Another well-respected film-maker finds a home on a streaming service; John Michael McDonagh on Prime Video this time.
McDonagh’s The Forgiven is set at a party in Morocco, thrown by the idle rich.
The Forgiven opens with Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain driving through the Sahara Desert at night. They play a married couple – I wouldn’t say a particularly happily married couple - called David and Jo.
Photo: Screenshot
They’re driving to a party being thrown by friends of Jo deep in the heart of Morocco. And something bad happens.
A young Arab boy runs out into the road while David and Jo are arguing. There’s a crash, he’s killed.
The couple’s host Richard – a rather good Matt Smith – is an old Morocco hand. He follows in a long, not particularly noble, line of wealthy, often corrupt Western tourists, exploiting young Moroccans over the years.
Richard tells Michael there shouldn’t be a problem, it was an accident, and so on.
In fact, the whole party is made up of people for whom life is generally free of problems, or indeed purpose. Once again, The Forgiven takes us to the world of the pampered rich.
The guests of Richard and his boyfriend Dally are mostly dedicated to the proposition “let’s throw money at our boredom.”
That’s certainly the motto of Tom, played by Christopher Abbott, who – seeing that Michael is distracted by his problems with the police – decides to start flirting with Michael’s wife Jo.
Of all the people wallowing in idle luxury – including journalists, socialites, aristocrats and hangers-on - the closest thing to a decent human being, initially at any rate, is Richard.
He tries to find a formula to keep both his guests and the local Moroccans happy.
The sourest is David, who didn’t even want to be here in the first place.
But David is about to learn a lesson in contrition, when the dead boy’s father arrives.
He’s no easy-going Moroccan. He’s a nomadic Berber, and he won’t be fobbed off by glib Western words, or even money.
The father will only be satisfied with David coming with him to his remote mountain camp, and helping the family bury the son.
Understandably, David isn’t keen on being driven so far – literally – away from his comfort zone.
The Forgiven, as the name suggests, is about getting past something difficult to forgive. The boy was the father’s only son, the culprit has to overcome centuries of prejudice.
Meanwhile the rest of the party carries on as if nothing happened. Though they are intrigued by some holes in the story David and Jo initially told them.
The story splits between what happens to David when he goes away, and what happens to Jo when David goes away.
And once again we’re confronted by our views of the rich and privileged. Why should we even care about people who so obviously only care for themselves?
I have to confess some of my own prejudices rather got in my way. I find Chastain a bit unengaging at the best of times.
And for me The Forgiven kept feeling slightly under-cooked. Nobody seemed to care much about it, which is why it arrived on Prime Video with so little love.
Star Ralph Fiennes, who I generally do engage with, does his best with his part of the story. But the mystery at its heart – did something else happen out there? – is left too unclear to justify an otherwise strong ending.
In other words, it got Prime Video when it really needed a prime producer making it better.
