September 25th & October 20th 2005
The Woodsman
Kassel, 2004
The Woodsman is one of those movies that has to do with such a touchy topic that it is bound to get some flak no matter how it tackles the subject matter. I heard in one of the interviews that the filmmaker or something was sent a dead rat (I think it was a rat) because they were involved with a film about a sex offender. However, being that The Woodsman deals with a child molester, it really handles the subject matter very well.
The main character, Walter, sexually assaulted two girls years ago, and when we are introduced to him he is being let out of prison. He is put in a small half way house (across the street from a school, ironically), and is given a low grade job. However, Walter is completely disconnected from everything. He is haunted by what he has done and is extremely anti social. He hates himself and he doesn't want anything to do with anyone anymore. He is a deeply troubled individual who hates himself.
The Woodsman actually manages to make us feel sorry for Walter however, despite what he has done. We don't think of him as a scary monster or an ogre, but rather a man utterly destroyed on the inside. I found myself sympathizing for him. However, at the same time the audience is repulsed by what he has done and what seems to still long to do, and in that respect it is like he also has a beast inside of him which the audience, myself included, hates. I almost felt like wanting to be his friend and try to help him, and yet at the same time wasn’t sure if I wanted to go near him. This sort of relationship with the character shows how well written the script is; Walter is very, very dynamic, and what The Woodsman does is allow us to understand.
To embody this carefully crafted character, Kevin Bacon gives what I think is his best performance of his career. He gave the character a real emptiness, yet allowed him to be three dimensional and dynamic. Bacon's performance was also exceptionally restrained and he holds back a lot of emotional cues on the outside, but is still able to convey emotion some other way. Really a brilliant performance, actually. I think he at least deserved an Oscar nomination.
Overall though, I found it to be a genuinely honest and heartfelt film in the end. Yes, it deals with a child molester, but it shows us that while what he did was monstrous, he was still a human being. Seeing everyone around him push him away, at work and with his family, and with the police was truthfully very sad. Just watching Walter’s character live in torture and torment as he tries to come to gripes with what he has done and what it has turned him into really translated perfectly from the screen to my emotional core. I’m not sure what everyone else thought about it, but it was a huge surprise for me as I wasn’t expecting much at all, but what I actually got was an excellent character study with simple direction, a very strong character, and a powerful performance to match it.
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Dracula
Coppola, 1992
I love vampire movies and stories. I can't get enough of the mystery and myth that goes with them. However, this is a strange stance to have towards the genre, as there are is an extremely small amount of good vampire films out there. In fact, the only one I can think of is Nosferatu. Other than that, there is a void where multiple classics should be, but aren’t. I guess I love the idea of what a vampire movie could be, but despise what they are. Bram Stoker's Dracula is no exception.
Coppola's jaunt into the underworld should have been good, as he is the director who created Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Trilogy and The Conversation. However, he crafted quite a dud in this case. In fact, it wasn't just mediocre - it was downright awful. Stupid, inane, dumb, and idiotic are just a few words I came up with when I was watching this.
What's worse is it isn't even technically well made, as I would have at least hoped for from Coppola. The general visual style of the movie is terrible, with ugly watermarked optics inserted into backgrounds and just as poor editing. I was hoping for more time spent on the actual ship with Count Dracula, as I love that part of the story in Nosferatu, but there were only a few poorly inserted shots of it. Further more, the pacing was completely off and it spends all the runtime in all the wrong places, with many grossly over long sections of purely stupid scenes. It was hard to look at it at times. Even the sets were poorly designed, which is disappointing as that means there is absolutely no visual eye candy.
The performances are at least hit or miss. Gary Oldman was pleasing as Dracula, even though his constantly changing costume and make up was terrible. I also was pleased with Winona Ryder and Anthony Hopkins. On the other hand, Keanu Reeves and the girl who plays the woman who eventually becomes a vampire are just laughably bad; seriously, I was laughing at them. How does Reeves get new work all the time?
I guess what I’m trying to articulate is this movie was dreadfully bad, and there was nary a moment, save for a couple scenes with Hopkins, that I actually enjoyed or was impressed with. It takes the classic story of Count Dracula and scribbles all over it with a crayon, like a child would on a wall, and then it douses itself in gasoline and burns itself into an unmemorable movie hell. They really dropped the ball on this project.
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