I think it was Quentin Tarantino who first used the word
“medieval” — in Pulp Fiction as part of a threat by boss
Marsellus (Ving Rhames) to a couple of hapless rednecks that “I’m-a
get medieval on your ass” — to mean scary-violent. Up until then,
“medieval” in the vernacular, if it meant anything at all, had
meant “extremely old-fashioned.” Suddenly, now that even mainstream
movies were going in for graphic gore-fests in a big way, it meant
“extremely new-fashioned.” I think there was even more to the
paradox than this, actually, since the sort of hideous tortures and
executions that Mr. Tarantino doubtless had in mind when he had
Marsellus mention pliers and a blow-torch had been practiced by the
official culture of the Middle Ages against heretics and traitors.
Yet Mr. Tarantino was instantly recognizable as the voice of the
unofficial culture — which now seemed to be welcoming
both traitors and heretics as well as the methods once favored for
dealing with them. It was all rather confusing until you realized
that neither the torture nor the invocation of the Moyen
Age was meant to be taken seriously.
This may be nothing more than an interesting tidbit from our
bizarre cultural history of the last 40 years but it is worth
reflecting on in connection with Martin McDonagh’s In
Bruges, which seeks to squeeze a little more juice out of the
same idea that the representation of murder without compunction (if
not necessarily torture) was a way of bringing things medieval back
into fashion. Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) play a
couple of Irish hit men who hole up in Bruges, “the most
well-preserved medieval town in the whole of Belgium,” on orders
from their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), back in London. There is
presumably meant to be some kind of thematic interpenetration
between the killers’ business and most of their conversation and
the cultural heritage all around them.
Mr. McDonagh’s film also follows Mr. Tarantino’s lead in
presenting the hired killers as a comic cross-talk act — an
up-dated and edgier version of Abbott and Costello. A lot of the
film’s humor depends on Ray’s dislike of the cultural riches among
which he and Ken find themselves and Ken’s attempts to talk him
into an appreciation of them. “If I grew up on a farm and was
retarded, Bruges might impress me, but I didn’t and it doesn’t,”
says Ray. At a key moment, he wonders: “Maybe that’s what hell is:
eternity spent in f***ing Bruges.” Ray only begins to perk up when
he comes across a movie set using, like this movie, Bruges as a
backdrop. He runs excitedly to tell Ken: “They’re filming midgets!”
On the film set he meets a pretty drug dealer (Clemence Poesy) and
her would be thug of a boyfriend (Jeremie Renier) as well as the
American midget (Jordan Prentice) and more rollicking comedy
ensues.
Gradually, however, it emerges that the two men are hiding out
in Bruges because Ray has inadvertently killed a child back in
London while carrying out a hit on a priest. The child had been
waiting to confess his sins. Harry has sent them to Bruges as an
odd gesture of humanity. It is a place that he himself loves, and
he imagines that he is giving his two employees a big treat. It
never occurs to Harry that Ray, an aggressive philistine, might not
share his enthusiasm for the place. And Ken wishes to protect him
from the knowledge of Ray’s ingratitude. For in Ray’s case, it is
to be a last treat before he dies. Harry has decided that he must
pay with his own life for the life of the child. “You can’t kill a
kid and expect to get away with it,” says Harry. “You can’t. You
just can’t.”
This makes Harry, ruthlessly evil as he is, the only person in
the movie who actually believes in something. He has “principles,”
he tells us, and principles, like torture, seem to fit naturally in
with the medieval context so handsomely provided by Bruges. He
tells Ken if he had done what Ray did, he would have put the muzzle
of his pistol in his mouth on the spot and pulled the trigger. But
the film is a bit vague about what, besides not killing any kids
himself and not allowing anyone else to get away with kid-killing,
Harry’s principles might consist of. They are, however, similar to
those of other movie criminals and perhaps even — who knows? —
some real criminals, in having to do with honor. When Harry tells
his wife that he has to go to Bruges on business, she asks him if
it’s going to be dangerous. “Of course it’s going to be dangerous.
It’s a matter of honor!”
Ken, whom we have learned to trust, confirms Harry’s sense of
honor, and cites it as the reason, when it looks as if Harry is
going to kill him too, why he refuses to fight back. It all may
begin to suggest that “medieval,” as applied to the art and
architecture of the Belgian city, also stands for a way of looking
at the world characteristic of such modern-day equivalents of
Renaissance princelings or Italian dukes as Harry or Marsellus and
utterly at odds with the decencies common to hit men and other
ordinary folks. But mainly the movie is just a vehicle for Mr.
McDonagh’s witty dialogue and a display, as so many movies these
days are, of its maker’s way with comically exaggerated villainy
and his sophistication in knowing that the “honor” in the mouth of
the villain is only what makes him comic.
