The Bad Founder Sleeps Well

This holiday break, two of the movies I watched were Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well from 1960 and The Founder from John Lee Hancock. Both of these movies tell stories of ambition in the corporate world—for The Bad Sleep Well, that overlaps with government service that might as well be corporate—and its spillover.

The Founder tells the adapted story of the founding of McDonald’s, with an ambitious, and—it turns out—ruthless salesman pushes aside the actual founders of the restaurant—two brothers—destroys what had been the dream of one of the brothers, and focuses only on his desires in the pursuit of . . . well, the pursuit of pursuing, as he kind of says himself.

In The Bad Sleep Well, the suicide five years previous of a public servant working at a state land management company seems to be linked to a corruption investigation targeting a construction company.  Somebody seems to know a dark secret behind the suicide, while others linked to two organizations also commit suicide. This is a loose adaptation of Hamlet, so you can probably see where this is going. I’m not going to share any more, but if you read any review or consideration of the movie, the central pivot on which the plot balances is likely revealed, but I think the movie works better if that ‘reveal’ plays out without foreknowledge.

The two movies share a basic central theme, but these are two very different movies from very different periods. Both are excellent movies I really enjoyed, but while The Founder I recognize as a modern movie, there is much in the staging of The Bad Sleep Well that reminds me of a play. In a pivotal scene, we have a character explaining to other characters what just occurred offscreen—literally telling us rather than showing us—which may have been done to reflect similar scenes in Hamlet itself. Much of it is obviously shot on a soundstage, even external scenes. While some of The Founder is also almost certainly shot on a soundstage, improvements in techniques and technology make that difficult to identify.

The difference in periods is also clear in the acting styles. The Founder has more natural presentation of the characters, something that was only just being adopted more widely at the time The Bad Sleep Well was filmed. There are at least two scenes when the movie veers into melodrama. As a fan of film noir and the movies of Cary Grant, this fit in my wheelhouse just fine. Melodrama is also a staple of a lot of films and TV—including K-dramas—so that works for me as well. That won’t be true of everyone.

While The Founder is kind of a limited biopic—it considers at a very specific period of Ray Kroc’s life—The Bad Sleep Well is basically film noir, based on a central mystery that leads into a thriller. There’s no real action, but tension is built on the execution of a plan and the complications that arise to foil the protagonist’s intent. These differences in structure also leads to a difference in tone—The Bad Sleep Well is much more clearing condemnatory of the ambitious antagonist while The Founder frames the actions of its protagonist to highlight their immorality or perhaps amorality, but does not condemn them as a villain outright.

But really the biggest difference is in the framing and lighting of the movies. John Lee Hooker does a good job, but there are very few filmmakers who can deliver a shot like Akira Kurosawa. While The Bad Sleep Well is a much more intimate film than Ran or even Yojimbo, there were so many shots that were just absolutely perfect. It reminded me of watching Stray Dog for the first time. It was the first of Kurosawa’s non-samurai movies that I watched, and the artistry that caught my eye in those other movies was on full display. The Bad Sleep Well is the same. It’s not gorgeous in the way that many of Kurosawa’s historical movies are, but it is definitely the work of a master artist.

I’d recommend both movies, but if I had to choose it would be—no surprise—The Bad Sleep Well. I specifically chose it as a Kurosawa movie, and I am a Kurosawa fan. Make of that what you will.