The compilation of Denis Villeneuve’s works is nothing short of stunning, though it’s darkness and foreboding promise little more than chaos in the slow, measured beats that continually push forth even when it seems that something must eventually give way to the light and to a more orderly approach. There’s a great deal of cynicism in the works of this director, and something that is elusive but still capable of being noticed since it is in your face and does not try to hide. The shadows in which the main points reside however and the darkness from which they come is sometimes hard to fathom. Villeneuve seems to like to hide the most pertinent points of a film within the story line and make the viewer guess at what might really be going on.
The order of chaos is what drives the film in many ways, though it also makes everything seem far more sinister than it really is at times. Even those scenes that deal with the light seem far less positive and more geared towards making the audience think that something untoward is about to happen to one or many characters within the film. The warm, fuzzy moments seem to promise that they’ll be taken away soon by something dark and ultimately fatal to those that are not ready to be shuffled loose from the mortal coil. Chaos is rampant throughout nearly everything that Villeneuve does, and it’s beautiful in a way, but also highly confusing to those that might decide to look past the known and attempt to understand what it is that they can’t see or aren’t able to divine from the picture they receive.
Chaos is order, and order gives way to chaos. It is a two-sided coin that when flipped ascribes more to chaos than order since the randomness of life and how it happens in various situations is in fact the nature of chaos. Order is the imposing of one’s will upon the chaotic jumble that is the natural world. In many ways Villeneuve imposes order upon the chaos though to show the futility of what we deem as control but is really just illusion. Life is chaotic but is made orderly by those that wish to understand its secrets without having to jump through the many different hoops that could lead to nowhere or everywhere all at once. Villeneuve’s artwork and films are such that the chaos within them is something that exists, breathes, and lives to pull away from the order that is forever a part of it, no matter that the two will always be at odds.
Villeneuve is perhaps one of the most bold directors out there right now and one of the least understood. Writers might understand the point, as many of us walk that fine line between order and chaos every time we put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Straddling that line is a daily occurrence for anyone that creates, as it begs for the chance to step into a world where little makes sense and the shadows breathe whilst speaking their secrets to anyone that will listen.
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