MovieChat Forums > Blue Ruin (2014) Discussion > This movie is about concentration and li...

This movie is about concentration and listening


I am just starting to realise that most people who have given bad reviews about this film are not paying strict attention to detail...the direction of this film is quite subtle so one has to listen to everything that's being said by each individual otherwise one loses the plot altogether...

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Sounds confusing!

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What subtlety? You must be mad...

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The kind that doesn't make you lol or call 911.

ce n'est pas une image juste, c'est juste une image

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perfect.

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Thanks

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[deleted]

The movie is indeed intelligent and it's fast at that. So, you need to be really taking heed, but the movie is so gripping that I doubt one wouldn't be engrossed in it.

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What detail? Subtle? It is pretty straight forward. Its a decent movie but don't pretend like it is deeper than it is...

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There's a few details that are subtly revealed:


1) The car he drives is riddled with bullet holes. It's the car his parents were murdered in.

2) He's homeless in Delaware. His sister says they go up there every three years to keep up the tradition. So, he's staying where his family used to go on vacation. He's trying to immerse himself in good memories, but it's not working.

3) His sister is living in the house where they grew up. She's living where their parents lived. He's living where their parents died. Although, at the end of the movie, the house is up for sale and she's probably never coming back.

4) He's obsessed with doing the decent thing, which is why he needs to avenge his parents.
*He turns off the faucet in the bar and the house so that it doesn't waste water.
*He cleans up the broken glass and covers the broken window.
*He wants a truce once he found out that he killed an innocent man. But, he also has to protect his sister's family.
*He keeps repeating "the keys are in the car" as he's dying. He forgot to tell his half-brother that the keys were in it, and he's obsessing about it as he dies.


I'm sure there's some others that I didn't catch. But there was certainly a lot subtlety.

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Ahh...So that's where the phrase "subtle as a bullet hole" comes from!

-Dad, who's that?
-Oh, that? One of my patients. He's...sick.
-Will he live?
-It's looking grim.

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I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it too, but it always irks me when people say of a movie "I got it, but you lot didn't. You need to be cleverer!"

If someone didn't like it, they didn't like it, and that's fine. Don't go looking for reasons why they didn't like it, or assume that they were too dumb, weren't paying attention or whatever. Just be glad you enjoyed it.





No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.

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Spoken like a true dummy, I'm afraid.

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I agree.





1) UnWatchable 2)Watchable,ButBad 3)Decent,SeeOnce 4)Good,Repeat&Recommend 5)Great,Classic

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I enjoyed it, and am glad I gave it a watch, but I wouldn't seek it out again. It's a decent movie, but nothing Earth shattering

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Yeah, it should be enough to just enjoy the movie and ignore whatever other people think about it... except, time and again people come to IMDB to berate movies as 'stupid' or 'boring' and leave crappy reviews that reveal they had no clue what was going on... likely spent half the movie texting or something. Not just 'difficult' movies either... they'll rant about simple *beep* that anyone could understand if they'd actually watched.
Kinda like critiquing a book based only on the back cover blurb.

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The first 15 minutes of this film were absorbing - with almost nil dialogue, the narrative, relying almost exclusively on the camerawork, made promise of an intriguing plot. Then it began to fall apart. Despite increasing the volume control, I just could not understand what was being said - let me assure you that my 'concentration and listening' were on high alert but to no avail. Frantically, I resorted to the subtitle button on the remote but alas, no subtitles were available! The first scene where dialogue was pivotal to the plot was when Dwight and Sam were in the diner. No matter how hard I listened and concentrated I could not follow the dialogue. Which leads me to the problem which seems peculiar to U.S. movies - far too often either through poor sound recording or the mumbling of the actors involved, much of the script is simply lost! Whereas many film goers resent the 'intrusion' of sub-titles, for movies watched on TV, their availability, for me, is a huge bonus.
Having watched just over a third of "Blue Ruin", I had to surrender to this nagging short-coming and stopped viewing the movie.To satisfy my curiosity then read the film synopsis on web site!

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exactly my feelings. thats why i sometimes prefer to watch on dvd so i don't miss anything. unfortunately there were no subtitles for this move and on top of that the sound was terrible i think i missed most of the dialogue.

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That's what bothered me the most about the movie. I usually don't have problems watching american movies without subtitles, but in "Blue Ruin" the dialogue consisted mostly of whispers and mumbles that were hard to understeand, and I watched it without subtitles. That wouldn't be a problem if the sound was better edited. I think that's a stylistic choice from Saulnier, since "Green Room" has some of the same problems regarding sounds, but it's still a bad choice, since being able to hear the dialog in this movie is essential to understeand the plot.

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I know this is old, but I had no issues with hearing the dialogue. I might add that I am hard of hearing. I can hear, just not well. So most movies I watch are typically foreign films, because they always have subtitles, or I turn on subtitles. I am also great at lip reading...just a skill I picked because of limited hearing. So I was skeptical to watch this because of no subtitles. However, I saw Green Room and had to watch this because Green Room was AMAZING (BTW, the sound in that is great and highly recommended if you haven't seen it...same writer/director). I just thought I'd comment because I could hear this film and I was confused why you and only a couple of others couldn't hear.

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You must have a special gift. The sound problem was very real as attested by more than a couple of other commentators. And I repeat, it is always US films which are responsible for this inexcusable technical problem.

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Ok...its understood that his parents were shot dead, his sister moved on, had kids...also that many things dont get totally clear in this movie but at any moment does anyone give a clue about how he became a homeless vagrant??

It shows that before the parents killing he probably was that guy with shaved-face, shirt, clean etc that he also becomes after he kills the guy. But if he had a normal life and his parents were killed...what made he became a strange disturbed long bearded hobo living in a car and eating food waste for so many years? A mental disorder? Depression? Any guess?

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After his parents were shot in their car at the beach he went to the same car at the beach without telling anyone - and never left. He just stayed in his parents car The film had kind of a Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo feel about it, except being self imposed.

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