Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne developed their own stable of actors when they moved from documentaries to fiction films about working class folks and life on the margins of society—Olivier Gourmet and Jérémie Renier have both gone on to great success—but steered clear of working with major movie stars. Until Two Days, One Night (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD), with bona-fide international superstar Marion Cotillard in the leading role.
Cotillard is more than a glamorous star, of course. She’s a superb actress with tremendous range—she won an Oscar playing Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose and that was before American audiences really knew she was a screen beauty scuffing up her good looks for the portrayal—and she delivers a raw performance here as Sandra, a wife, mother, and blue-collar worker recovering from severe depression and fighting to keep her job at a small solar panel factory.
The premise is a little contrived. Sandra returns from medical leave, still fighting the lethargy and dispiritedness of her condition, to find herself the victim of downsizing. Her absence has convinced the manager that they can get by on a smaller staff and he leaves it up to her co-workers: they can choose to take a year-end bonus or welcome her back and the bonus goes to her salary. Kind of sadistic as a real-world tactic (especially considering the vote is taken by a show of hands, which puts a lot of pressure on the individuals) but a powerful metaphor for the use of conflict to shift focus from management to labor.
That’s just the lead up. It turns out the public vote, which goes overwhelmingly for the bonus, is illegal and a secret ballot is rescheduled, giving Sandra the weekend to convince her co-workers to change their votes, criss-crossing town on buses and in a borrowed car (driven by her supportive husband, played by Fabrizio Rongione), fighting her own sense of self-esteem to make a case for her employment at the expense of their (in many cases much-needed) bonus.
Sandra struggles just to keep her equilibrium in a situation that could douse to hope of even the most well-equipped people and Cotillard superbly communicates her fragility, but it’s the conversations that create the drama. Not in terms of arguments or debates—though there are some of each—but the kind of honesty that comes out between people in difficult circumstances who have nothing to hide and everything to lose. It’s a portrait of people on the knife’s edge of survival and yet it has a hopeful message about communication and community and personal support. There’s no conventional happy ending here, which makes the little victories all the more profound, and Cotillard’s performance earned a second Academy Award nomination for the actress.
Criterion’s 2K digital transfer has been approved by directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and the Blu-ray release features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack. In French with some Arabic and English, with English subtitles.
This edition is packed with supplements, including a number produced by Criterion for this release. A new video interview with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne covers the inspiration, themes, and production of the film in a detailed talk that lasts over 50 minutes, and there’s an additional interview featurette, “The Dardennes on Leon M.’s Boat,” where they discuss their earlier documentary films. Actors Marion Cotillard and Fabrizio Rongione are interviewed separately in another featurette, discussing their preparation and performance. The 37-minute “On Location” revisits four key locations with the directors and uses split screens to show clips as they describe their process. Kent Jones contributes the 8-minute video essay “To Be an I,” which explores possible influences on the Dardennes.
There’s also an archival extra: the Dardenne’s second documentary When Léon M.’s Boat Went Down the Meuse for the First Time (1979), which is just under 40 minutes long and explored the general strike that shut down Belgium in 1960. It’s discussed in depth in one of the new interview featurettes.
Finally, there’s a foldout leaflet with a new essay by film professor and film critic Girish Shambu.
Citizenfour (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD), winner of the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, is the story of Edward Snowden and his release of classified NSA documents that revealed the systematic surveillance of phone calls, E-mails, and internet activities of American citizens by the government. It was the biggest act of government whistleblowing since Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.
Snowden contacted filmmaker Laura Poitras because, as he says in his initial contact, she chose herself: she was on government watchlists and the victim of government harassment for her documentaries My Country, My Country (2006) and The Oath (2010). She was filming as he, working with The Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, released the digital documents to the press over the course of a week in June 2013 while holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong, and she won a Pulitzer for her involvement in the reporting (along with Greenwald and Barton Gellman). She was there to provide a record and give his actions a transparency that he demanded from his government.
Citizenfour (named after the handle Snowden used when he first reached out to Poitras) is as much about Snowden as it is the secret surveillance he revealed. Poitras structures it along the timeline of those releases and the reverberations across the media and through the response of the American government and keeps returning to Snowden, who is at once geek activist, concerned citizen everyman, and enigmatic martyr all too well aware of the consequences of his actions to his own life. Well-spoken and precise, he’s an amiable tech suddenly in the eye of the international media storm, a man living out of a hotel room, seeking asylum from the U.S. (which soon charges Snowden with espionage and brands him a traitor) and conducting all meetings and communications with an informed sense of paranoia. Poitras isn’t there to question his motives or the rightness of his cause, she’s there to bear witness. This film is her document on why his actions matter and what it cost Snowden. She leaves judgments to us.
