Bronson

Bronson (2009) is about the prisoner held longest in solitary confinement in Britain. Michael Peterson was given seven years for a post office robbery in 1974. He has been inside for around forty years, most of it alone in isolation. The reason is not the original crime: he kept starting fights, took guards hostage, and his sentence was extended each time. He changed his name later; he took Charles Bronson while fighting on the unlicensed boxing circuit. The film is not built as a prison drama. In one scene Bronson stands on an empty stage with his face painted, telling his life to an audience. The telling is a performance; the man is selling his own story. The question is why he does this. The answer is not money or escape. What Refn shows is more uncomfortable: outside he was nobody and inside he is somebody, and his notoriety is all he has. Tom Hardy put on more than thirty kilos of muscle for the part and met the real Bronson; the moustache was matched to his. Nicolas Winding Refn directed. The music mixes opera and electronics; the violence is staged over classical music. The naked fights are the film's signature: before fighting the guards Bronson strips and oils himself so nobody can hold him. That was a real tactic. The film never justifies him and offers no explanation. It runs 92 minutes. Good for: character portraits, formal experiment, and Refn. Less good for: the violence is constant and the film is open to being read as admiration for its subject.