BURIED

A man wakes up in a coffin, buried underground. He doesn't know how he ended up there or who put him there. He only has a lighter and a cell phone. When the phone rings, the man will realize the situation he is in. From that moment, he will only have ninety minutes of air to find a way to get out of there. Claustrophobia in cinema always works rather well. It is a common fear and even those who do not suffer from it pathologically are always uncomfortable in situations that may trigger the symptoms. Dark, cramped places where it is hard to breathe, to move, real traps from which those who enter have difficulty getting out: it is normal that such situations are feared by a living being and its natural instinct of conservation. The Spanish Rodrigo Cortés wanted to exaggerate, he did not settle for creating a scene with a high anxiety rate and immerse his protagonist in a few minutes of guaranteed claustrophobia… no, too little. So, he wanted to build the entire film on a situation of extreme difficulty, 90 minutes of darkness, lack of air and terror. Cortés has thus crafted a film that is reductive to define as anguishing, an experience rather than the simple viewing of a fiction story, a magnificent example of cinematic minimalism loaded with pathos and tension. Cortés and the almost debuting screenwriter Chris Sparling succeed in an operation that nowadays seems increasingly difficult to realize, bringing the viewer to a maximum emotional involvement in the story. Focusing exclusively on a single character, in a single location and developing the story in real-time, the viewer inevitably ends up identifying with the protagonist; the more of “Buried” is, then, having built a good protagonist, a human person, very close to the being of the real viewer. The transporter Paul Conroy, played by a good and involved Ryan Reynolds (“Amityville Horror”; “Ricatto d'amore”), has a credible background, has made decisions voted by the current events, by an economic crisis that leads the Western protagonist to make career choices that in other conditions maybe he would not have made. And in this sense, the scene in which he is fired by phone by the company he works for is one of the cruelest and most cynical things seen in cinema in recent years, really capable of making the viewer feel anger. But that is the magic of “Buried”: 90 minutes of fixed camera on Ryan Reynolds, a device that leads to complete empathy, a particular synergy that leads us to identification in such a way that at a certain point we will really care about Paul's fate, we will have grown fond of him. The unfolding of the plot and the reasons that drive the protagonist's entrapment are another point in favor of the film, a thrilling series of plot twists centered on the back-and-forth phone call that Paul has with his captors, the authorities he contacts, and his family. From the conversations emerges the portrait of a greedy, false humanity, devoted to deception and individual ambition, a pessimistic depiction of the human being, but so damn real. Government institutions come out destroyed, the family of the never really achieved American Dream too, organized (dis)organized crime can easily rule, and fear is real, tangible, and incredibly anchored to current events and politics. “Buried” is a film that wins and convinces, loaded with tension and with a thrilling and original plot. Cortés's film is different from the mainstream, almost antithetical to the current conception of the thriller, where scenographic splendor, production grandeur, and visual violence dominate. “Buried” is a film visually reduced to the bone – and for this reason, it might not please many – made with very little, and focused exclusively on highly effective psychological violence, a torture of the mind more than the body that remains imprinted on the viewer much more than any dismemberment in the style of “Saw.” Ironclad screenplay, perfect actor, tension at its highest levels, originality. A gem, without ifs and buts capable of redefining the thriller genre. Not to be missed.