DOASKDOTELL MOVIE REVIEW of In the Bedroom, Little Children, Running with Scissors,
A Matter of Taste,
Moonlight Mile, The United States of Leland,
I’ll Sleep when I’m Dead,
Separate Lies , Match Point , Dial M for Murder , Transsiberian,
Night Train,
Revolutionary Road; Reservation Road; Strangers on a Train, Suspicion, The Lady Vanishes
Title: In the Bedroom |
Release Date: 2001 |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: about 140 Minutes |
|
Distributor and Production
Company: Miramax; Greeneleaf, Good Machine |
Director; Writer: Todd Field |
Producer: |
Cast: Tom Wilkinson,
Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl and Marisa Tomei. |
|
Relevance to DOASKDOTELL site: |
Review: This is a slow, tempting
drama, played out on a wide screen set up like a stage, with the simple
Shakespearian setup of revenge. A somewhat winsome college freshman, Frank
(Nick Stahl) is carrying on an affair with an older woman, gets knocked off
by a crude blue-collar and somewhat decaying ex-husband-a crime which the
family must avenge vigilante style, given the paucity of the police and
justice system. This film was real hit at the 2001
Sundance. I think it makes an interesting comparison to The Deep End,
in terms of psychological intensity and panoramic storytelling, even if the
setup is more traditional in content. The final vengeance, though, is
chilling, reminding one of Blood Simple. A comparable family grief film is Moonlight Mile, written and directed by Brad Silberling, from Touchstone (why not Miramax
instead?) The setup is that a gangly young man, Joe Nast (played by
Jake Gyllenhaal), the son-in-low-to-be, comforts
the grieving parents (Ben and Jo Jo Floss, played
by Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon) of his fiancé after she is gunned down
in a bar. The story is loosely based on an incident earlier in Silberling’s own life. Nast is actually already living in
the parents’ home, a setup that seems awkward until we gradually understand
how Nast was to get into the father’s “commercial real estate” ambitions. The
quiet story gradually reveals layers of secrets and side affairs. The film
apparently is supposed to build up to a courtroom drama scene where Nast is
supposed to testify about his own loss, but comes apart, mumbling on the
witness stand, until he recovers himself to make a rather wincing speech
about “the truth.” Gyllenhaal’s manner is so
underplayed and low-key that it seems almost stagnant. I think a lot of
script readers would have rather seen the victims’ impact, prosecution and
courtroom part done with more emphasis and direction, since courtroom drama
is perceived as a good way to explore many different issues (including some
of mine). (The death penalty stuff gets short circuited.) Pets fill in
some action into the film, including one scene where a dog barfs on camera
(never seen that before in the movies), and later when the dog is attacked by
a cat (the cat triumphs again in the final scene). The film is widescreen and
looks bigger than it really is. Another comparable film is Kevin Spacey’s production of The
United States of Leland (Paramount Classics, Trigger Street, Thousand Words, dir. Matthew
Ryan Hoge, R, 112 min, 2004; note – Kevin Spacey is
one of the founders of Trigger Street, which provides networking for new
filmmakers). This is a non-linear retrospective docudrama of the murder of a
retarded boy by a seemingly gentle teenager Leland FitzGerald, played by Ryan
Gosling. A prison teacher (Don Cheadle) befriends
Leland and then announces his attempt to write a book (“you’re not a writer
until people read what you write”) about the boy, although this would
obviously violate his confidentiality agreement at work. Leland’s father
(Kevin Spacey) is a jet-setting fiction author and literary agent who despises autobiography dressed as fiction. The father also
believes that he can be admired for his writing but not for what he is as a
person, an idea that locks into the idea of self-handicapping behavior. (A
good one for Dr. Phil.) And Leland himself starts handwriting his thoughts in
a prison social studies book. The plot builds up around the victim’s family,
especially the brother of the victim (Chris Klein) and his father (Martin
Donovan). It turns all to Shakespearean tragedy
without that much character-driven explanation (as you would find with the
bard himself). Leland’s flaw seems to be a kind of apathy that makes him so
pliable that he can become unstable. But part of the explanation may be a
homophobic statement made by his father to the jail teacher earlier, as the
killing happens in an embrace after the retarded kid becomes confused by a
barricade on a bicycle path. You leave the theater wanting to see a movie
about teens who turn out well. In my own life, I
have met enough who did, despite jet-setting parents. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
(Paramount Classics, 103 min, R,
dir. Mike Hodges) provides another story about family grief that fits the
paradigm of In the Bedroom. Here the movie tracks two brothers Will Graham
(Clive Owen) and Davey Graham (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Will is working as a
manual laborer logging in Separate Lies (2005, Fox Searchlight/Celador/ Match Point (2005, Dreamworks/BBC,
dir. Woody Allen, R, 124 min) is a steady British dramatic thriller, in the
studied style of Woody Allen, all right, rather than Hitchcock, who seems
invoked by the plot. Former tennis star Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers)
takes on a job as instructor/playboy at a Dial M for Murder (1954, Warner Bros., dir. Alfred Hitchcock,
105 min, play by Frederick Knott). “People don’t commit murder on credit.”
