FANTASIA 2020: Savage State
fantasia
The American Civil War is far from a new topic within cinema, with various films tackling the conflict from multiple angles. David Perrault's Savage State, which is streaming as part of the 2020 Fantasia Film Festival, attempts to highlight the time from a new lens. Following a family of French colonists who decide to move back to France as the conflict is starting, Savage State has the opportunity to find a nuanced look at conflict and how it affects minorities, only to fall stale as yet another forgettable period piece which struggles to find an interesting angle or lasting quality.
Starting with the positives within the film: the production quality behind it is pretty solid. Where nothing has a distinct eye making it stand out in the grand scheme of films from this genre, the film does competently transport audiences back to this time period. Without this fundamental accomplishment, the film would have fallen apart as a true disaster but, with this, the film can be a competent period piece at least. In the conversation of perspective, Savage State also tries to give a feminist perspective on life of this time; though unremarkable in its findings, it is at least a respectable attempt to break the mold of the traditional narrative explored in this type of film.
Past these elements, the feature sadly ranges from unremarkable to disappointing. One of the first things to stick out as disappointing was the visuals in it. Despite the production quality being up to par, the cinematography from Christophe Duchange works more against the movie than with it, showing Duchange's inexperience as a cinematographer. While the best period pieces will give their cinematography and visuals a roughness and grit to help immerse the viewer into the world and establish the mood of the setting, Savage State's cinematography stands out as distractedly clean and elegant for the story it is attempting to tell. This is a film that – especially in its second half – attempts to get into the dirt, showing the struggles and harshness of this time but visually that is failed to be represented, which hurts the film's ability to actually achieve this.
The performances, though not nearly as bad, are also plenty disappointing on their own. It is hard to point out any single actor as being truly bad, but it is equally hard to point out anyone who is giving a particularly memorable or impressive performance at the same time. Similar to the production quality, every performance is perfectly acceptable but, at the same time, fails to evoke any deeper emotion from the audience. Every actor is there simply going through the motions of acting without finding a deeper point that would elevate their performance any higher than average.
Due to these forgettable elements, Savage State sadly suffers the curse of being plain boring. Especially in the first half of the film, it feels like the film treads water wanting to be more than the average period piece without having any of the personality or substance needed to actually be that. With a bloated 118-minute runtime, Savage State is a film that undoubtedly sounds better on paper than in execution and really can't be recommended in nearly any capacity.
