Bound Wachowski 1996 film analysis

The Noir Hitchcock Tendencies of Bound The Wachowski Brothers catapulted to film legend status with their directorial completion of The Matrix, which would reinvent many of the conventions concerning computer graphic integration, cinematography and even thematic impetus. But in many ways, the slick, leather-clad world imagined by the Brothers would be given prelude by the 1996 crime drama, Bound. Here, the Wachowski's narrative would center on the plot of a mafia money-launderer's unhappy wife (Violet), her lesbian affair with the alluring ex-convict next door (Corky), and their shared plot to steal $2 million dollars. As the plot unfolds and unravels, we find that the story's true point of emotional interest is actually in the relationship between the two women. This is less a twist than it is the emotive core of the film, constituting a relationship founded on genuine attraction, love and camaraderie which persists ensconced by ugliness and brutality. Distinguished especially when compared to such relationships as that between Violet and her husband, that between Violet and Corky is perhaps the only one established in the film which is not based on fear. Instead, the women in question forge a genuine human bond that stands as a lightness in a dark, mechanized and, perhaps by no mere incidental narrative decision, dominated by men. In this regard, the women and their relationship are used to identify this universe from a warmer vantage. In this regard, we can see that the Wachowski's have appealed to some classic noir film concepts in order to achieve their aim. This is to say that like Alfred Hitchcock, among the original and greatest of noir auteurs, the Wachowski's view these human protagonists as a life raft in an abyssal sea of darkness. The crafting of a bleak and bloody world makes the warmth of their affair, and its absence of male-induced aggression or dominance, stand as the point of redemption, suggesting a clear worldview on the part of the directors. Hitchcock's universe is also, perhaps more than anything else, common throughout in its worldview. The uniqueness of Hitchcock's films as thrillers, suspense dramas or dark comedies goes beyond simple genre representation. To some extent, "directors' statements of intent guide comprehension of the film, while a body of work linked by an authorial signature encourages viewers to read each film as a chapter of an oeuvre." (Lewis, 41) This perhaps above anything else, helps to reinforce the basic presumption of this discussion, which is that there is a knowing relationship between audience and filmmaker-often based on a history between the two-in which certain conceits of the genre or personnel tend to reinforce the presence of a stylized illusion, in this case the machismo of a Mafioso community. This approach is at the heart of filmmaking for audience and filmmaker alike, with both parties desiring an end product that sufficiently removes the former from the present recognition of the distinction between the film's use of illusion and its attempt at reality. So is this the case with Bound, which thrusts our sensibilities in a representation of an older world. Its noir tendencies come through in the somewhat romanticized world of Mafia criminality, in the elegance of its women and in the film's plot-driven bloodletting. Like a Hitchcock movie, the killing is never incidental but is instead premised on the intensity and darkness manifested in real personal relationships. In this way, it embraces the macabre as an element of style and content alike rather than one or the other. The lesbian romance which drives this universe forward, by contrast, helps to ground our story in the present, if only for the reason that its theme might have seemed impossibly taboo only a decade.