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When Frank Carver (Nicolas Cage), a prisoner haunted by an excessive incurable insomnia, goes out of the penitentiary, by a long corridor during a dark dawn, he enters inside the infinite night of his memory that takes shape in the appearance of his son, along the damned road on which Frank starts to walk with the death.
"The man, when he ceases to sleep, is before all the toy of his memory, and that in the normal state this one likes to him weakly trace the circumstances of the dream, to deprive the latter of all current consequences, and to make leave the only determinant of the point where he believes, a few hours earlier, to have left him: this firm hope, this concern. He has the illusion of continuing something that is worth it. The dream is thus brought back to a parenthesis, like the night. " had written André Breton in his Manifesto of Surrealism.
The minutes don't stop to overlap, day and night are intertwining, old friends became enemies, liars, some opportunists spirits, demons , goddess appears, changing of faces , metamorphosing, leading Frank to temptations becomed desires, illusion of love, illusions of revenge, illusions of a goal drived by his suffering transmuted in the Dream , interupted by flashes of remembrances, hallucinations, coming to form, to organize a new reality.
"In the limits where it is exercised , in all likelihood the dream is continuous and carries a trace of organization. Only memory arrogates to itself the right to make cuts, to ignore transitions and to represent to us rather a series of dreams than dreams. In the same way, we have realities at every moment only a distinct figuration, whose coordination is a matter of will. " explained André Breton.
"I take, once again, the waking state. I have to hold it for an interference phenomenon. Not only does the spirit testify, under these conditions, to a strange tendency to disorientation, (...) but still it does not seem that, in its normal functioning, it obeys much more than suggestions that it comes from that deep night of which I recommend it. As well conditioned as it is, its equilibrium is relative. He hardly dares to express himself, and if he does, it is to confine himself to seeing that such an idea, such a woman, is having an effect on him (...)Who tells me that the angle under which this idea which touches him, what he likes in the eye of this woman is not precisely what ties it to his dream, connects it to data that by his fault he lost? And if it were otherwise, what might he not be able to do? I would like to give him the key to this corridor. " continue the master of Surrealism in his manifesto.
A mythological parallel seems to appear between “A score to Settle” of Shawn Ku and the episode of the historical mythological story “Daji and Boyi Khao”, exposed in the novel "The Investiture of the Gods or The Creation of the Gods" of Xu Zhonglin, from the XVI century BC; in which Ji Chang, a western Duke is arrested and placed in jail unfairly, by the king. His son Boyi Kao comes to help his father, but the king becomes furious toward the young man who rejected his daughter; then he kills him, and force the father Ji Chang, to eat the body of his son . Then the king releases Ji Chang, who looks for revenge for the death of his son.
As all surrealist creation contain a mythological story , the dream made by the memory becomes a surreality. The suffering of the lost of the one we love can drive us to recreate the presence of the beloved , to support the pain it does to us, conciously or unconsciously.
"There is a man cut in half by the window" describes André Breton.
This interiority and exteriority of Frank is showed crescendo by the acting of Nicolas Cage. His transformation, as the curve of the reality is distorting, during the duration of the time of his life , from his past, his youth changed in a long agony of 19 years in jail that has metamorphosed him, to the three days of liberty and actions that drive the anamorphosis which is extending or contracting the perspective of the optical illusion of the Dream, of the past, present, future inside his mind toward the outside which represent his death, his last minutes of reality that will kill him.
As the painter Francis Bacon represented himself among meat quarters suspended, and hided some secrets in the art painting "1946" , the life of Frank Carver is reflected in those masses of meat , already dead and cut, during his meeting with Tank, became butcher, who chooses which piece of meat to use; and with the surname of Beef that gives Q to designate Frank, he's reduced again more. His destiny is counted in three times, three acts, as the three gestations of the figure on the canvas in the self-portraits of the artist.
Nicolas Cage, as Francis Bacon, is representing Frank in his doubts, his contrasted transformations, and the violence of his alterations.
He's moving in a dance with the death and against the six “dragons” : Nicole G. Leier/ Sleepy's Daughter, Benjamin Bratt/ Q, Ian Tracey/Tank, Karolina Wydra/Simone, Nicole Muñoz/ Isha, Mohamed Karim/ Jimmy the dragon.
Before he has access to the heaven gate, Nicolas Cage/Frank Carver does a martial dance, fighting against the corruption and the lies of some half humans, half spirits who surround him.
From abstraction, to naturalism, the feelings of Frank evolutes in the confusion caused by his insomnia, some masks start to be drawned on his face, like in a chinese opera; it appears at the starts lighly, to shows the emotion of his heart hurted, until the mask of complete anger, the mask of the justiciary warrior , then finally the white mask of death, when Frank joins the soul of his son Joey (played by Noah Le Gros), forever.
The references about surrealism, World war II, the ancient chinese legend, Francis Bacon Art and his Art painting "1946"/Soutine, combined with the song "I'm always chasing rainbows" sang by Nicolas Cage in this movie, make me deduct that "A score to settle" of Shawn Ku from the screenplay written by John Newman and Swegal, is a surrealist, modernist, post modernism movie evoking by the tragedy, the jew and chinese immigration in America of the post World war II period, and the contemporary consequences, lives of those immigrations in the evolution and decline of the families, social, mores, people, industries in America.
Vanessa Martinez Volterra
Les éditions de l'Or Blanc
Francis Bacon "1946".