The Intruder (2004)

The Intruder is a dying man’s long goodbye and at times recalls Jim Jarmush’s Dead Man

The Intruder (2004)

Directed by Claire Denis

Inspired by a short book written by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy about his heart transplant, The Intruder works best viewed as an adaptation of a metaphor. The film starts vaguely, increases in abstraction, and ends inexplicably. Making any sense of the plot is pointless. It’s such a mixture of seemingly irrelevant events that we’re never sure what we’re watching or how any scene relates to the one just before it. There’s a fair chance at least half the movie takes place in the protagonist’s head. But Denis refuses to distinguish between planes of reality.

The Intruder is a dying man’s long goodbye and at times recalls Jim Jarmush’s Dead Man. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen and will surely frustrate most viewers. There are elements of a spy thriller, an international crime drama or a road movie but in the end The Intruder is really a meditation on life.

Visually, the picture is a treat, and part of what makes this great thriller is the mystery lying beneath the images of country calm. The film is layered with extreme contrasts – life and death, young and old, new borns and dying men, east and west, tropical islands and icy mountains, cold winters and scorching summers, bright days and blackest nights, the past and the present.

Perhaps the film’s most striking technique is to flash an act of violence or omit it completely and later linger long on the aftermath. A slashing of the throat lasts two seconds at most, but we examine rugged hands expertly clean the bloody knife. A woman with a rifle enters a seemingly abandoned house with caution, only to later discover the rifle and blood on the floor without any trace of the woman.

Denis works a lot of magic in the making of this film and The Intruder is exciting, vital cinema that pushes the boundaries of what movies can do. An elusive, gorgeously shot, haunting, bitter sweet cine poem with a superb score by Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples. Made to be analyzed more than enjoyed, The Intruder is required viewing for any cinephile.

- Ricky D