Before the devil knows you’re dead

Here family members pit themselves against each other and “ordinary people” grapple with the repercussions of murder and the revenge urge. The film centers around an adult family from upstate New York, one of whose member’s (Charles, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) harbours a sense of being at one remove from the others. Superficially at least, Charles has made a success of his life, but he relates badly with his father, and is privately unhappy and has been supporting himself through drugs which he buys with money he skims from his employer. An impending audit forces Charles to take desperate action, to help with which he enrols the help of his brother (Hank, played by Ethan Hawke), himself struggling to make ends meet because of alimony commitments. “It’s too late to think”, Charles exhorts to his dubious brother in an attempt to convince him and, as you might expect, things do not work out well.

The dialogue in the opening scene is very good and elsewhere in the script also. Many harsh things are said, primarily by the prime mover, Charles, who, referring to his perceived childhood status within his family, says “I was never one of the beautiful birds that flock together”, to his father at his mother’s wake, before asking him “are you sure I’m yours?”, which at once conveys his sense of isolation, and his latent disrespect for his parents.

This film also depicts some occasions of physical violence, in particular the scene where Charles threatens to shoot his brother. His brother is either a flake or simply less success-driven than Charles, depending on your point of view, and is always, even when he wears a suit, slightly dishevelled. However, he is not without a certain charm, and actually asks Charles to “do it”, such is the nadir to which he has descended. The suicidal request, given the context of it’s utterance, is very powerful.

This film is structurally complex, with many chronological transpositions that are usually achieved by rapid and accelerating cut shots between two stills and are accompanied by a chapter foreword to help the audience situate the action on the timeline, e.g. “Charles – two days before the robbery”. Sometimes the same scene is depicted with different lighting or camera filters. This technique is used to most effect to communicate Hank’s shock when he hears gunshots in his parents’ jewellery store as he sits outside waiting for his accomplice to return with the goods they have stolen. This technique is most common towards the beginning and end of the film, but isn’t much seen elsewhere.

When the film gets going, there are several competing tensions, and each character is a potential source of action. However, it is Charles that is the centre around which the storm focuses, and it is he who precipitates a bloody concluding chain of events, even if it is his father who ultimately salvages what he can from the tragic circumstances in which he finds himself as the film whites-out.

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