In the Flesh: Sorcerer

Every inch of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer is made with such exquisite attention to detail that by the time the payload of unstable nitroglycerin around which the film’s plot revolves and from which it derives the lion’s share of its tension first appears, the consequences of its mishandling feel not just obvious but physically tangible. That the film’s first use of the explosive for a serious effects shot is not during an accident but as the climax of a back-breakingly protracted scene of labor-intensive problem solving set immediately after one of the most harrowing action sequences of all time is a stroke of genius, and the setup couldn’t be simpler. There’s a tree in the road. If the drivers can’t move it, not only do they not get paid, but they’ll be on foot in a trackless jungle with no way back to their point of origin.

What ensues is a sequence of exacting, highly delicate demolitions prep which manages to be just as tense as the film’s more famous bridge sequence in a completely different emotional register and color palette. The apocalyptic blues and blacks of the storm-tossed bridge swaying and coming apart under the weight of the trucks give way to a virtual untamed Eden, white-gold light filtering through a full spectrum of browns and greens and grays. Shadows seem limned in silver haze and the characters’ skin glistens in the suffocating heat. It’s an undeniably gorgeous setting, but the emptiness and silence of it is as taut as a bowstring after the unrelenting visual chaos of the scene immediately prior. Friedkin’s big, muscular shots of men and machinery in motion grind to a near total halt, the film’s focus shifting from forward progress to intimately filmed expert handiwork.

Simple machines made from sand, socks, stripped wood, and string. A dribble of glistening nitroglycerin oozing like semen over a slab of stone. Friedkin recreates in miniature and at a fraction of the speed the same life-or-death terror of a massive and heavily loaded truck navigating a crumbling wooden bridge in a rainstorm. One slip, one wrong move, and the painstaking task becomes fire and thunder, blood and flying splinters. Kassem’s (Amidou) slender, elegant hands only accentuate the precision required. His intense look of concentration even while doing something as simple as raising and lowering a stone striker via pulley invests these actions with real and believable weight. And then, somehow, when the explosion finally comes it’s more astonishing than we could ever have imagined, the agonizing minutiae of the past ten minutes transmuted via alchemy into a bloom of fire and kinetic force like a bolt of lightning hurled from heaven. Pure cinema.