6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Pregnant and nearing her due date, the introverted Esther is assaulted on the street by an unknown assailant. She survives, but loses her baby. In a group for grieving mothers, she meets Melanie, a friendly suburban housewife who lost her son and husband. They form an unexpected friendship. But both women have secrets.
Starring: Alexia Rasmussen, Joe Swanberg, Alexa Havins, Kristina Klebe, Adam StephensonHorror | 100% |
Psychological thriller | 17% |
Mystery | 3% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (192 kbps)
DD track not listed on disc menu
English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Even to explain the title of Proxy would involve giving away important elements of the plot. Director and co-writer Zach Parker has said that he likes films to surprise him and that he expects audiences to be savvy enough to spot the character arcs of a typical film in the first half hour. His goal is to construct a story that subverts viewers' expectations, but not with arbitrary "twists". The plot has to fit together by the time the movie ends, and the characters' actions must have an internal logic that gradually reveals itself, even if the logic is crazy by everyday standards. Proxy, which Parker scripted with Kevin Donner, succeeds in keeping the viewer off balance for much of its two-hour running time, but it also demands your attention as it keeps changing direction and whipping around unanticipated curves. I can't say as much as I would like to without revealing too much of the plot, but I can assure you that it all pays off. But you may find yourself going back to replay some or all of the film after the final frame, just to be sure. (I did.) Proxy was shot in 2012 and premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It toured the festival circuit for the next seven months before being released in a limited theatrical run and via video-on-demand by IFC under its "IFC Midnight" label in April 2014. IFC and MPI Media are now releasing it on Blu-ray with a generous complement of extras.
As Parker describes in the "Behind the Scenes" documentary, he and his cinematographer, Jim Timperman, did extensive tests comparing the behavior in post-production of footage from a Red camera, which they had used on their previous feature, Scalene , with footage from an Arri Alexa. They concluded that the Alexa offered them greater flexibility for what they wanted to achieve with Proxy. Having been captured and completed digitally, Proxy has been transferred to Blu-ray with no intervening analog stage, so that the image on disc should represent the finished film accurately. Although the Alexa is renowned for its ability to create a film-like image, Parker and Timperman have elected to shoot Proxy with photo-realistic clarity that looks more like first-rate video than film. At the same time, the camera movements and framing are almost classically cinematic, providing a striking contrast to the video style of the imagery. Combined with precise adjustments to shadows, densities and colors (examples which can be seen in the "VFX" featurette), the effect is consistently unsettling, because everything seems to be clear and well-resolved, but there's a persistent sense of things hidden just outside the frame. MPI's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray offers an impressive presentation of Proxy, despite a notably low average bitrate of 15.46 Mbps. The low average results from the many shots where Parker holds steady on a single character, or on two characters talking, while the rest of the frame remains unchanged—a gift to the compressionist, especially in a digitally originated film, where there is no film grain moving in the static portions of the frame. In the film's sudden, sharp eruptions of activity, by contrast, the bitrate spikes up sharply. In general, the image is sharp, clear and finely detailed, with very good black levels that provide an accurate delineation of Parker's subtle use of shadows. The colors are almost unnaturally bland, neither assertively bright nor noticeably desaturated. The major exception is a TV broadcast near the end of the film that has the excessive brightness and contrast of your typical consumer set.
Proxy's 5.1 soundtrack is encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, and there is also an undocumented Dolby Digital stereo track. The mix contains various forceful effects that I will leave for the viewer to discover, but the most impressive component of the soundtrack is its orchestral score by The Newton Brothers (Oculus), which has a scale and emotional range that recalls the scoring supplied by Pino Donaggio for Brian De Palma's thrillers and Bernard Hermann for Alfred Hitchcock. While seemingly ordinary events are happening on the screen, The Newton Brothers' music conveys the scale of the emotions sweeping through the characters' interior worlds. Even when we're not quite sure exactly what those emotions are, we understand that they're big and powerful. The score is beautifully reproduced on the lossless track and is so critical to the film's impact that at key moments it becomes the only audible element, while everything else goes silent.
Warning: Many of the extras contain major spoilers.
Proxy is not a film for all tastes. It requires a patient viewer who doesn't mind letting a story unfold at its own pace and who is willing to wait in confusion as conflicting information arrives in bits and pieces. Parts of the film probably won't make sense on an initial viewing, but it does all fit together (assuming, of course, one can accept that there's method in madness). Parker is clever enough to leave enough mystery at the end to let each viewer decide the ultimate resolution, but by then one is simply choosing among different versions of a terrible outcome. However you view it, though, Proxy isn't like anything else out there. Highly recommended.
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