X
- 2022
- R
- Roadside Attractions
- 1 h 57 m
- 2022
- R
- Roadside Attractions
- 1 h 57 m
Summary Speeding through the Moroccan desert to attend an old friend’s lavish weekend party, wealthy Londoners David and Jo Henninger (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) are involved in a tragic accident with a local teenage boy. Arriving late at the grand villa with the debauched party raging, the couple attempts to cover up the incident with ...
Written By: Lawrence Osborne
- 2022
- R
- Roadside Attractions
- 1 h 57 m
- 2022
- R
- Roadside Attractions
- 1 h 57 m
The Forgiven
59
4.7
Where to Watch
Summary Speeding through the Moroccan desert to attend an old friend’s lavish weekend party, wealthy Londoners David and Jo Henninger (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) are involved in a tragic accident with a local teenage boy. Arriving late at the grand villa with the debauched party raging, the couple attempts to cover up the incident with ...
Written By: Lawrence Osborne
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 33 Critic Reviews
59
39% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
61% Mixed
20 Reviews
20 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 33 Critic Reviews
59
39% Positive
13 Reviews
13 Reviews
61% Mixed
20 Reviews
20 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
McDonagh’s sumptuous version of the novel —which premiered at TIFF last year — is utterly faithful and thus note perfect, capturing its resonant ruminations on social inequity, racism, and cultural tourism in a sweeping Moroccan desert Sheltering Sky novelist Paul Bowles would recognize.
Dark and unsettling, The Forgiven doesn’t ask us to like its characters, but it forces us to watch as privilege begins to shatter and people for whom everything feels inconsequential have to deal with consequences.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 19 User Ratings
4.7
26% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
47% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
26% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 19 User Ratings
4.7
26% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
47% Mixed
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
26% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
Apesar de ser um filme meio arrastado, tem um trecho que engrena: entre a morte de um garoto por atropelamento e a visita forçada do motorista ao vilarejo para prestar-lhe condolências, ainda que tudo não soa nem um pouco orgânicos.
Convidados a passar uns dias de festa em pleno deserto do saara ao lado de vários ricaços, o casal vividos pelos ótimos Ralph Fiennes e Jéssica Chastain se vê em apuros dado atropelarem um garoto enquanto o homem dirigia bêbado ao local de encontro.
Por mais que a festa em si não seja o foco do filme, o fato da produção optar por um ambiente contido e nem um pouco caprichado, nos leva a questionar: mas que diabos eles foram fazer ali? Não há absolutamente nada que justifique tamanha missão em se deslocar tantos quilômetros para um ambiente com pessoas chetérrimas e sem muitos atrativos.
O grande barato do filme ficou por conta mesmo não apenas da atuação do casal principal, mas principalmente pelas tiradas sarcásticas envolvendo o choque cultural visto em tela: um inglês que decide manter a pose, uma mulher que claramente está entediada do casamento, e um crime que lhe atormenta. Evitando o envolvimento policial, ele decide fazer o que o pai do jovem marroquino está disposto a lhe cobrar, e ao menos o suspense para que ele vá até a cidade natal do garoto para enterrar o corpo e participar do ritual fúnebre vai sustentando o tempo em tela.
Fora isso, os personagens secundários vão interagindo com um humor tipicamente britânico, e temos desde os anfitriões **** ao affair da mulher que vai despertando-lhe uma série de desejos, e que acompanhamos até com curiosidade, dado, repito, o talento dos personagens principais.
Mas fora essa explosão de multiculturalismo a desafiar as identidades dos indivíduos num resort a 40º graus, não resta ao filme muita coisa, mesmo porque sua projeção é burocrática e apenas razoável. É um filme para ver, dar algumas risadas, e esquecer logo em seguida.
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The Forgiven runs the risk of becoming a thoughtless movie about a vile white man who is taught a lesson by wise brown people, but McDonagh, who also wrote the script, manages to (mostly) avoid that with a subtle touch.
Fiennes peels David in layers, unraveling this man until you see his hollow interior.
