Volume 1: The Devil (E01)

If you’ve read Brubaker’s Criminal, you’ll feel at home with this. The mosaic of disreputable characters in unenviable situations unfolds slowly, very slowly. Refn gives us languor in a hurried world. With any other director, the slow dialog, long pauses and easy-going car rides accompanied by Martinez’s synthesizers would end up on the cutting-room floor, so he could shock with a twist pulled out of nowhere. Here, the power lies in the calmness and static images. Teller in the role of Martin is intriguingly distracted and unapproachable, but in spite of that, it is easy to identify with him in some sequences. The beginning of a thirteen-hour film. (18.06.2019)