Though I had certainly heard of Buried when it first came out in 2010, the film passed me by when it first came to Portland cineplexes. This didn’t bother me at first, even though the film carried a ton of critical acclaim. I can’t get to everything, after all, and there was no particular reason to put this on the queue above all the many other classics and curiosities that I hadn’t seen yet. Honestly, I didn’t even think about the film for quite some time.

But then came my infamous review of Chinatown, in which I dared to suggest that the ending was a huge “fuck you” to the audience. This led to several of my correspondents implying that I was some softie who couldn’t bear to see an unhappy ending in film. The ensuing conversation encouraged me to finally watch Se7en, which I promptly lauded as one of the greatest films of the past couple decades and a superlative example of an unhappy ending done right. Yet the spectre of Buried loomed large over all of these discussions. Between Chinatown and Se7en, quite a few of my readers (and, I as well, admittedly) kept wondering where Rodrigo Cortes’ film would fall on my spectrum.

Flash forward to earlier this month, when my local Blockbuster finally started going out of business. I began raiding the store’s DVD supply on a weekly basis, with the prices slowly dropping each go-round. Yet from the very outset, there’s always been at least a dozen copies of Buried on the shelf. Finally, the price got low enough that I could bring myself to buy a copy outright. This was quite a gamble, considering that I refused to spoil the ending for myself. Moreover, I can’t resell a Blockbuster DVD, especially from a store that’s going out of business. For better or worse, this DVD is a permanent part of my collection.

So let’s get this over with.

For those who don’t already know, this is movie is nothing more than 90 minutes of Ryan Reynolds in an underground box. I know that Reynolds has a lot of haters out there, but if the thought of a one-man show with him makes your skin crawl (or perhaps if you like the idea of burying him alive), worry not. Reynolds’ performance in this movie is uncommonly good, and he proves as much in the opening five minutes. What’s even better is that the lighting, camerawork, and editing in this film are all more than inventive enough to suit the creativity of the premise.

As to Reynolds’ character himself — name of Paul Conroy — it’s easy to sympathize with him at first. He’s trapped in a hopeless situation and he’s afraid for his life. The predicament lends itself to instant tension, and it’s not like the movie gives us anyone else to root for. However, I had to remind myself that I didn’t know a thing about this guy at the outset. The movie just opens with Conroy bound and gagged in this box, with no idea of how or why he’s in there. What if he was a criminal of some kind? What if he got buried down there as part of a revenge plot or a gang war of some kind? Already, I was wondering who this character was, and whether a man in such a dire predicament would be any less deserving of empathy if he really was some kind of scumbag. Not a bad start.

Of course, the movie does have its flaws. For example, given all the heavy lifting our protagonist does while trying to escape, and considering that his primary source of illumination is a lighter, I really had to suspend my disbelief to keep from remembering that he should’ve run out of oxygen in very short order.

There really isn’t a lot to say about this film. After all, the whole movie is just one man, a lighter, and a cell phone, all in one place that barely qualifies as a set. Additionally, the movie is only 95 minutes long, and it’s a thriller by nature. Divulging anything about the narrative beyond the premise without spoiling the film irreparably would be very difficult. So let’s see what I can do.

First of all, it’s worth re-iterating that Conroy is hardly a reliable narrator. He’s buried somewhere in the Middle East, which raises at least some possibility that he may not be there for peaceful civilian purposes, as much as he claims otherwise. Additionally, his story does have quite a few holes, which may or may not be the result of head trauma.

Then, of course, there’s all the effort being put in behind the scenes. The score is beautifully tense, and the camerawork explores every inch and angle of the story’s confined space in a way that I haven’t seen since 127 Hours. There are a few stretches in which nothing of import happens, but it’s hard to call these scenes “padding,” as they mostly reinforce just how futile the whole thing is. I’m also very fond of the lighting, with the cell phone’s blue screen, the lighter’s orange glow, and all the oppressive shadows constantly clashing with each other. Later on, he gets a green glow stick and a flashlight with different-colored lenses, both of which add to the effect very nicely.

Still, all of this is beside the main question I had with this film going in. And if you’re a longtime reader, you may have already guessed what that question is. Specifically, I wanted to know what the point of this movie was. If this movie was going to have a sad ending (as my correspondents seemed to imply that it did) I at least wanted the satisfaction of knowing that this movie was trying to express something in a novel way. And roughly a half-hour in, I got my wish.

To summarize it as spoiler-free as I can, Conroy uses his cell phone to get in touch with someone at the State Department. It’s during this conversation when I started to see Conroy as a metaphor for the Iraq War. His situation is a novel representation of all the soldiers who were stuck dying over there while unseen forces in Washington dither over how to get them out. In fact, for all Conroy knows, maybe they’re just paying lip service without doing much of anything. It’s a theme that only gets more overt as the film continues, all without pointing the finger at any one guilty (political) party, which does a great deal to enrich the film.

Oh, and that doesn’t even get into Conroy’s employer. Again, to put it as spoiler-free as I can, the people who sent Conroy into Iraq take the first and flimsiest possible opportunity to cut all ties with him. They thoroughly cover their asses to make sure that they have no legal or financial responsibility for the situation that Conroy is in or whatever care he may need if he survives. This is only one scene in the movie, but it’s a damning statement about our litigious overlords in the public and private sectors, concerned only with saving face, redirecting blame, avoiding risks, and preserving the bottom line by any means necessary.

All of this brings me to the ending, which is very decidedly a downer. However, it doesn’t really upset me so much. For one thing, the whole movie is extremely pessimistic, which suits the oppressively futile nature of the premise within the film and America’s general outlook of the Iraq War outside the film. A sad ending is really the only way to press this movie’s point, so much so that a happy ending would actually have been the far bigger “fuck you.”

This movie doesn’t exactly say anything new, but the execution is so novel and so brilliantly done that I can’t help respecting it. That said, I have no idea how this film will age, considering how intrinsically this movie is tied to the Iraq War and the public’s opinion of it in the late ’00s. I find it entirely possible that 30 or 40 years down the line, some young smartass who’s never lived through these times will see this movie’s ’00s-era pessimism and dismiss it outright, just as I’ve dismissed Chinatown and its reflection of ’70s-era pessimism. To be quite honest, I hope that happens. It would be great to see the world progress so far. But I digress.

If you’ll pardon the imagery, Buried works elegantly as a time capsule of the here and now. The film ingeniously captures our perceptions of government ineptitude, corporate apathy toward the working man, fear of Islamic terrorism, the ubiquity of the Internet, and our unending cynicism that things will ever improve. And all of this is portrayed through the brilliantly original allegory of a man trapped in an underground box. Throw in technical excellence on every level and a watershed performance from Ryan Reynolds, and you’ve got one thoroughly impressive — albeit wholly depressing — modern masterpiece.