, 90 minutes. Colour.
Samuel L. Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones.
Directed by Tommy Lee Jones.
Sunset Limited is a two-hander, based on a screenplay by novelist Cormac Mc Carthy who wrote The Road and No Country for Old Men.
The film is set in the one room, making use of the various parts of the room and the furniture to open the film out? Still, it is really a filmed play. The emphasis is in dialogue, played well by the two central characters.
The situation is the attempted suicide from a train of a professor played by Tommy Lee Jones. Samuel L. Jackson is a railway employee who saves him. They are in the employee’s room, discussing the issue, going back and each one telling something of his life story. The film also raises issues of life and death, belief and unbelief, the role of the Bible.
The film reachs a climax and reveals that, perhaps, the Samuel L. Jackson character is really an angel (something in the vein of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life).
The performances are well worth seeing, Cormac McCarthy’s? dialogue worth listening to. However, ordinary audiences may have a difficult time because of the need for such intense concentration on the dialogue.
1. The film as a filmed play? The use of the locations, the emphasis on words, variety in movement, types of shots and editing, the musical score?
2. The location photography, over the period of time the confinement of place, the table the chairs, the sofa, the toilet?
3. The importance of the editing, the close-ups and conversation, reaction shots? The drama, the different positions of sitting at the table lying on the sofa, going to the toilet? The faces, the profiles?
4. Cormac Mc Carthy and his issues, life, death, suicide, faith, alienation, literature, the Bible? Themes of family? Divine help? Friendship or not? Hope?
5. The work of Tommy Lee Jones, his performance, direction? Samuel L. Jackson as the centre of the film, holding the film together?
6. The narrative, the professor, his attempted suicide, the background of his family, alienation from his parents, not going to his mother’s funeral? His work? Not having real friends? The casual acquaintance and talking with him? His reading, not reading the Bible, the Book of Job? Calculating how many books he had read in his life? His lack of faith? His questions about the Divine, belief? Puzzle about being saved? His need to talk, to be listened to? What happened to him ultimately? An everyman figure?
7. The railway worker, saving the professor, going to his room, the functional room, his work, help, trying to keep the professor talking? The professor wanting to leave? The worker and his character, the background of his prison sentence, being a murderer, the jail experience, reading the Scriptures? Faith and learning? His capacity for both listening and talking? Down to earth? The discussion about the books? Faith, hope?
8. The issue of whether he was an angel? His behaviour, powers of persuasion, acting as a counsellor, therapist? Successful or not? His final prayer?
9. A film of literacy, theatrical, philosophical and theological? Cinematic or not?
