Angelina Jolie’s New Film as a Director Is a Huge Miss at TIFF
TORONTO, Canada—Two horseback riders emerge over a hill on the vast plains, five pursuers right at their heels. Gunshots ring out, and one man topples off his steed. The second is no more fortunate; lassoed and pulled off his stallion, he’s dragged behind his attacker for what seems like an eternity.
The camera trails behind him, capturing this in a widescreen panorama that’s all the more horrifying for being so strikingly composed. In voiceover, a narrator speaks about the need to “break up the Earth” in order to create “a better world” where everyone has the right to happiness and dignity—a destiny that, it’s clear, is not reserved for these unfortunate individuals.
The identities of these murdered men is never revealed by Without Blood, and that’s in keeping with its wholesale haziness. An adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s novel of the same name by writer/director Angelina Jolie, this period piece—premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival—is dogged in its lack of specificity.