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Odd that Atom Egoyan and Paul Schrader, two
distinctive and fairly marginalized directors, would be attracted
to the material of Russell Banks, popular rancoteur of rural
despair and a writer whose heartstring tugs aren't known for
their gentleness, for their latest films ("Sweet
Hereafter" and "Affliction", respectively). What's
not surprising is that both have managed to improve upon their
source novels, to varying degrees of success. "Sweet
Hereafter" was certainly a highly admirable film, but it's
straightforward narrative made it Egoyan's most strangely
unsatisfying film to date. Meanwhile, "Affliction" is
Schrader's most assured and confident work in some time, and is
his most expertly streamlined and quietly powerful work as a
director so far. Wade Whitehouse is the appointed police chief of
a small New Hampshire town, the kind of place where the
appearance of a computer at city hall or a neon sign in a local
diner can elicit both wonder and anger, who carries some rather
glaring personal and domestic baggage of his own. When a union
leader is killed in a hunting accident on a real-estate
developer's property, Wade suspects foul play and embarks on a
misguided investigation that threatens not only the fabric of the
town, but culminates in Wade's excruciating collapse. But this is
only a murder mystery in the most superficial sense (the 'case'
is never even definitively 'solved'). The picture hones in on
Wade's psychology and failures with a clinical scrutiny (Nick
Nolte's thorough examination of the character is similarly
determined and approaches, quite frankly, the heroic), but it's
essentially the story of Rolfe, Wade's brother (played by Willem
Dafoe in his standard 'resigned martyr' mode), who narrates the
film and presents Wade's situation as a method for confronting
his own demons. Rolfe has dissasociated himself from his family
attempting to escape the physical and mental abuse delivered by
their father (James Coburn, who's always struck me as more than a
little creepy and doesn't, um, disappoint here). But, as Rolfe
points out in his final monologue, the human products of violence
are all too prevalent...Rolfe can manage, because for him home is
everywhere. Wade, however, remains trapped, and when his mother
dies and his father comes to live with him, his defenses
(inflated self-importance, denial, alcohol, passive agressivenes)
are no match for the decades of abuse-related trauma, and his
desperate attempts at redemption reach tragic proportions. Tough
stuff that covers a lot of emotional ground, and if it weren't
for Nolte and Coburn's Oscar nods, it's not a picture that would
find much of an audience (in fact, it was completed in 1997 and
has been sitting on distributors' shelves since then). Which is
really too bad; it's one of the most sober-minded, elegant and
quietly powerful American pictures to come down the pike in some
time, at times achieving a hushed reverence that plays like
Tarkovsky with a New England twang (indeed, the film's central
image is cribbed directly from Tarkovsky's
"Sacrifice"). Where "Sweet Hereafter"'s
elegiac tone was expressed through blank, wide-screen expanses,
Schrader's claustrophobic box-shaped compositions are in a a
constant state of contraction, and the actors' choreography
deftly expresses their respective psychological states and
relations to each other (watching Nolte, Coburn and Sissy Spacek
- who gives her role as Wade's hesitant girlfriend more than it
asks for - circumnavigate a cramped kitchen has more tension and
dread than a thousand action pictures). It's not without a few
false notes...there's some pretty hamfisted symbolism (Nolte's
existential toothache and his Christ-on-the-Cross pose while
performing crossing guard duty stand out), the mystery elements
are only marginally interesting, and some of Dafoe's voice-overs
lean towards the unnecessarily preachy (Dafoe himself at times
seems reluctantly inserted, if not from another planet or
picture, at least from another actors' workshop), and I'm not
sure whether Schrader or Banks are to blame. Still, though, it
would have been all too easy for Schrader to make an easy,
simple-minded "Afterschool Special" polemic on the
evils of domestic violence (what's onscreen here is actually
quite minimal, but filmed as it is from a child's-eye view on
grainy 8mm stock like some nightmare home-movie, is legitimately
terrifying), or to present Wade's undoing with less contemplation
and more viscera. As it is, it's a far more challenging,
intelligent and haunting piece of work than that, and it quietly,
inexorably earns its respect. Highly recommended.
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