The best moment, the one that perfectly sums up THE GREY, is the one where a character has decided to die. Not because pain and fatigue suffered by that character have muddled his judgment and clouded his mind, though the actor involved certainly brings that, no, the decision to die is more transcendent than that, and the actor involved, nameless lest too much be given away, also brings the moment of absolute clarity that having been through an ordeal can sometimes bring. At that moment, with a landscape of staggering beauty around him and a life of mindless work and even more mindless drunken brawling ahead of him, he chooses the beauty. Joe Carnahan, who with THE A-TEAM and SMOKING ACES, has proven that he has a way with action/adventure brings that moxie brand of filmmaking to THE GREY. But he also brings a profound existential quality to the story of men struggling for survival in a snowy wasteland where they dont belong.
Liam Neeson heads a committed cast as Ottway, a wolf-hunter hired by a petroleum company to safeguard their operation in the wilds of Alaska. Ottway begins the film by choosing death by suicide, and ends it by choosing life, but in a way that brings new meaning to that word. When the company plane taking him and his fellow employees back to civilization crashes, Ottway takes charge of the survivors. Without hope of rescue, without a clue about where they are, and with a pack of wolves after them for invading their territory, the seven survivors set out to save themselves. The journey becomes about more than that, though, with the dynamics of the wolf pack finding oddly resonant echoes among the men. The script, co-written by Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, on whose short story it is based, wastes no time in establishing the humans as the intruders, stumbling through a landscape that gives them no quarter, and the wolves as the offended parties, yet offended parties who prey upon the weakest, most unwise of the men and of their own.
On the surface, THE GREY is a story of survival, and on that level it works quite well. The suspense and terror of being hunted by wolves is told with straightforward simplicity and a keen understanding of the primal human fear of what lies beyond the light of the campfire. On a deeper level, it delves into the equally human, equally primal fear of what lies beyond the light of civilization and of reason. Related in the vernacular of men whose deepest thoughts before their accident was, perhaps, the color of the liquor with which they chose to drink away their existence are startlingly sophisticated considerations of the meaning of life from both theological and nihilistic viewpoints. Carnahan never strays from authenticity as his characters snarl at and bond with each other. Nor does the stray from the tenets of good storytelling, both visually and verbally. There is equal urgency in the harrowing plummet of the plane going down in the snow and in someones moment of quiet revelation. There is as much terror as beauty in the reflections of eyes in the dark appearing by twos just beyond the firelight as there is in a paw print slowing filling with blood in the snow. There is just as much ragged suspense in someone facing their fear of heights with a whisper, as there is in the futility of shouting at wolves galloping fearlessly in pursuit.
The lesson of THE GREY, one demonstrated with superb sensitivity rather than preached with hollow cacophony, is one of life lived not easily, but in harmony. Ottways metamorphosis results from both the external demands of the odyssey, and the inner journey, coming to terms with the absence of his beloved wife, seen in flashbacks or visitations, and finally understanding his father, whose framed bit of poetry looms large in the process. It can be no accident that by the end of the film, Ottways garb has become a seamless continuation of his environment. Not camouflage, with baffled patterns to blend in, but rather distinct blocks of black, white, and grey that are part of the landscape in which he moves so purposefully, with the serenity of a revelation understood and absorbed. Staying until after the credits reinforces that impression without the vulgarity of being obvious, but rather sublimely enigmatic.
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