"Ballad of a Small Player": Does Edward Berger's new film with Colin Farrell have what it takes to win an Oscar?

At the beginning of "The Ballad of a Small Player," Colin Farrell rides an escalator, and for a moment, James Friend's camera leaves the viewer uncertain – is Lord Doyle going up or down? It quickly becomes clear that it's a descent. What remains unclear throughout the following 101 minutes of Edward Berger's (director) and Rowan Joffé's (screenwriter) "The Ballad of a Small Player" is whether this gambling addict has simply descended into his hotel's casino or has he landed somewhere else entirely.

Finally, at the end of Alan Parker's "Angel Heart" (1987), Mickey Rourke's Harry Angel also took an elevator whose descent took him far beyond any basement level. Hell may be outside the earthly sphere, but in any case, it is somewhere far, far below.

This sense of unease is evoked again and again throughout the film. The glittering world of the Cotai Strip, the super-Vegas on China's southern coast, makes Macau seem cut off from the rest of the world. The nights here are filled with fantastic electric lights, but even the daytime glares with excessive intensity.

Has Lord Doyle landed in Naraka, the Buddhist spirit realm that the moneylender Dao Ming (Fala Chen) tells him about? The people of Macau call him "gweilo"—a "strange spirit." And in the streets, the Spirit Festival is being celebrated—a time when the worlds of light and shadow intersect.

Swiss-Austrian director Berger is currently one of the most successful German-language filmmakers – his recent works “All Quiet on the Western Front” (2022) and “Conclave” (2024) won Oscars. He and Joffé sow seeds of doubt that something might have happened to their protagonist's reality. A man falls to his death from Lord Doyle's window. And why can't he win at baccarat against an elderly, smiling lady who – surrealistically – always reveals the nine – the optimal card combination?

Dao Ming, whom Doyle seems to love in some way, appears as suddenly as if saving his life at his table in a Hong Kong restaurant, where he appears to be dining alone. The entire atmosphere of the film has something uncanny about it. A glimpse into the abyss of an almost empty soul.

Of course, all this seemingly supernatural behavior could also simply be the hallucinatory perception of a man who must tear himself away from the illusion that luck will ultimately be on his side, that a happy ending is predestined for him. Lord Doyle's hell, whose real name is Reilly, is his addiction to winning.

He has four days to repay the immense debts owed to the casino bank, otherwise they'll report him to the police. A quirky woman named Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), with whom he engages in an absurdly comical chase, gives him only 24 hours to repay the more than 900,000 British pounds he stole from an elderly English lady while posing as her lawyer. "I so long to be free of shame," confesses the con man Reilly Dao Ming when she takes him to her houseboat on Lamma Island after he suffers a heart attack.

Unlike in the novel by British writer Laurence Osborne, which has not yet been translated into German, Berger, who was born in Wolfsburg, does not convey Reilly's imprisonment in his addiction, the resulting self-hatred and the accompanying self-destruction as an inner monologue in his third consecutive literary film adaptation after "All Quiet on the Western Front" (Erich Maria Remarque, also for Netflix) and "Conclave" (Robert Harris) - this is inherent in the nature of the medium.

But through external presentation. Visually, Berger delivers another impressive film. The shifting of the inner anguish onto Colin Farrell's face and onto the dialogues results in a very strong focus on the main character, who, in his neglect, increasingly resembles a junkie. The other characters are neglected.

In the end, after all the warning signs, it does indeed become a ghost story – but not as expected. Combined with the superstitions of the Chinese casino owners, a door opens at the film's end for the truly successful gambler Reilly, whose story takes a different turn than, for example, the alcoholic played by Nicolas Cage in Mike Figgis' film "Leaving Las Vegas" (1995).

The film won four Oscars at the time. The Academy has a general penchant for addiction dramas – most recently, Darren Aronofsky's "The Whale" (2022, about binge eating) and Thomas Vinterberg's "The Intoxication" (2020, about alcoholism) were also honored.

"Small Player" ends with a twist, much like "Conclave" before it. Again, it helps maintain the suspense if you haven't read the novel. While this "ballad" doesn't feature a single likable character and offers no real solution, it's like an intense dream that lingers for days.

"Ballad of a Small Player", film, 101 minutes, directed by Edward Berger, screenplay by Rowan Joffé, starring Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Alex Jennings, Deanie Ip, Jason Tobin, Adrienne Lau, Alan K. Chang (available to stream on Netflix)