‘Good Time’: The Safdie brothers movie inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger
As both individuals and a collective, Josh and Benny Safdie exist at the opposite end of the cinematic spectrum from Arnold Schwarzenegger in every way, but there’s still a point where the two crossed paths in a spiritual sense.
On the one hand, there’s the inventive and dynamic sibling duo that took the American independent scene by storm with their fresh, vibrant, and engaging features. Their work placed the spotlight on a unique cross-section of suburbia, presenting familiar setups captured from a different perspective.
Whether it was the dysfunctional family drama of Daddy Longlegs, the existential criminal thrills of Uncut Gems, or the slice-of-life psychodrama following a homeless heroin addict in Heaven Knows What, the Safdies rose to prominence for putting an immediate and intoxicating spin on the unspoken underbelly of everyday life.
On the other hand, there’s the musclebound action icon who made a career out of dropping just as many quips as bodies and who wouldn’t exactly be the first name that comes to mind for an intimate indie. And yet, the Safdies took their cues from one of their childhood favourites starring the ‘Austrian Oak’ when they sent Robert Pattinson on an odyssey through the underworld in Good Time.
It’s definitely not sci-fi, but it is dystopian in a sense, with Pattinson’s Connie Nikas battling bureaucracy and encroaching threats to extricate his brother from incarceration. What does Good Time have to do with Schwarzenegger’s Stephen King adaptation, The Running Man? On the surface, nothing, but also a great deal.
“Running Man is dystopia. Look, we’re living in a dystopian time right now,” Josh told Nick Allen. “Every day I wake up, and there’s some more horrific crazy thing or some photos that we see. There’s a website that I go to occasionally that my DP turned me onto that’s literally the most horrific, entropic place I’ve been to in my life.”
Nightmarish parables aside, the brothers were asked how the dots connected from The Running Man to Good Time, other than Josh calling it “one of our favourite movies as a kid.” Benny added, “The music is pretty good, too,” which became its second form of influence.
“Yeah, the [Harold] Faltermeyer soundtrack was actually on heavy rotation when we were doing the score,” Josh acknowledged. “But yeah, the dystopian view of society, the individual trying to break free of conformity, et cetera, et cetera.”
There surely can’t have been many people who saw Good Time and realised they were watching the Safdies pay tribute to The Running Man, but Josh and Benny were heavily influenced on a thematic and musical level. They may not be two peas in a cinematic pod, but they’d make for an interesting – and apt – double feature.
