Thursday, January 6, 2011

Blood Meridian Movie

For anyone that's read Blood Meridian, making a movie from it sounds like insanity. Although there's enough action to satisfy audiences, the brutality deliberately makes the action almost unbearable. On the flip side, Judge Holden is one of the most compelling characters I've ever run across. Equal part preacher, sadistic thug, and renaissance man, treating Holden in a film would be the most important element. Get the casting/screenplay wrong, you get an over the top cartoonish self satire. The filmmakers have to avoid the scenery chewing types like John Malkovich. It works in some films, but not in one that needs to be this brutal. Or go the other way and get a brooding, morose mess like Brando's General Kurtz, which is another awful direction. Holden has to be charismatic, a bit playful, but utterly brutal and untethered by normal human emotions. I want to say psychopathic, but that doesn't go far enough. He has to realize his evilness and revel in it, without seeming to outwardly enjoy it. Personally, I vote for James Gandolfini, who has the right imposing physique and has done charming psychopath to great success before.

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