Having a Good Time (Thriller Analysis)

 Today is an intense day. Today I'll be talking about and critiquing one of my favorite thrillers of all time, Good Time. I know I've talked about this production before, but I didn't really go into as much as depth as I would have in an analysis, and this piece is something I'm heavily inspired by, both thematically and stylistically. 

Good Time follows a young man Connie, and his brother Nick, who has a mental disability. Connie elects to rob a bank with his brother to get enough money to leave town, which ends up triggering a sequence of events that doesn't let up until the movie concludes. After a successful heist, Nick opens up the bag with money in it, only to find it has been rigged with explosive paint, causing him to start panicking until the commotion eventually draws cops, and Nick is arrested while Connie barely escapes.

Two elements I am most inspired by are the overall look of the production, and the way it manages to blur the lines of what is moral and what is not.

As in many other of their films, including Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems, The Safdie brothers have an iconic, grainy, gritty look which adds to the overall intense tone that defines all of these productions. Whether this have to do with a specific camera or post-production is something I'll be sure to delve into in my planning phase, but this look truly elevates these films from a story to what feels like an experience.

What further immerses the audience into the Safdie style is their immersive dialogue, characterized by mundane realism, and often interruption and characters speaking over one another to the point where it grows overbearing.

They also use immersive long takes focusing on one specific action to make the experience of their films grow more immersive, even on the most simple, seemingly insignificant tasks, such as when Connie dies his hair to conceal his identity.

Connie goes to extreme lengths in order to attempt to free his brother from jail, even breaking into the hospital in which he stay in attempt to break him out. However, after doing so he realizes he broke out the complete wrong person, and instead uses him to get enough money to pay Nick's bail. This, to me, embodies the concept of blurring the lines between morality, as his overwhelming love and worry for his brother forces him to commit felonies and even steal people's identities in hopes to even potentially help his brother escape. 

In my own short film, an idea me and alejandro have been messing around with is the image of a school custodian who forgets to put up a wet floor sign late after hours, resulting in the death of an employee, forcing him to hide the body. He has some sort of ulterior motivation to keep the job like keeping his family fed or something along those lines, and he fears losing his job. I think it would be really interesting to explore the concept of what is moral and what isn't like the Safdie brothers in this scenario and simultaneously see just how intense I can make it.