Ben Wheatley 2011 UK
Starring: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Michael Smiley, Emma Fryer, Struan Rodger
*SPOILER ALERT*
The British director Ben Wheatley has fast become one of the most interesting directors in the country, his four features covering a wide range of genres and receiving a huge amount of critical acclaim, particularly for his originality. Personally he reminds me a lot of Nicolas Roeg, Peter Greenaway and Jacques Rivette in that his films are brilliantly made, visually audacious and ferociously intelligent, if you can work them out that is. His second feature, Kill List, is no different. Indeed, it can be read in several ways spanning topics including Macbeth, King Arthur, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Saturnalia and even the aftereffects of Tony Blair's decisions about Iraq. To explain the Macbeth line the main character Jay is a former soldier introduced to a task he doesn't initially want to take part in by what turns out to be a coven of witches and forcefully encouraged in it by his wife. The dead rabbits he finds left in his garden here take the place of the 'wing of bat' in the witches' potion, both ending up as they do being willingly consumed by the main characters. The knife wound inflicted on Jay by his client (which he later rips open) meanwhile is reminiscent of the 'damn spot' that just won't disappear. There are three victims on the list (the priest, the librarian and the Hunchback), all of whom get their own title sequences and each of whom represent a different type of enlightenment (faith, intelligence and the all-seeing eye of the Hunchback from his tower) as well as matching the three witches and the three murderous acts Macbeth performs. Both men also end up killing their best friend, their enemy's family and are crowned as King. The symbol scratched into the screen pre-film and into Jay and Shel's mirror later also continues the triangular theme but could also be seen as an A, as in both the famous sign of Anarchism and Arthur. In the Arthurian legends King Arthur is supposed to return to Britain in a time of great need. In the film Britain is shown to be in crisis, with Jay still suffering after serving in the Iraq war and now working as a part-time hitman. The bedtime story he tells his son involves his experiences abroad, something he says doesn't happen anymore when asked. The witches meanwhile appear to be messianic rather than Pagan and have evidently manufactured the whole scenario to test his qualifications for the role; he is after all ruthless enough to kill a priest without much bother but moral enough to violently react to his second victim being an apparent paedophile. The final task has him committing the ultimate sacrifice under a full moon and presided over by Lady Justice (the woman in the picture above). To further add fuel to this theory the first two victims thank him before he kills them with the second even saying "he doesn't know who you are" in reference to Gal (short for Galahad?) as if they are happily giving up their lives for a higher purpose (his crowning). The third laughs in his face. There are even blink-and-you'd-miss-them references with Jay talking about getting a puppy and calling it either Arthur or Gwynnie (Guinevere) and having a playful swordfight with his wife and son early in the film. This also foreshadows his final battle with the 'hunchback'. In this interpretation Jay is crowned not as king but as the Pope Of Fools, just as Quasimodo was in the book, and is reinforced by him killing the 'hunchback' (and her laughing as she dies) and seemingly taking its place as the ultimate fool. And in a way he is, having been manipulated throughout, possibly by every character, until he destroys the thing he loves the most. The Feast Of Fools is also a Saturnalian rite which ties back in to the Pagan idea. All of these are valid readings but at the same all of them could be wrong. There's even an argument that the film could be seen as a comment on the treatment of soldiers with Jay possibly suffering from post-traumatic stress and creating the whole scenario as a sort of psychosis-laden dream to deal with the things he has done in the name of war. Or it could just be a badly-made gangster/horror mash up. Wheatley hasn't helped things either, having given several contradictory answers when questioned. My guess would be that he quite enjoys the divergent analyses and, to a level, he doesn't want us to understand. That may even be the underlying point - that, when it comes down to it, there are sometimes things in life that we just can't comprehend. And while all of this is in the film's favour it may also be its downfall as, for many people, it will undoubtedly be too intellectual for its own good.
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