Blu-ray and DVD with a New York Times video talk with Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden conducted by David Carr, an audience Q&A with director Laura Poitras conducted by Dennis Lim, a New York Times Op-Doc by Laura Poitras, and deleted scenes.
Also new and notable:
British Noir (Kino Classics, DVD) collects five of the lesser-knowns films in the British strain of film noir. The best of the films, The October Man (1947) directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring John Mills, is a stylish nocturnal drama of trauma, amnesia, and nightmares in post-war Britain. Also features The Golden Salamander (1950) directed by Ronald Neame and starring Trevor Howard and a very young Anouk Aimée; The Assassin (1952) directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Richard Todd; They Met in the Dark (1943) with James Mason; and Snowbound (1948) with Dennis Price, Robert Newton, Herbert Lom, and Stanley Holloway.
The Walking Dead: The Complete Fifth Season (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD) opens with an action-packed season premiere—taking on the cannibals that have turned the hope of the terminus into a human meatmarket—before hitting the road again for Washington D.C. and a possible cure with new allies. 16 episodes on Blu-ray and DVD, with commentary, interviews, featurettes, and deleted scenes, plus a bonus Ultraviolent Digital HD copy of the season (SD on the DVD version).
Digital / VOD / Streaming exclusives:
Available on Cable and Digital VOD on Friday, August 28, same day as select theaters nationwide:
Alex Ross Perry’s indie drama Queen of Earth starring Elisabeth Moss as a woman struggling with depression and delusion;
The post-apocalyptic drama Z for Zachariah with Margot Robbie, Chris Pine, and Chiwetel Ejiofor;
The offbeat comedy 7 Chinese Brothers starring Jason Schwartzman and Olympia Dukakis
Now available on VOD:
The Front Man
Allure
Available for digital purchase in advance of disc:
Furious 7 (Universal)
Entourage: The Movie (Warner)
Love & Mercy (Lionsgate)
The Age of Adaline (Lionsgate)
Classics and Cult:
Daniel (1983) (Olive, 25/15)
The Singing Detective (2003) (Olive, Blu-ray, DVD)
Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon (Sony, Blu-ray)
The Reivers (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray)
The Revengers (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray)
The Sender (Olive, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Last American Virgin (Olive, Blu-ray, DVD)
Student Bodies (Olive, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Babysitter (Olive, Blu-ray, DVD)
Play Motel (Raro / Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD)
Easy Money / Men at Work (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
Metamorphosis / Beyond Darkness (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
Gene Autrey Movie Collection 11 (The Singing Cowboy, Guns and Guitars, Round-up Time in Texas, Springtime in the Rockies) (Timeless, DVD)
TV on disc:
The Good Wife: The Sixth Season (Paramount, DVD)
Elementary: The Third Season (Paramount, DVD)
Criminal Minds: Season 10 (Paramount, DVD)
Revenge: The Complete Fourth and Final Season (ABC)
The Mindy Project: Season Three (Universal, DVD)
Portlandia: Season Five (VSC, DVD)
Harry (Acorn, Blu-ray, DVD)
Shades of Love (Acorn, DVD)
Don Matteo: Set 11 (MHz, DVD)
Don Matteo: Set 12 (MHz, DVD)
More releases:
Aloha (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD)
Iris (Magnolia, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Runner (Alchemy, Blu-ray, DVD)
Lila & Eva (eOne, Blu-ray, DVD)
Big Game (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD)
Falling Star (IndiePix, DVD, VOD)
About Elly (Cinema Guild, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (Kino Lorber, DVD)
A Wolf at the Door (Strand, DVD)
The Breach (Kino Lorber, DVD)
Banksy Does New York (Kino Lorber, DVD)
Camilla Dickinson (Random Media / Cinedigm, DVD, Digital HD, VOD)
Animals (Oscilloscope, DVD)
Blood Rage (Arrow, Blu-ray, DVD)
LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
Skin Trade (Magnolia, Blu-ray, DVD)
A Plague so Pleasant (Wild Eye, DVD)
Where Hope Grows (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD)
Bring it On: The Championship Collection (5 Movies) (Universal, DVD)
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD