The Killer Is David Fincher's Best Movie Since The Social Network; Priscilla Is Kind of Like Elvis, Only Good
Fincher and Coppola unite and take over
It begins, like all love stories, at a U.S. Air Force Base in Western Germany. “You’re just a baby,” the king of rock and roll says when she tells him she’s a high-school freshman, not that it stops him. For once, the age gap (a decade) and innate power imbalance in one of these relationships isn’t glossed over as a “things were different then” sign of the times — little surprise, given that Priscilla was written and directed by Sofia Coppola, who’s been expanding the worlds of adolescent (The Virgin Suicides) and famous (Marie Antoinette) women since she herself was in her twenties. This account of Priscilla Presley and the rock star who gave her her last name might be thought of as the anti-Elvis, which is to say that it’s actually good; where that film was all sizzle and no steak, this one gives a sugar rush without feeling like empty calories.
Elvis can only serve his country on the Continent for so long, of course, and after he returns to his career on the other side of the Atlantic his underage inamorata is left to pine over him and scribble his name in her notebook until he calls her to Graceland some time later. As her hair gets bigger, her world gets smaller — she’s like a princess locked away in a beautiful but severe castle, forbidden from bringing friends over and rebuffed when she asks to join Elvis on tour. He’s no prince charming: aloof on good days and abusive on the bad ones, he constantly makes her feel unloved and undesired. He’s her whole world, while she’s just a small part of hers; that Priscilla was barely a footnote in Elvis and Elvis is a dominant force in Priscilla kind of says it all. And while most other filmmakers wouldn’t have done nearly as much with the material, it’s still easy to imagine Coppola doing even more with it than she has. Her film has a flat affect and can too closely match the meekness of its subject at times, as though it too is afraid of being its true self rather than what everyone expects it to be.
He uses many aliases — Oscar Madison, Lou Grant, Reuben Kincaid — but we never learn his real name. What we do know is that he’s chosen his outfit in order to look like a German tourist and more easily blend in on the streets of Paris, where he’s here to do his job. We don’t know who the man he’s been hired to kill is or why a high-paying client, also unknown, wants him dead. Our protagonist (but not our hero) would be the first to tell us none of this matters.
The bravura first act of The Killer, David Fincher’s first film since Mank and his best since The Social Network, consists of little more than one long, narrated monologue from its title character (Michael Fassbender, in what’s likewise his best work in ages) as he prepares for his latest hit. He listens to The Smiths to concentrate, checks his heart rate, and quotes Aleister Crowley without remembering it was he who said “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The Killer’s dispassionate stream of consciousness reads like a manifesto recovered from the home of a deranged mass killer, but only half of that description applies to him — he’s calm and collected at all times, even when he botches the job (a first) and has to set about cleaning up his mess before someone beats him to it.
All that follows could be summarized in a single sentence and exemplifies Roger Ebert’s words of wisdom: “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” The Killer is as ruthlessly efficient as the character it’s named for, with no wasted motion or extraneous details as it details the fallout of one split-second error. It’s a movie that never raises its voice, forcing you to lean in and listen carefully lest you miss a single word. There are quite a few of those, and while the Killer’s philosophy is clearly skewed — the fact that 1.8 people die every second in no way excuses his actions, however much he might argue to the contrary — his delivery is quietly enthralling.
Occasionally we’ll take a liking to one of the civilians he considers collateral damage on his quest to tie up loose ends, hoping the person behind the professional will inspire him to spare them. Tellingly, he never monologues to them the way he does to us — that would be a needless extravagance, self-indulgent in a way he doesn’t have time for. “It’s amazing how physically exhausting it can be to do nothing,” he says while waiting for his target to arrive; true enough, but watching this movie for two hours never feels like an endurance test of the sort he’s going through.
Can’t wait