TIFF’s With Blood On His Hands – The Films of Nicolas Winding Refn Review: Pusher (1996)

Cast: Kim Bodnia, Zlatko Buric, Laura Drasbæk
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Country: Denmark
Genre: Crime | Thriller

Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage for TIFF’s With Blood On His Hands – The Films of Nicolas Winding Refn which runs from October 24th to November 5th at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For more information on upcoming TIFF film series visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

In Refn’s first feature film, Pusher, he establishes a sensationalist style of unremitting violence through hand camera movements, close-ups, and saturated colours. As a result, Refn’s films have a highly close and personal feel to them; the characters, which are undeniably the main subjects of his films, are illustrated with care and empathy. In turn, the viewer’s receive a strong connection to the protagonists, and therefore may easily immerse themselves into the film. What are therefore needed for Refn are strong acting, believable characters, and thorough character development. With Pusher, Refn presents himself already as an accomplished director, yet these elements remain relatively amateurish. It’s not until later features that Refn would truly hone the style he has chosen for himself. Still, Pusher is a testament to Refn’s, at the time, latent abilities. Throughout the film, one might realize glimpses of what would come—moments of Refn’s undeniably exhilarating stylistic signature.

In Refn’s first feature film, Pusher, he establishes a sensationalist style of unremitting violence through hand camera movements, close-ups, and saturated colours.

Commencing with music and inter-titles to introduce the characters, Refn immediately tells his viewers that they are watching a film, that it’s a story, and that these are the players. His decision to frame the film over a week, and to moreover use inter-titles to display the day, is further support to this decision. While allowing the viewer to establish an episodic read of the film, and perhaps helping one keep up with the plot, this use of inter-titles is a bit distracting and momentarily moves one out of the film.

Throughout the film is a moving camera; almost exclusively, hand camera movements follow in near close up the actions of the protagonist, Frank (Kim Bodnia). With these movements, Refn presents an innovative style of editing; there are times what cuts are rather quick, but most of the time long takes fill the screen time as Refn’s camera abounds the action with visceral inspections of the activities. Often spinning around characters or trying to catch up with them, the camera yields itself as if the eyes of an invisible character watching the action. While this movement attests to the relatively amateurish and underfunded aesthetic, it permits the film to breathe its own unique atmosphere.

With two slow motion scenes, one chase scene, and only a handful of musical interludes, the film distinguishes a strong presence of itself that, when broken, calls attention to itself. While the grey colour palette of the film is unrelenting, the saturated redness of blood becomes a highly affective and deliberately sensational trope. This affinity for the phenomenal affect of blood’s presence would become a unique quality of Refn’s authorial signature. His fascination with blood, redness, and the display of blood as art—through which the colours and textures influence the emotional experience of the viewers—is perhaps the most notable of Refn’s aesthetic designs. For example, after a junkie shoots himself with a shot gun in fear of the pushers, the blood is as illustrative as a painting. The saturated colour and texture of blood speak of its history, telling the story of how it became splattered on the wall and concrete ground in such a manner.

This affinity for the phenomenal affect of blood’s presence would become a unique quality of Refn’s authorial signature. His fascination with blood, redness, and the display of blood as art—through which the colours and textures influence the emotional experience of the viewers…

Most of the film is a character study. In consequence, most of the scenes are conversations between Frank and somebody else. In the first half, the dialogues are between him and his partner Tonni (Mads Mikkelsen), but after Frank beats him to near death upon discovering he spoke to the cops about him, the film leaves Tonni behind and follows the dialogues between Frank and Milo (Zlatko Buric), the man who provided him the 200 grams of brown which was lost in the lake. While the first part of the film gives Tonni as much expression as it does Frank, when his character is done with, Refn chooses to leave him behind and simply follow Frank. This decision demonstrates what motivates Refn: the character’s whose psychology is in turmoil. Facing problem after problem, Frank becomes the target of great psychological pressure; consequently, his desperation and moments of snapping into violence are a logical extension of his mental state. Trying to capture it in full, the explicit expression of his internal state becomes the object of study. As he changes, the handheld camera captures his expression in close up. At the end, when Frank is alone, robbed, and expects multiple groups out to kill him, the camera lingers on his stoic facial expression. What will happen is perhaps left to interpretation, but perhaps it will be explained in a subsequent film.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Kamran Ahmed

Sr. Staff Film Critic. Visit my personal blog at Aesthetics of The Mind

Kamran's areas of interest include formalism, realism & reality, affect, and notions of the aesthetic. With experiences as a TA, an event panelist, a presenter at conferences from UofT to Harvard, and a writer of a self-authored film blog, Kamran would like to share with others his profound interest in the profilmic in the hopes of inspiring, in them, a similar love for film.

Latest posts by Kamran Ahmed (see all)

• TIFF’s With Blood On His Hands – The Films of Nicolas Winding Refn Review: Pusher II (2004) - October 28, 2013
• Review: Dallas Buyers Club (2013) - October 28, 2013
• TIFF’s With Blood On His Hands – The Films of Nicolas Winding Refn Review: Pusher (1996) - October 27, 2013