This famous film, that I wasn’t allowed to see as a boy, is the inspiration
of “Match Point” probably, as a retired English tennis player (Ray Milland) plots to eliminate his wife, who is seeing an
American writer (Robert Cummings) by blackmailing an ex-con (Anthony Dawson)
to break in, hide, and strangle his wife when she is beckoned to the phone.
Maybe British phones had the “M” isolated then. There are plenty of
Hitchcock’s famous close-ups and the typical detailed plotting of British
mysteries with ordinary things. (This style of photography works better in
3-D, in which this film was originally shown.) The plan goes wrong, and the
wife gets convicted to be hanged. So the writer comes up with a Plan C. As
with the Woody Allen film, all of the characters are rotten. Strangers on a Train (1951, Warner Bros., dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 101 min,
novel by Patricia Highsmith) is one of Hitchcock’s
most diabolical film noir masterpieces, in the sharpest black-and-white you
ever saw. The plot is stock Patricia Highsmith,
like Mr. Ripley. On a train (at the time, the Pennsylvania railroad between
New York and Washington, probably one of the electric trains), a likeable
young tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Grainger) meets a stranger, Bruno
Anthony (Robert Walker), who will evolve in the movie as a demented,
psychopathic (or at least sociopathic) playboy. Bruno peppers him with
questions, having recognized him, and starts exposing his own value system.
One should try anything in life once. He proposes the perfect murder, where
two strangers commit each other’s crime so that the police will not have
motives. (“They swap murders. Each guy does the other guy’s murder. Then
there is nothing to connect them.”; “You think my theory is OK, you like
it.”) Apparently he knows that Guy’s marriage to his pipsequeaky
wife (Kasey Rogers) is on the rocks. After they get off the train, Guy finds
out he can’t get a divorce. Bruno stalks her into an amusement park, and
strangles her after getting off a lover’s lane ride (and asking her simply,
“Is your name Miriam?”). (The shot, reflected in eyeglasses, is famous.)
Hitchcock has mixed plot and character in this film, as he has shown
Miriam to be quite a tramp in public herself before her partially deserved
demise. Of course, Guy and his family have to keep the police at bay. Guy
agrees to go along with his end of the deal and murder Bruno’s father. Does
he really agree, or is he just outflanking Bruno? They come into
confrontation, and a chase that winds up in a famous merrygoround
scene, where they fight, Guy saves a little boy, and the ride crashes. There are obvious
“lessons” in the film, about attracting attention to oneself from unstable
people and potential stalkers, even in a lower tech, pre-Internet world.
There is wonderful attention to the finest details, such as the lost
cigarette lighter. The action takes place in unspecified cities in the
Northeast, probably around Unlike “Match Point,”
here at least one of the major characters, Guy, is good and likeable, for the
most part. Hitchcock pays attention to the smallest details, even the manly
hair about Guy’s wrists in the opening train compartment scene. Later Guy is
presented on the courts in tennis matches (remember how the audience eyes
follow the ball, except for Bruno) as a lanky, hairy handsome man, rather
like the youngest version of Andre Agassi (before all of the latter’s
“changes”). The The There is also some controversy as
to whether Bruno is homosexual. Hitchcock was ambiguous on this, and it is
not necessarily so. Nevertheless, the initial meeting on the train, where the
shoes touch, playing footsie, is almost like a "pickup." Highsmith was particularly concerned with randomness, of how things
happen, how good people can suffer and bad events can go unpunished, how
villains can entice a rooting interest. "You never know what is going to
happen in the future." The Lady Vanishes (1938, Criterion, dir. Alfred Hitchcock,
novel by Ethel Lina White, 97 min) is another
delicious old black-and-white mystery based on what happens on a
transcontinental train. This time Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) meets an
old lady Froy (Dame May Whitty)
at a mountain lodge when they are snowbound. They get on a train to go home
and Froy disappears, and all the other passengers
deny having seen her. Pretty soon there is a faceless corpse, or at least a
doll, and then the train is attacked. Miss Froy is
carrying a secret code. What is interesting is that the story anticipates
World War II, and the plotting to keep secrets away from the Nazis. The movie
was remade in 1979 and directed by George Axelrod. Suspicion (1941, RKO Radio, dir. Alfred Hitchcok,
novel “Before the Fact” by Francis Iles aka Anthony Berkeley, 99 min). An
English socialite Lina (Joan Fontaine) meets a
playboy (Cary Grant) on a train, in a tunnel no less, and falls for him,
gradually to become suspicious of his intentions when he gambles behind her
back and gets fired, all while pretending to work. There is some moralizing
about the work ethic. The novel is famous for being told from the viewpoint
of the victim. The ending, arguably violating the novel (where Lina is the accessory before the fact for her own murder),
is vintage Hitchcock (with the car-on-a-cliff scenes) and anticipates his
later work. I love the line about the novelist who says her villains are
actually heroes. Little Children (2006, New Line Cinema, dir. Todd Field, 130
min, R) will probably be compared to In
the Bedroom but it is much more rhapsodic and impressionistic. The New
Line trademark plays against a rising Doppler train whistle (instead of its
music trademark), and the train sound becomes a leitmotif for the mood of
this most disturbing movie about suburbia. Then we open with the broadcast of
a video about a registered sex offender Ronald McGorvey
(played by Jackie Earl Haley), whose apparent crime was indecent exposure in
front of a child, for which he served two years. He is constantly referred to
as a pedophile and pervert, but the facts of his case seem less clear. It’s
even possible that the exposure was inadvertent or accidental. Various
married couples congregate in various situations (Robert Altman like) and
focus on their fear of the sex offender, who faces a societal ostracism out
of proportion to his crime. So this turns into a movie about the emotions
behind the socialization that it takes most ordinary people to marry and
raise families, and connect to their “little children” who are abundant in
this film. The people are fruitful and they multiply. The “prom king” is
handsome young lawyer Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), married to Kathy
(Jennifer Connelly) but he plays around with Sarah (Kate Winslet).
