Bronson (2008)

Directed by: Nicolas Winding Refn

Refn’s movie tells the story of Charles Bronson, the name assumed by one Michael Peterson, who has (at the time of writing) been held in prison almost continually since 1974.  But this is no political prisoner or serial killer.  The movie describes him, however, as Britain’s most dangerous prisoner and on the basis of the evidence shown to us it’s easy to believe the claim.

The movie is framed by fictional scenes of Bronson giving a music hall-style performance, and this device is repeated at intervals to allow him to narrate aspects of the story.  But it serves a second purpose, which is to support the film’s thesis that Bronson’s driving force is a theatricality that demands an audience who, if not exactly appreciative, is certainly impressed.  

We are taken through scenes of his early life, in Luton, where schoolboy Michael is shown beating up a classmate and teacher.  After a brief spell working (and pilfering) in a cafe, and a marriage that produces a son, he decides armed robbery is the way to go, and he lands a seven year sentence.  But prison is a revelation to him: its cells, spaces and corridors are stages on which to perform to an audience that does seem to appreciate what he does and which has, in the form of the uniformed prison officers, an easily identifiable enemy.  More than once he refers to prison as his hotel, and he craves the security that it provides.

Each of the institutions in which he is confined is depicted as a grim place, ghoulishly lit, with shiny, pealing paint on the brick walls.  These, however, serve as an inspiration to him and he embarks on a lifelong, obsessional campaign of fitness, apparently aiming to sculpt his body into something every bit as hard as the brick and steel that surround him.  Refn and his cinematography and production design team manage to create a grainy-dirty look to all the scenes, suggestive of purgatory – and never more successfully so than in the Bedlam-like mental institution to which he is temporarily committed (and where, uniquely in this film, he is depicted as unhappy).

In the end, the film does not attempt to explore very far what is going on inside Bronson’s head, and goes  no further in explaining his behaviour than asserting his theatricality (which gets more extreme and eccentric as the story progresses, with Peterson exhibiting an increasing preference to launch himself into fights naked and, sometimes, covered in butter), and at times it feels a little repetitive.  No one is very sympathetically portrayed – certainly not the forces of law and order, though we need to remember that the story is being told from Bronson’s point of view.   But that does not detract significantly from what is an impressive film.  As Peterson/Bronson, actor Tom Hardy is utterly compelling, maintaining a hold on the viewer that is at times just an appalled fascination.  He is well supported by the rest of the cast who bring us a collection of grotesques and monsters entirely in keeping with this vision of hell.