A Most Violent, and Stylish, Year

By Pamela Zoslov

J.C. Chandor's new thriller, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, is set in New York City in 1981, a time when the city was gritty and the specter of crime was ever-present. It was also, says Cynthia Deering, owner of Deering Vintage, the city's leading destination for well-curated retro clothes, a revolutionary time for women's fashion.


“Minimalism was a shocking new concept,” Deering says. “The 'power suit' was just beginning to find its way into the wardrobes of the most confident women.”

A Most Violent Year

Review by Pamela Zoslov

J.C. Chandor is a filmmaker who seems to have something to say, but who says it in a remarkably inarticulate way. The ultimate expression of this was ALL IS LOST, Chandor's nearly wordless film that featured Robert Redford adrift in his sinking yacht. Tedious though it was, that film at least spared us the leaden dialogue that characterized his debut, MARGIN CALL, a would-be GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS about the financial industry.

Chandor's new film, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, finds him again in the business world, this time 1981 New York City (Chandor is the son of an investment banker). At the center of the drama is Abel Morales, the ambitious Mexican-born head of a successful heating-oil business. Although he has the demeanor, pompadour, and expensive tailoring of a Mob boss, his ethics are impeccable. (Even his name – “morals” – reflects his probity and Chandor's literalness.) “I run a fair and clean business. I have never taken anything from everybody,” Morales asserts, though he seems to have purchased the business from the father of his Mob-connected wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), whose long, manicured talons look poised to draw blood. Anna keeps the books for the business, cooking them when necessary. She defends her husband as “an honorable man” but alternately calls him “a pussy” when he refuses to carry a gun.

All Is Lost

Review by Pamela Zoslov

With ALL IS LOST, the young writer-director J.C. Chandor tries an experiment. He dispenses with the dramatic conventions of character and dialogue, presenting a nearly wordless film with a cast of one, Robert Redford. The 77-year-old actor plays an unnamed yachtsman (the credits list him as “Our Man”), adrift in the Indian Ocean after a collision in the Sumatra Straits with a wayward shipping container tears a hole in the hull of his boat. (The container is filled with sneakers from China – those cheap Chinese exports, always hazardous somehow.)