But, in a way, it is sort of all those things.
Really, I don't know the last time I was this
baffled by how to define a movie. Let's start with the basics. It's director
Lenny Abrahamson's follow up to the Oscar-winning Room.
It stars Domhnall Gleeson as a doctor in town in England sometime in the 1940s.
He gets a house call to a once opulent estate outside of town that has fallen on
hard times. The Ayres family who lives there have a somewhat cursed existence.
The eldest brother and de facto head of the estate, Roderick (Will Poulter),
suffered a bad injury when he was in the army and is on the edge of a psychotic
break, believing there's something malevolent in the house. The widowed
matriarch played by Charlotte Rampling is still haunted by the death of her
first daughter many years ago. Her living daughter, Caroline (Ruth Wilson) has
been worn down and become cynical by life. Their troubled finances don't help
matters. Dr. Faraday (Gleeson) has a fascination - an infatuation, really -
with the Ayers house. He remembers visiting there as a young child for a town
celebration, which had a profound effect on him. After that initial house call,
Faraday continues to find excuses to return to the house and see Caroline. The whole
time, strange things keep happening around the house. Not consistently strange
things though. And Faraday is hesitant to call
them supernatural.
As I said though, it's easier to say what the movie
isn't. It isn't about Faraday investigating the mysterious happenings in the
house. It isn't about a boogeyman terrorizing this family. It's not about some
decades-old puzzle finally making sense when this doctor becomes part of their
lives. The movie isn't anything, and I think that's by design.
The Little Stranger is a slow burn movie that never reaches a boil. What
Abrahamson (and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon) makes is a movie that punishes you
for ever thinking you know what it is. It's a tease, essentially. As soon as
the movie starts to become an identifiable type of movie, it pulls back from
that. It wants you to suspect something, but it isn't going to confirm it. It's
a frustrating movie in the wrong way.
It's telling that this movie is getting burned off
on the same weekend that Tulip Fever
was last year. Both are high caliber duds. I don't know if the audience for
this movie even exists. It's not scary enough for a horror movie. It lacks the
flashy production and costume design to appeal to period drama fans. It's too
busy with misdirects to be an incisive character study. It isn't clever enough
for art house fans. I think that Abrahamson made the movie he intended to, but
it feels more like an experiment in restraint that a film.
I saw this because I see anything with Domhnall
Gleeson. He's well-suited to play a tightly-wound, repressed British doctor.
Faraday is kind of like if he played General Hux but he wasn't allowed to be
angry. I had trouble with Gleeson's narration throughout the film. I was never
sure where it was coming from. It's just there because there's no other way to
figure out what Faraday is thinking. The problem is, we don't get everything
he's thinking; just what he wants us to know. So, his narration is a
performance. That's fine, but who is he performing to? Is this a journal? Is he
trying to defend his actions? He doesn't directly address the audience. The
tone isn't conversational. I know most narration doesn't have an explanation,
but it is at least clear what the point of it is. Take About Time,
for instance. It isn't clear who Gleeson's Tim is telling the story too in that
movie, but it's clear why. He wants to impart knowledge. It's straightforward
narration with a touch of wisdom. The Little Stranger's narration is
cagey and pulled back. A personal issue I had too was that I'm so used to
Gleeson's narration in About Time, that it felt wrong for him to be
narrating a movie with such a different tone. That's more my fault than the
movie's though.
Ruth Wilson has my favorite performance in the movie.
She's tired for most of the runtime. It's not a whiny tired or a dramatic
tired. She just doesn't give a shit about anything and doesn't realize there's
another way to go about life. She just lets it all weigh on her. Will Poulter
is so buried under makeup and affectations, that it's hard to find anything
real in what he does. He's fine. He's just too busy with the external
components to bring anything internal to his performance. Charlotte Rampling is
a bit wasted. She's the only one playing things like it's a horror movie. In
fact, that might be what's going on with all the actors. They are all
approaching their roles like they belong in different kinds of movies.
I can't call The Little Stranger bad. It's
well made on a technical level. It kept me curious where it was going the whole
time. Gleeson and Wilson play off each other with an uncomfortable chumminess
that isn't like relationships I see in other movies. If I really sat down and
reflected on what the movie was about, I could pull out some good stuff.
However, it is bafflingly hard to define. The performances don't line up. The
narration lacks a discernible angle. And the whole thing is more intentional
than interesting.
(A section with spoilers)
OK, I have to talk about what the movie ultimately
amounts to. Faraday is obsessive about getting the house. Right? That's what
it all is. Between his mother working there before he was born and his one
childhood experience there, the house became a symbol for everything he hoped
to achieve in life. If he could have that house, that's how he'd know he'd made
it. The only other thing I'm pretty sure I know is that he pushes Caroline to
her death at the end. And even that isn't clear.
Everything else is strategically not confirmed. My
read of the movie is that Faraday works in that town for reasons unrelated to
the Ayers estate. He takes the opportunity to make that house call which
reawakens his childhood memories of the house. He feels a pull to the house and
is happy to find more reasons to visit. He is interested in Caroline, but he
isn't sure how much of it is her and how much of it is because being with her
puts him one step closer to living in the house. What happens with Roderick is
not Faraday's doing, but he does use Roderick's mental issues as a way to get
him out of the way. Mrs. Ayers madness has nothing to do with Faraday either,
but he does arrange a situation where she's likely to kill herself. At that
point, he's still lying to himself about how obsessed he is with the house.
He's displaced that with his desire to marry Caroline. It's only after she
calls off the wedding that he's aware that the house has been the appeal the
whole time. Even still, I'm not sure how aware he is that he killed her. I
don't know how aware he is of his motives at any point. I assume the very end
indicates that he was able to buy the run down estate with no one living there
and in a decrepit enough state that he could afford it. Mission accomplished.
The movie withholds so much information though, that I could be very wrong. Faraday could've be the cause of all the problems. He could've killed Mrs. Ayers. His treatment for Roderick's leg could've driven him insane. I can't explain the dog attack though. And what's with all the 'S' scribbles? Was it actually mice ringing all the bells? If this was really a movie about an obsessive man taking advantage of opportunities, I wish the movie would've been more upfront about it. The supernatural element is such a massive and unclarified misdirect that it just annoyed me. It's Abrahamson playing games with the audience more than entertaining the audience.
As I said, I don't think there's an audience for the movie. That's a
bit of a shame, because there are some people I would love to see break this
movie down and examine it. The problem
is, they won't see the movie or won't give it that initial level of examination
needed to motivate further investigation. The Little Stranger is a
failure first and interesting second. It's sort of how I feel about Dorm Daze. That's a
movie worth examination for the crazy things it tries, but it's a bad movie.
It's hard to argue that something that's bad* is worth deeper consideration. The
Little Stranger is certainly a better movie than Dorm Daze, but it's
likely to be just as forgotten.
*And I mean bad. Not misunderstood. Not ahead or
behind the times. I mean not good.
No comments:
Post a Comment