AFFLICTION
** 1/2 (out of 4) - an enjoyable movie
Release Date: February 19, 1999 Starring: Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, Willem Dafoe, Holmes Osborne, Jim True Directed by: Paul Schrader Distributed by: Lions Gate Films MPAA Rating: R (violence, language) URL: http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio/reviews/1999/affliction.htm
It has been said that men achieve a piece of immortality through their children. Fathers and sons in particular are a uniquely bound pair, having a historical precedent of patriarchal family living. Some sons aspire to be the great men their fathers were, while others live under the shadow of their father's legacy. In the case of Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte), his father's legacy was one of drunken abandon, a legacy which now frightens him in a very personal manner in Paul Schrader's character drama AFFLICTION.
Wade, a character essayed in fine form by the accomplished Nolte, is a man who's being sucked into a black hole of desperate living. His wife (Mary Beth Hurt) left him, and due to his reckless lifestyle, has taken their daughter (Brigid Tierney) with only minimal visitation rights. His life is plagued by a multitude of minor problems which snowball into a giant, aggrivating circumstance: his car's transmission is bad, he has a toothache, he can barely afford to pay his lawyer, and he's frightened to death of becoming the man his father is.
His father (James Coburn), as we learn, beat him and his brother Rolfe (Willem Dafoe) as children; the old man lives on now in a drunken stupor of harmlessness. Yet the tensions between Wade and his father are now greater than ever, due to a lifetime of silent confrontation. Nolte and Coburn really accentuate this relationship, and through excellent casting the father-son bond is truly authentic. Nolte, in particular, offsets some of the horrible risks this film takes by wearing the character of Wade like a second skin.
Some of the risks that AFFLICTION takes pay off, and some do not. For instance, center-wrapping the movie around the character of Wade pays off because of Nolte's excellent work. Deviating from the conventional plot structure and allowing Wade to simply hit bottom does not work. Using a particular deer hunting accident to emphasize Wade's crooked mind does work; attempting to turn the accident into a mystery and then dropping it does not work. Also, the script suffers when it discards the characters of Rolfe and Margie (Wade's love interest, played by Sissy Spacek), for they are the stabilizers of Wade's life and the audience's only sympathetic characters.
In all, AFFLICTION is a dark and scary character study of the common man. It has a very realist point of view, evident because the chain of events is very plausible. And the atmosphere bears no hint of lightness. This is a different kind of movie for a different kind of crowd.
all contents © 1999 Craig Roush
-- Craig Roush kinnopio@execpc.com -- Kinnopio's Movie Reviews http://www.execpc.com/~kinnopio
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews