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| Dollface |
Big, gloopy spoilers splattered all through this.
Given that I'd got my grubby little paws on Jim Thompson's novel 'The Killer Inside Me' in my adolescence and had devoured every gritty detail, it seemed only fair that I give Michael Winterbottom's recent adaptation a viewing. It's done the festival circuit, and has been peppered with hand-wringing and anxiety and general hysteria at its portrayal of violence towards women. The usual suspects have jumped into the cinema aisles and more or less screeched "think of the children!" (come forward, Dr Linda and the Daily Mail), and one particularly irate audience member rose to her feet at a festival screening and implored "how dare you? How dare Sundance?"
So, as you can imagine, despite the sack of salt I took to the screening I was half-expecting something gratuitous, something exploitative. More on that later...
The film tells the tale of smalltown sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), the embodiment of Southern hospitality and "yes ma'am" manners, tipping his Stetson to every woman he walks past. One character notes that he's "a boy scout with a badge", and it's easy to believe. Unassuming, mild-mannered, perhaps a little simple but well-respected and engaged to town good-girl Amy (Kate Hudson).
However, a chance encounter with Joyce (Jessica Alba), a prostitute who he's been ordered to run out of town, triggers long-suppressed emotions and drives that Lou has managed to keep hidden for some time. Joyce's violent and sudden reaction to Lou's request for her to leave stirs a sexual sadism within him, but Lou is shocked to find something of a foil in Joyce who responds enthusiastically to his beatings. They embark on a brutal, passionate affair that momentarily provides Lou with an outlet for his desires. Joyce loves him and whispers suggestions of running away together, scamming local rich-man's-son Elmer Conway who happens to be besotted with her.
So far so good, but it's short-lived. The involvement of town elders and insidious union representatives muddy the waters and disrupt Lou and Joyce's arrangement, and he finds himself seeing no other alternative than to start killing those around him.
This is where the controversy has come from. The scene that has caused the most upset is where Lou brutally beats Joyce to death by pummelling her repeatedly in the face (Winterbottom's adaptation is fiercely loyal, and there's no disputing that he kept to Thompson's "like pounding a pumpkin" imagery). It's unflinching, bloody, and we see full shots of Joyce's battered and bloodied face as she struggles to breathe through her injuries. It's unsettling viewing, and desperately sad.
Lou also kills Amy, although the scene is far less graphic than Joyce's murder. Even so, the shot of Lou casually moving his foot away as Amy's quivering hand reaches for it after he's floored her is quite possibly more chilling than any bloody close-up.
And so the moral panic begins. Winterbottom has been accused of being misogynistic at best; a psychopath at worst. And herein lies my issue.
I didn't sit in the cinema and casually observe a young woman being beaten to death without so much as batting an eyelid. It was upsetting, and very graphic. However, I can't say that I felt offended. I felt that the violence was essential to the story, outlining Lou's complex character further and firmly driving home his complex relationship with women. Thompson's novel is disturbing and relentless, why should Winterbottom shy away from this?
The violence was not there to entertain or titillate. While it has brought a lot of attention to the film (and I don't doubt that people will see it out of curiosity, or perhaps for the more base reason of seeing Jessica Alba partially-clothed), I never once got the impression that that was the reason for its existence.
Violence sells tickets. We're constantly sold blood-drenched horror films with the premise of some nubile blonde sort being stalked and terrorised by your fairly typical knife-wielding maniac. We're offered the prospect of pretty girls being tortured by people paying for the pleasure in 'Hostel 2'. Muscle-bound action heroes drenched in sweat and testosterone shoot endless rounds of bullets into civilians and foreign villains alike, and cinemagoers lap it up. But no-one complains about that, do they?
David Cronenberg, upon the release of 'Crash', stated that the crashes themselves were not eroticised. They were quick and awkward, much like real crashes. No slow-motion rollovers, no fireballs and eye-watering stunts. And while the film dealt with the fetishists who take pleasure in the crashes themselves, critics seemed blissfully and hysterically unaware of more mainstream films constantly eroticising similar scenarios, providing audiences with glass-studded faces and bloodied victims.
Winterbottom seems to have received similar treatment, which is unfair. I enjoyed the film immensely, finding it to be a sensitive, faithful adaptation of what is a difficult book. It portrays apple-pie America beautifully, and the cast provide career-best performances (Affleck is spine-chilling with his dangerous babyfaced charm, Alba is cunning and seductively sweet and a to-die-for supporting cast including Elias Koteas and Ned Beatty offer solid, delightful backup). It's incredibly pulpy, atmospheric and wipes the floor with the noir genre.
Whilst previous noir efforts historically fetishise aspects of male/female relationships (the femme fatale, the strong silent types, smoky backrooms, schemers and chancers), Winterbottom strips 'The Killer Inside Me' clean and offers us what feels like genuine noir - dark, uncompromising and frighteningly accessible. It's as if he's grabbed the audience's hair by the roots, forced them to take a good, hard look at human nature and stated that if we REALLY wanted noir, we should be careful what we wish for. Thompson's world is hard-boiled, and Winterbottom never forgets this.
So. While I get a horrible feeling that the hype (if you can call it that) may sully the experience for some, I'd wholeheartedly recommend the film. As aforementioned, it doesn't make for comfortable viewing. But it's hard, and unforgiving, and incredibly brave; the cinematic equivalent of lifting up a brick and looking at the squirming mass of worms underneath.
Edited Sun 6 Jun 10, 11:58 AM by Dollface
| 6 Jun 10, 4:21 PM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs  |
The controversy is part of the industry though. The puritans rage, and their readers read about it, the libertines scoff and go to watch the film to spite them. The movie makers get paid, the puritan ragemongers get paid, everybody is happy. They need each other. If people made films like this and nobody raged then nobody would be interested in watching them, and if the likes of the Daily Mail found themselves in a world with nothing to rage about they'd lose their audience too. One hand washes the other, while all the time accusing the other of being the dirtier. Science isn't about why, it's about why not. You ask: Why is so much of our science dangerous? I say: Why not marry safe science if you love it so much. | |||||||||||
| 7 Jun 10, 2:33 PM Marvell UK, 4 yrs |
Where is Lou when you need him
I get the impression that this, combined with the casting of America's sweetheart Ms Alba, is Winterbottom's money shot. More to do with commerce than art in my view.
Film makers avert the gaze of the camera not to spare the audience the more graphic details, but usually to get their imagination going (though sometimes it can be due to a lack of budget for special effects etc - making a head realistically look like a smashed pumpkin is an expensive business - you do not waste that on a Kate Hudson!).
I do not see a moral issue here though, just one of film making and technical skill.
A psychopath ? Who has accused him of this ? I must admit I did not pick that up in the reviews I have read. Do you have a link ?
The story is there to entertain. Some will find it titillating. The violence is an element of the story.
The book contains violence, the film contains violence. Violent fiction does not create the outrage it used to, but film, due to the passive method of delivery, tends to.
Well they do complain a bit. Fantastical violence tends to be less complained about than the depiction of the sort of violence that is happening right as we type. Fantastical violence reassures us that only monsters/bogeymen do really terrible things; depictions of every day violence seem to gnaw away at us, disturbing us, reminding us that the terrible people are sitting next to you on trains, living next door, driving up and down the streets of Whitehaven.
This no doubt was expected and forms part of the PR/Marketing drive. Film noir has a certain market place, film noir + scandal has significantly more (think of the DVD sales also).
I shall have to dust down and re read my copy of the book double quick ! Then a little trip down to the local flea pit is in order "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." | |||||||||||
| 7 Jun 10, 4:26 PM Dollface UK, 6 yrs  |
Fucking hell you two, that's the last time I write a blog with more substance than usual, you've made my brain explode. I'll just stick to smut peddlin'. "When you're going through hell, keep going." |
