There’s a saying attributed to Confucius that goes “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Blue Ruin is such a journey. This film is a masterfully realized narrative, not because there’s any gratuity to the violence, or that we care a whole lot about the protagonist, but because it’s just so raw and honest. It’s a revenge story straight and simple; however, there’s nothing straight up about this film.
I don’t want to give too much of the plot away because it’s surprising at every step of the way, not due to clever plot twists or sudden revelations, but because writer/director Jeremy Saulnier takes his time and presents information in such a pristine, nonverbal way (which plays to the strength of visual storytelling). It’s not that everything goes wrong for the protagonist Dwight on his mission of revenge…it’s that everything goes about the way it should go for someone whose business is not killing people. There’s no slickness, no fancy revenge speeches, no Bible quoting. As a matter of fact, at one point he is told “No speeches. When you point the gun, shoot.”
"Blue Ruin" writer/director Jeremy Saulnier
There’s also no moralizing. Dwight struggles with his own guilt and seems willing at every step of the way to accept that there will be consequences for his actions, even his own death, but his concern for a sister that has been estranged is touching. The brutal honesty comes after he tells her what he has done and she tells him, “I’d forgive you if you were crazy, but you’re not crazy. You’re weak.”
There’s much that could be said about a commentary being made on gun culture in America, but Saulnier balances this topic well. The old school friend he goes to to get a gun, who kind of knows what he’s planning to do, could have been portrayed as a gun nut gung-ho psycho, but he’s very calm and tries to educate Dwight about what he’s planning on doing. At one point he says something like “I ain’t helping you because this is right. This is ugly.”
In the end there seems to be hope in that one character, ironically the one who shoots Dwight ends up walking away from all the violence by choice. The film ends with Dwight repeating like a mantra, “The keys are in the car…the keys are in the car…the keys are in the car” as if to say to this young man, “You have what you need to escape all the violence and madness. All you have to do is choose to escape.” Maybe as a country we have what we need to escape all the gun violence; all we have to do is choose to escape.
The literary term I’d like to talk about actually comes from Beowulf. The term is Wergild, also known as “man price”. It was the amount appraised to every man or piece of property, so that if property was stolen or a man was killed, there perpetrator could pay to the family of the victim money so as to end things there, a kind of restitution. This was not just custom, but Germanic law. At the time there wasn't a distinction between manslaughter and murder. That came later thanks to the Catholics in Rome. It was also replaced by Capital punishment.
The amount of wergild depended on the social rank of the person killed, and by “Man Price” it included women as well, as in Anglo-Saxon society females had a much more prestigious role in the community than soon followed. Of course the amount was increased, for example, if someone was killed while on a mission given to them by the king. Not just in Beowulf, but this concept of restitution is also found in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
This concept, albeit strange to our modern sensibilities, still exists in some cultures. Take Korea for example. Here, if someone perpetrates a crime against someone else, it is perfectly ordinary for the perpetrator's family to offer the victim money in order to persuade them not to file charges.
This concept, albeit strange to our modern sensibilities, still exists in some cultures. Take Korea for example. Here, if someone perpetrates a crime against someone else, it is perfectly ordinary for the perpetrator's family to offer the victim money in order to persuade them not to file charges.