All the world's a stage

• Published in: Sight and sound (London) 2009-04, Vol.19 (4), p.15-15
• Main Author: Corless, Kieron
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Danish; Motion picture directors & producers; Motion pictures; Prisoners; Refn, Nicolas Winding; Scripts
• ISSN: 0037-4806; 2515-5164

The article introduces Nicolas Winding Refn's film, "Bronson", about Britain's longest-serving prisoner Michael Peterson, aka Charles Bronson, and interviews the director about his aims. The film channels the spirit of Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson, Refn citing "O Lucky Man!", "If...", "A Clockwork Orange", "Scorpio Rising" and "Deep End" by Jerzy Skolimowski as his conceptual points of reference. His willingness to take risks results in a film light-years away from the typical British-underworld hack work in the Guy Ritchie mould, and like many foreign directors who have shot films here, the unique universe it constructs can prompt eerie moments of recognition for the British viewer. Refn says "Charles Bronson is not a gangster or a criminal or anything like that; in my movie he's an artist searching for a stage on which to create his performance... I wanted to show that there are so many sides to him that you can never capture him. If Charlie Bronson had become an ad man he'd be bigger than Saatchi. He's an extremely intelligent conceptual artist who found his stage, and for some reason it was in the form of solitary confinement. And I can never judge him for that or even comment on it because I don't have the right. I would never be able to explain him to an audience because he is who he is, a force of nature. We have to observe and accept him". (Quotes from original text)