Man facing the savagery of men and/or nature. This is the definition of survival film or survival in English. Unity of action (saving one’s skin, whatever the cost), unity of place (often a forest, sometimes a desert or a city devastated by the apocalypse), unit of time (a day or two in hell, until exhaustion characters). This gave some masterpieces about Hobbesian violence (“Man is a wolf for man”) and quite a lot of super gore turnips. Visit this link to watch free movies.
Deliverance, by John Boorman (1972)
Four friends realize a bucolic dream. They go, short vacation time, give up their offices and live life outdoors. These old scouts decide to descend a tumultuous river: camping, hunting, fishing … The beautiful ride becomes a nightmare. With this terrible film, whose strong scenes annoy the memory, John Boorman disconcerts us voluntarily. At first, he seems to embrace the theories that civilization has killed the best of human nature. The healing experience of the heroes of this strange odyssey seems salutary. And then, gradually, this certainty is transformed into doubt, and doubt into reverse certainty. The laughing landscapes hide unsuspected traps. The good savage is a dirty individual or a poor moron. This is an overwhelming observation. It can be rejected, it can also be meditated. A fascinating fable, remarkably told.
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Gerry, by Gus Van Sant (2002)
An hour and a quarter of wandering in the middle of nowhere, an alternation without a reference of burning sun and blue night, deafening squalls and mortuary silences: here is a film without compass or backpack. Gus Van Sant and his actors, Matt Damon, and Casey Affleck, did not even take the bare necessities. Gerry, it’s two boys lost in the desert, period. The director shot it in reaction to his Hollywood films, inaugurating an experimental trilogy and walker that will continue with Elephant and Last Days. But even as an ultra-modernist filmmaker, Van Sant remains, as in the time of My own private Idaho, an author enamored of his characters. The more the kids get misled, the more the physical dimension of their drift is palpable. Formal work then takes on its full meaning: the hypnotic stretching of sequences, the game of tracking shots with the pace of steps, ArvoPärt’s flowing music, all combine to create a regime of limit reality. Suddenly, it is another border that threatens to fade away, between civilization and barbarism. We will not say more, but as long as we love the unexplained, Gerry is a dream movie. This does not forbid to approach it with the imagination at low tide, taking literally the dry regime inflicted on the protagonists: to get rid of everything to better get lost.
Essential Killing, by Jerzy Skolimowski (2010)
Who is this man who detaches before being quickly captured by the US military? It will remain a mystery. We will just learn that his name is Mohammed and that he is a Muslim. A Taliban? Perhaps. A terrorist? A terrified man, especially. At bay. That’s pretty much the only thing that characterizes it – it’s not that much, but it’s essential. The instinct of survival, the fear that drives one to kill, such will be the subject of this hunt for the man. Panting, because of a bewildering series of events, imagined by Jerzy Skolimowski, at its best. It is the reign of pure energy, in short. That of the body in tension, the cosmos, myths. Poet and boxer in his youth, later painter, Skolimowski seems to merge the three in this marriage of shiny white and blood red. What happens is urgent and seems oddly timeless. Does the action extend, moreover, over a few hours? Several days? Unless it is a whole life spent fighting and fleeing death, so concentrated as a sparkling mirror.