McDonagh is such a smart writer that one spends much of the movie waiting for his script to exhibit some awareness of the trope, and to comment on it, but that acknowledgment never arrives – and as a result, this is his thinnest screenplay to date, flimsy enough that, in a lesser actor’s hands, it could really fall apart.
Whatever satire of white elite society is intended by The Forgiven has been blunted by monotony.
While The Forgiven isn’t concerned with making David a better person — rather to get him to fully grasp his guilt — McDonagh’s methods can’t distinguish the film from the long list of stories about white folks learning lessons at the expense of brown people. There may have been higher ideals in mind, but “The Forgiven” fails to gracefully reach them.
(Mauro Lanari)
Why title it "The Forgiven" when it tells of a path of inner change of the only character with a leftist past that flows into atonement as the acceptance of revenge? Why critique the dark side of the western white elite as if moral degradation (Gide's book) were its exclusive and not a feature of poor and Arab humanity as well? Are you looking for self-absolving scapegoats?
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Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain play a rich couple on the way to a lavish bash in the Moroccan desert, when they accidentally hit a local boy with their car. The repercussions involve an atonement trip thru the barren countryside for him, while she lives it up at the party The story's developments are relatively simple and even the ending isn't a surprise. What stands out are the quiet observations around the decadence of the rich white crowd contrasted against the solemn disdain of the locals, many of whom are in serving capacity. Fiennes' character starts uncompromisingly dismissive and heartless, but his transformation is abrupt. Chastain relishes looking being gorgeous and self-indulgent. While the setting presents an interesting contrast, the story never gets to any genuine catharsis or even real dramatic heft.
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The Forgiven – Or Are They? It’s difficult to know what writer/director (John Michael McDonough) was trying to convey with this production. It’s about a group of highly unlikeable (in fact totally despicable) privileged whites, gathering together for a grossly decadent ‘party’ in a most unlikely **** isolated semi-palace in the middle of the Moroccan desert. With scant knowledge about the hosts or their guests, we are simply expected to put up with their all too obviously unsubtle vulgar language and generally vile behavior, as they settle into a weekend of grotty debauchery. Drugs, booze, and sex are all part of the sleaze on offer while being attended to by local Moroccan servants -- all who seem to view their employers and guests as worthless rubbish-- which the filmmakers go out of their way to demonstrate. The activities of these privileged whites are served up as gross sensationalism that’s bent toward manipulating our view of them as worthless - while all the Muslim servants are presented as angelic – that alone is conjuring up a theme of deliberate racial hatred for little reason other than the sake of it. Is this the sole point of this movie; is there nothing of any other purpose here? At one point a local teenager is killed in a somewhat careless accident, this produces the film’s best segment. The father of the boy (played with intensity by Ismael Kanater) requests the perpetrator to go with him while he buries his son, causing much anxiety, but the outcome of this can only be viewed as somewhat peculiar in the extreme. This could have been a modern classic with a more rounded and balanced script. The visual quality is evident and the cast clearly hand-picked, there’s an effective atmospheric music score courtesy of Lorne Balfe but how much of Lawrence Osborne’s novel remains within the screenplay? (seems to have serious omissions) If the object of this project was to generate hatred for whites, it’s done its dirty job but will this help any of the world's social relationships heal? I doubt it very much. Best Quote: from a Moroccan servant after witnessing a blatant act of adultery by a female guest; "A woman with no discretion is like a gold ring through a pigs snout” (no, not Moroccan wisdom, as this pic would have you believe but Proverbs 11:22.
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Another one of the 'white people bad' movies that lately flush cinemas and TV screens. Not worth watching.
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Production Company
House of Un-American Activities,
Brookstreet Pictures,
Head Gear Films,
Metrol Technology,
Assemble Media,
Kasbah Films,
Lipsync Productions
Release Date Jul 1, 2022
Duration 1 h 57 m
Rating R
Genres
Tagline Everything must be faced
Awards
London Critics Circle Film Awards
• 1 Nomination
