ABSURDIST CINEMATIC LANGUAGE IN IN BRUGES BY MARTIN MCDONAGH

Abstract

Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges is a darkly comic crime film that doubles as an absurdist morality play exploring guilt and redemption. This paper argues that McDonagh’s cinematic techniques such as disjointed editing, visual composition, tonal shifts, and surreal imagery construct a purgatorial liminal space to interrogate guilt, moral ambiguity, and redemption in absurdist terms. In doing so, it addresses a gap in In Bruges scholarship by situating the film’s absurdist aesthetics within a tradition more often associated with literature and theatre. Drawing on frameworks from absurdist literature and philosophy, such as Beckett’s Theatre of the Absurd and Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, to visual art, like Bosch’s grotesque iconography, and performance theory, incorporating the Heiner Müller’s concept of sensory “flooding”, the paper illustrates how absurdist aesthetics inform the film’s narrative structure and tone. This approach illuminates In Bruges’ unique blend of black comedy and existential drama, underscoring its significance as a cinematic critique of violence and simplistic moral binaries.