That gets explicit, close to NC-17 territory. A retired policeman (Noah Emmerich; Gregg Edelman is Richard) is leading the
picture crusade to keep Ronald pilloried, with ugly pictures and bullhorn
attacks, but the cop has a skeleton in his own closet—an accidental shooting
of an innocent juvenile. The guys have a touch football league that reminds
one of Invincible. The story builds in
little steps. One disturbing scene occurs early when Ron goes skinny dipping
in the town pool, and all of the townspeople scram because the “pervert is on
the loose.” They refer to him as scum or vermin, to be exterminated, or at
least castrated (the poor guy will take the knife on himself eventually). All
of this hostility and hatred comes out of the need to "protect"
their own progeny. You see the "monster" close up, haggard, aging,
but at least he isn’t going bald in the legs. But then we learn that Ron
lives with his mother (Phyllis Sommerville), who
has always overprotected him. She tries to get him to date a woman his own
age, and he isn’t attracted to her, he thinks, yet eventually his behavior on
the date does turn a bit inappropriate. There is a snide line that any man
who lives with his mother is suspect. That is my situation now, but it wasn’t
in the 90s, yet some coworkers thought that I lived with my mother when I
didn’t, because I had not created my own family. Mr. Field would have had to
exercise great caution in constructing this story, to keep the character
generic and general, or else risk accidental libel. Yet the reality of all of
this is even more subtle. Some of us are not very good at building our own
families, so if family responsibility or eldercare comes our way, we aren’t
good at it. If Mr. Field wants to explore that angle in another film, I can
certainly help him . The camera focuses a lot on
Wilson, his muscularity with hairy chest and legs; it's as if it is the male,
rather than the female, that really needs to be perfect in Field's world. The
film, from the opening train horn, tries to hypnotize the moviegoer into living
in this Stepford-wives
like wold, closed off (except for the
self-propelled commuter train cars) as if it were a closed universe, to
experiment with perfection, and the contempt for those who miss the mark.
We've seen that kind of thinking in history before, and we know where it can
lead. This film, though funded by a
major studio, is starting with a platform release in independent theaters
(like Landmark) to build an audience, due to its very sensitive subject
matter. The film is narrated
by the voice from PBS Frontline (Will Lyman).
Running with Scissors (2006, TriStar, dir. Ryan Murphy, book by Augusten Burroughs, 116 min, R, USA) also uses the
Doppler train horn in anticipation of critical intimate scenes, and I wonder
if Murphy and Field were familiar with each others’ films. The film is adapted from a memoir by the
protagonist, Augusten, played for most of the movie
by 20 year old A Matter of Taste (“Une affaire de
gout”, 2000, TLA/Pyramide, dir. Bernard Rapp, novel
by Transsiberian (2008, First Look International / Filmax, dir. Brad Anderson, 111 min, R, Spain/UK) A
couple takes the trans-continental train from Night Train (2009, National Entertainment/A-Mark, dir. Brian King). A
passenger dies with a mysterious object, and everyone else on the confined
train “changes.” Blogger
discussion. Revolutionary Road (2008, Dreamworks/Paramount Vantage,
dir. Sam Mendes). Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet square off again in the conformist 50’s. Compare to Reservation Road (2007, Focus, dir. Terry George) where a lawyer
accidentally kills a young musician and then is called upon to help the
victim’s family while hiding his secret.
Blogger. |
Related reviews: The Deep End Proof
A
Separate Peace Anything
Else Torn
Curtain; The 39 Steps; other Hitchcock films; The Talented Mr. Ripley |
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