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Ballad of a Small Player is a Vivid, Indulgent, and Trifling Moral Fable

The character at the centre of Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player feels quite weak and artificial as we are introduced to him. A character that really doesn’t suit Colin Farrell, who seems to struggle with both the aristocratic affect and the accent itself that feels like a two-bit imitation of Ralph Fiennes. It was not coming together. And then, roughly twenty minutes in, the Irish comes out, the facade is dropped and the movie starts looking up, until you have to reckon with what it is actually doing.
Ballad of a Small Player is a step down in thematic scale for Berger, being a more intimate story than either his previous English films All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, and yet it is set against a world more grandiose and opulent than either of those could aspire towards. Shot on location in Macau, it spends a lot of time in its stylish casinos, luxurious penthouses and elegant restaurants, creating an intense image of wealth and excess, delectable until it is nauseating, and certainly in no way sustainable. A world that is easy to be hypnotized by, Berger finding a kind of horror in it that is thrilling where he remembers to entertain it. This is not a frequent occurrence.
Farrell’s character is introduced as Lord Doyle, his presence, prestige, and confidence in the casinos of Macau not always matched (in fact frequently undercut) by his luck as a gambler. He’s managed to make the most of his occasional wins, living luxuriously out of penthouses and enjoying every refinement that comes his way, but it is a limited stroke of fortune that he can comprehend though not admit. He befriends one casino employee Dao Ming (Fala Chen), an intelligent and charismatic woman attracted to a sense of subdued kinship in their histories as she touches on his vulnerable humanity. Unfortunately, Lord Doyle is eventually spotted by Cynthia (Tilda Swinton), an agent connected with a manhunt for him after he -really an Irish former lawyer named Reilly- absconded with the fortune of a deceased wealthy woman who had entrusted him with her estate. He is given the choice of paying back his debts within a set time frame or being arrested and deported, the start of an intense and nebulous reckoning with his vices and guilt.
The film is incredibly subjective for Berger, even compared to All Quiet on the Western Front -we spend the entirety of the film close-in on Reilly and his moral, psychological strife. And that is quite literal -a lot of intimate close-ups including several in very unflattering lights. But even beyond a certain aesthetic abrasiveness, his is not a pleasant or encouraging vantage point to be in: pathologically self-destructive and self-pitying, with a conscience, though not one that springs into action until he is under the pressure. Generally just a guy with a very limited integrity, and this translates through the duration of his arc. Farrell plays the part with extreme dedication, caked in sweat and sickly looking throughout the movie, but he struggles to convey Reilly’s sense of humanity beyond a sense of self-preservation, until perhaps the very end when he has to face up to some dramatic consequences. The Lord Doyle persona is rightly called out as dumb and unbelievable, but his assumption of that character feels in line with an understated callousness that only wavers in a few tender scenes with Dao Ming, whom he views as both a romantic interest and a saviour. Chen is great, and does give pathos to her own unfortunate background, layering her performance with a kind of enigmatic serenity that draws the audience to her in the same way it does Reilly. Her role in the story is ultimately its most captivating facet.
Her scenes especially, but really much of the movie wholesale has a dreamlike spell cast over it -some of it again a manifestation of Reilly’s perspective and unreliable psyche as both his ruse and his demons close in on him. In the latter part of the movie he hallucinates himself as a Taotie, a mythological figure of voracious gluttony and excess -a reminder of the peril of his indulgences, especially after a reprieve that nearly seemed to reform him. That segment too though, away from Macau, has a misty air that doesn’t entirely feel real. It is a curious atmosphere, especially as applied by Berger, and it does suit the kaleidoscope of almost otherworldly wealth and opulence that is Macau. But as hypnotic as this texture is, it acts as mere filter for the relatively shallow character drama, and is a bit lessened by association. The same is true of the film’s colour schemes, as rich in places as its setting, doubtless meant to sell more that state of luxury and temptation to the viewer -which perhaps it does too well. Unlike what the movie does with its fineries of food, the aesthetics of space are never warped into something unappealing.
‘Too much is never enough’ appears to be the movie’s intended screed. It is somewhat the core of gambling addiction -there’s always more to win, more riches to obtain. And the film does an adequate job conveying the inherent emptiness in that, how the status symbol of it all is more important to Reilly than any material worth -he is positively bored by his luxuries, even as he gorges on them in the hope of finding some nebulous value. Yet all it does is rip away his humanity. It is a potent theme that plays out in a highly operatic way, especially through Reilly’s last temptation phase of his arc. Yet he does succumb, and pulls free in only a fairly mild and unremarkable way. His doing so is tinged also with a personal motivation that somewhat lessens its gravity, especially in lieu of a twist designed to make it more meaningful but only making it look like his psyche was tricked into doing the right thing. It also is an arbitrarily depressing development, much as it is forecast. Again Reilly the character gets in the way of the film sticking its otherwise strong virtues.
Berger makes his Ballad of a Small Player look good, but he is less comfortable with its degree of hypnotic chaos and is unable to bring much to the moments of tenderness that act as relief to that. The great shift in subject and tone from his last couple movies is an admirably bold thing and it does push Farrell to some hitherto unseen lengths for him as an actor. But while its thematic and stylistic choices are alluring, the dimness of its subjective drama hurts its capacity to be fully engaging. It can be a wild ride, but that means tuppence with a protagonist who inspires so little sympathy and an ultimately banal moral trajectory predicated on a relatively simplistic gambling addition ethos. Macau looks great though, yet I can’t help thinking that too is part of the problem.

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