Snatch

by Frenchie.

After my return from a week in Nice, I was walking along the Champs Elysées looking for a nice baguette to suit my 1992 Burgundy decanting in my flat, when a word on the marquee struck my fancy: Snatch.

Of course I immediately entered. What was two hours of oxygen to the fine vintage that I couldn't follow my temptation? For what is life but lost temptation and un-chased passion? Well, while the subject matter of this film disappointed me, I cannot say I did not love this film as one loves watching children walk around and bump their heads like drunken nains.

The plot, which is too complex and layered to be recounted here, is delightfully seedy, and tells itself repeatedly not to take itself too seriously. Guy Ritchie makes these complex situations very entertaining and fast, not bending over to the Hollywood technique of telling the audience exactly what is going on.

It's interesting that Guy Ritchie does not care about reality. He is one of few that realize that the camera lies, so the audience will never get truth but only a perception of truth. Guy Ritchie knows this and puts passion into his work. When life becomes that which is driven to music, we hear music instead of dialogue, but when life is so exact that we must see what is written on the side of a gun, he will show that as well. When life needs to be fast, Ritchie speeds it up, and when life needs to stop for us to observe fine details, he stops it. His is a Godhood of extremity in necessity.

Ritchie has obviously seen many films of my French brothers, for a work so stylistically baroque as his must surely root in the early works of Godard or Rivette. Many of Ritchie's contemporaries (I will not call them peers because they are not) seem to lack the understanding for their twitchy visuals. There is no passion and so there is no truth.

This film is champagne. It bubbles with flavor, it fizzes with life, and you can not feel it taking control. A movie to get drunk on with friends, or to celebrate love with. Although it is in no way elegant, it is undeniably fun.

So hurrah for Guy Ritchie and hurrah for Snatch, and all that it contains.

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