After two acclaimed features (“Murder Party,” “Blue Ruin”) emerging director Jeremy Saulnier returns with “Green Room,” a hardcore punk fable that’s as much of a tribute to the music as it is a love letter to his youth.
Infused with energy and panache, Saulnier’s first traditional theatrical release often plays like archival footage from his upbringing in Victoria, Virginia. It was there that Saulnier (now in his 30s, and married with children) discovered his affinity for punk rock. In turn, “Green Room” seems like the creation of a man tapping into his dormant desires to relive his youth and to let loose again, breaking free from the shackles of paternity to just mosh.
The movie opens with a wayward band desperate for work after their last few sparsely attended gigs garnered them little attention or money. When a performance at an ill-suited cafe goes south (they each made about six bucks), the group finds themselves without anywhere to go. In an attempt to support the band, a longtime supporter and journalist finds them a paying job up north.
Without much in the way of alternative options, the band, spearheaded by Pat (Anton Yelchin), spends the rest of their money on gas to drive up to this venue. From the second they arrive, it’s clear something is a bit off. There’s an unspoken uneasiness that permeates the air, exacerbated by Saulnier’s purposefully dreary color palette. Nearly every image exudes a feeling of unmitigated hopelessness, as if life begins and ends at this ramshackle music hall.
Nevertheless, the band trudges onward and performs. The audience is alternately receptive and disappointed with the show, but the performance eventually takes a backseat to the backstage green room, where the band accidentally walks in on a murder. And the owners of the venue refuse to let the group leave.
It’s here that Saulnier’s strongest work to date finds its footing, planting its characters in a singular location, the green room, as they try to escape. Of course, that escape leads to resistance, and then combat. What starts as a movie about determined musicians who want nothing more than to rock out turns into a scintillating horror-thriller hybrid, as the punks discover a Darwinistic streak as they’re forced to retaliate.
Fearless about filming violence, Saulnier captures hand-to-hand combat better than most big-budget action directors working in Hollywood today. Bodies begin to pile up, splayed on the floor and covered in blood. A smattering of scenes find this rambunctious punk band fighting and surviving to an upbeat tempo. In “Green Room,” brutality unfurls like music: fast then slow, sonic assault followed by silence, all to a consistent cadence.
Despite the descent into madness that appears on screen, the movie is controlled and measured. With Saulnier at the helm as writer-director, the story steadily builds momentum and tension. However, the film’s true feat is capturing the gradual evolution of this band as they are forced to fight for their lives. Outmatched and outnumbered by the owner’s posse, they must quite literally band together. Even in the face of Darcy (Patrick Stewart) and his skinhead goons, they remain resilient.
At the film’s core is an untraditional battle of punk vs. evil. Evil in this case being neo-Nazis, affixed with forest-green attire and bad haircuts. A Confederate flag is visible on the wall of the green room throughout the film, but there’s a subtlety to Saulnier’s placement of the flag. The politics of the skinheads aren’t exactly explicated and, unlike in “American History X,” the views of the neo-Nazis here are a bit more nebulous. As a result, these characters feel more lived-in and genuine, natural byproducts of their unseemly environment. They slavishly listen to Darcy, who orders violence as the band tries to flee from the crime scene.
Given recent controversies over the Confederate flag, “Green Room” feels unexpectedly timely. The hatred in the hearts of Saulnier’s neo-Nazis seem to imitate those current denizens of the South who are unwilling to understand that the flag is an an anachronistic, dangerous symbol that represents, for many, pain, suffering, and oppression. And it’s that oppression that this punk band ultimately has to upend, fighting the good fight in the name of equality and progress without submitting or retreating in the face of ugly bigotry.