Somewhere on a frozen mountain, forest ranger Sanggye’s monotone life is disturbed by the arrival of a wounded man who storms through his door with a rifle.
The classic ‘bottle episode’ thriller of a movie. It’s been executed so many times it’s an impressively rigid microgenre of filmmaking. When it works, it feels incredible, and audiences learn not to expect what will happen next. In this instance, it’s a little tired and doesn’t seem to merge thoroughly enough. “One and Four” brings the tundra and desolate log cabins to the microgenre with a fair amount of success, but its ending makes us question if the mystery was worth it.
Jigme Trinley plays Shanggye; a forest ranger shacked up in a cabin in the dead of winter. As he drinks away the days, a mysterious, bloody stranger bangs on his cabin door, claiming to be a Forest Ranger hunting down a mysterious poacher. As Shanggye lets him in, we begin to suspect not all is as it seems. As more men turn up and tell their stories, our suspicions shift and change, forcing us to question every character. Only Shanggye has the opportunity to catch the real poacher, find the real forest ranger, and stop the poaching ring for good.
These kinds of movies work well in a Rashomon-type effect where each story told by the men recontextualizes what we saw previously. Heroes become villains who become heroes again. The constant shifting of information makes us feel unstable as if the ground beneath us is too shaky to stand on. This movie accomplishes that effect sometimes, maybe not at a tight clip but still within its leisure. To that effect, it accomplishes its mission of keeping us guessing until the end. Unfortunately, the ending levels the playing field so thoroughly it makes us wonder why we even bothered to track all that information.
Jigme Trinley seems to use every filmmaking tool in this movie, and it shows. It’s a surprisingly maximalist style of filmmaking as the camera whips and pans, blurry slow-motion fills certain moments, and extreme close-ups obscure our view. The gorgeous landscape gets a second in life in the camera’s lens and makes for an impressively staged location. It makes the film feel stronger by adding a fifth character: the landscape.
Ultimately, the film sometimes feels confusing, but it lands on its feet with a tense final standoff. That standoff feels earned, and we are stuck puzzling out who the villain is. It makes a grave error in removing Shanggye from making a conflicting choice, and I think that’s what ultimately sinks this movie in the end. It’s a big swing and a tiny miss, but a miss nonetheless.
“One and Four” recently had its Texas Premiere at 2022 Fantastic Fest
