Watch Jake Gyllenhaal break stuff in the… | Little White Lies

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Watch Jake Gyl­len­haal break stuff in the Demo­li­tion trailer

09 Sep 2015

Words by David Jenkins

The actor takes a mal­let to his mar­riage in the new film from Dal­las Buy­ers Club direc­tor Jean-Marc Vallée.

Corny sen­ti­ments and heavy hand­ed metaphors of renew­al aside, Demo­li­tion looks like being as pol­ished, irrev­er­ent and touch­ing as direc­tor Jean-Marc Vallée’s pre­vi­ous offer­ings, Dal­las Buy­ers Club and Wild.

The tone of the trail­er is spot on. Gyllenhaal’s monot­o­ne deliv­ery and unemo­tion­al phras­ing reflects his apa­thy for life, but com­bined with Davis’ wit­ty asides screen­writer Bryan Sipe avoids the ​‘evil banker’ stereo­type instead he becomes the lik­able ingénue. While the colour palette bril­liant­ly trans­forms through­out the trail­er, in line with Davis’ chang­ing men­tal­i­ty and expand­ing hori­zons, it main­tains the mut­ed look of a ​’70s peri­od piece despite the obvi­ous pres­ence of smart­phones anchor­ing it in the present day.

Get more Lit­tle White Lies

This delib­er­ate choice by Val­lée shows us the kind of film he’s try­ing to make. By cre­at­ing a retro aes­thet­ic he soft­ens the tone of the film allow­ing hard emo­tion­al points to be made in a com­fort­ing, mild­ly nos­tal­gic envi­ron­ment; some­thing he employed per­fect­ly Dal­las Buy­ers Club. Demo­li­tion looks to be a small scale human sto­ry with the dra­ma turned all the way up. With Val­lée at the helm, expect this to be anoth­er emo­tion­al rollercoaster.

*Update 19 Jan­u­ary, 2016*

Fox Search­light have just released a UK trail­er. Check it out below and let us know your thoughts @LWLies

Demo­li­tion is released in the UK 29 April.

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LWLies 107: The Sin­ners issue – Out now!

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