On the surface, the concept for director Rodrigo Cortés' Buried seems more cinematic dare than viable artistic framework. A feature-length story that unfolds entirely from the inside of a wooden box? That's not a movie--it's an exercise in creative masochism. Yet it is into this directorial nightmare that Cortés strides, like some twisted Greek demigod, to complete his own impossible labor. The film he manages to pry from the dirt is haunting, tense, and impossible to ignore.
I'm fortunate that the basic plot of Buried takes so little space to explain, because there is a wide set of other aspects deserving of consideration in any earnest discussion of the film. To summarize: Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is a civilian contractor in war-torn Iraq, circa 2006. Conroy is a truck driver tasked with the transportation and distribution of everyday supplies. Just before the film begins, Conroy's team falls victim to an ambush by militant insurgents. During the ensuing chaos, Conroy is knocked unconscious. He awakens in total darkness, with six wooden walls separating him from the outside world. By the light of his Zippo lighter, Conroy quickly makes a series of grim discoveries that leave him certain about his miserable fate: He's been buried alive by the insurgents as part of a ransom scheme.
Within the actual physical confines of the coffin, Buried documents Conroy's struggle to secure his own rescue. Almost all of the film is concerned with Conroy's thoughts, reactions, and emotions--we see just one other human face in its 94-minute duration. Other characters do exist on the periphery of Conroy's struggle but appear solely through voice-over conversations--Conroy's captors have seen fit to provide him with access to the surface through a cellular phone. The external characters we meet through Conroy's phone conversations help to expand and complicate the bare-bones storytelling. With the help of the movie's tight, careful screenplay, these audio performances resonate with vibrant personality.
Still, it is Reynolds' stellar turn as Paul Conroy that gives Buried its crucial human dimension. At nearly every juncture, Paul behaves the way any of us might in his terrible situation. About ten minutes in, as his initial escape plans hit a snag, Paul drops suddenly and deeply into the grip of a serious anxiety attack. He knows he needs to conserve oxygen inside the coffin, but he can't help himself: For a few precious seconds, he flails helplessly against the wooden walls and ceiling. This is just one moment of many in which Paul fails to make progress—and the camera, thankfully, never shies away when made to document the consequences of these failures. From the beginning of the movie to the pulse-pounding ending, Paul spends every second fundamentally conflicted. For a character who can only move about three inches in any direction, Conroy has a high degree of agency. The decisions he makes—and the sense of investment Reynolds brings to each decision—allow us to care gradually and organically for this ill-fated, innocent captive.
The artistic elements that surround Reynolds are equally strong. Since he's the one operating the cell phones, glow sticks and lighters that illuminate Buried, it wouldn't be unfair to also credit Reynolds with the film's superior lighting choices. Still, the success of the lighting goes beyond its physical dimension. Buried manages to incorporate a broad vocabulary of colors, literally showing Conroy in a different light as the moment demands. The cell phone's eerie glow dyes Reynolds' face horror-flick blue; the green light from the chemical glowsticks gives him a sort of special-ops, night-vision feel. It's amazing how completely a slight change in light or sound—the cell phone changing from vibrate to ringtone, for example—rewrites the entire environment of the coffin.
Buried only gets in over its head once or twice, when it becomes suddenly forceful in its political finger-pointing. When it's not trying to assign blame, Buried carries out an honest, if often distressing, investigation of a complicated international rivalry. Its claustrophobic filmmaking captures perfectly the helplessness many Americans feel with regard to military action in the Middle East. Before a backdrop that, in its best moments, has the power to truly terrify, Buried successfully dramatizes a static, personal story in a constantly shifting world.
Sum..ology: A haunting, incisive thriller that dares its audience to break free.
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