Jumpman

Part of my coverage of the 54th Chicago International Film Festival.

JUMPMAN   ***

Ivan I. Tverdovsky

2018

IDEA:  Reacquainted with his mother sixteen years after she left him in an orphanage's baby box, Denis, who can feel no physical pain, is exploited for an illegal scheme: he jumps in front of moving cars driven by wealthy people, and a rigged jury collects their money.

BLURB:  Jumpman’s most recurring, indelible image – of its half-naked protagonist, Denis, bound by a hose two of his peers pull taut around him – provides a fittingly concise metaphor in a film that doesn’t waste any time getting to and bluntly sticking its point. It’s an image of palpable, suffocating constriction that encapsulates Denis’ exploitation by a corrupt system, but since Denis’s analgesia prevents him from feeling pain, it’s also one that reveals a compulsory numbness born from a cruel, uncaring social order. One can easily understand how the Russia of Jumpman would breed such acedia: Tverdovsky flatly, pungently illustrates a government and a legal structure indifferent to justice, run by a rapacious power elite that pulls all the strings to get its way. The depiction is deliberately unsubtle, the corruption as flagrant to the spectator as it is to the film’s victimized characters, whose cries of innocence during ritual sham trials are impassively brushed over by Tverdovsky’s unblinking, circling camera gaze. Meanwhile, Denis grows from uncritical accomplice to a young adult with scruples, even if he’s been hardened to the point of ossification by the world that has raised him. Desensitization is both a precondition and a systemic symptom of living in a callous, morally bankrupt society, Jumpman says, and while the slim framework it hangs this thesis on can sometimes lack nuance, its simplicity and terseness are also what help deliver its indictment with damning clarity.