DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: This is a film full of questions
about justice, tyranny, and the nature of truth.
Ironically much of what is necessary to make it
work will also be a turnoff to many viewers, but
the film boasts two riveting performances. Rating:
high +2 (-4 to 4) [The premise of the film is not
made clear until some time into the film. I will
reveal no more than is necessary to describe the
film, but to that extent there will be a spoiler.]
Fifteen years ago, in an unnamed South American country, Paulina Escobar (played by Sigourney Weaver) survived arrest, interrogation, and inhuman torture at the hands of her country's former fascist dictatorship. But her body and her mind remain horribly scarred and her life is a waking nightmare. Now she lives for the justice that she hopes to get by the efforts of her husband, a leftist lawyer just named to the President's commission on human rights.
Fifteen years after her ordeal she still lives in fear and hatred for the doctor whom she never saw but who tortured and raped her repeatedly. Her husband Geraldo Escobar (Stuart Wilson) is brought home one night by a man who gave him road assistance. Pauline hears his voice and is convinced he is the man who has haunted her nightmares. When given the chance she traps Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley) in the house, ties him to a chair, and holds a sort of impromptu trial to determine if she should kill him or not. Geraldo as the moderating force must take the role of defense attorney but cannot fight too fiercely for Miranda for fear of himself becoming the victim of Paulina's rage.
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, a play by Ariel Dorfman adapted to the screen by Rafael Yglesias and Dorfman, is one of those simple and enigmatic stories that you can take at face value or in which you can see a multitude of meanings and issues raised. Among the issues one might see in this film are: Can people avoid letting the magnitude ofa crime affect their impartiality in the decision of guilt or innocence? Where is the line between avenging past wrongs under tyranny and becoming another tyranny? What is the nature of evidence and how much circumstantial evidence constitutes a convincing demonstration of guilt? Do we have a natural bias to believe one sex over the other and if so, which way?
Roman Polanski has been criticized for setting this film in a South American country, yet not giving appropriate accents to the characters. This is an unfair criticism of this film. In fact, if he were going for total realism he should have had the film spoken in Spanish and used subtitles. However, even accents would remind the viewer that the film is set in another country. Polanski may well have wanted to avoid the distancing effect that accents would give him. Where he does leave himself open to criticism is ironically in the makeup. His film has been accused of using gratuitous nudity. In fact the scenes are intended to show us the scars of Paulina's torture. But this is before the plot lets us know she has been tortured and, at least in the print I saw, the scars were not obvious and could have been missed by a viewer not expecting to see them. The screenplay's descriptions of torture are at once too muted to be realistic, but sufficiently graphic to bother some audiences.
Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley both give tight, riveting performances. Weaver gives the erratic feel of a wounded and irrational animal. One is never sure what she will do. Kingsley gives a tightly-wound performance of controlled desperation. Stuart Wilson's performance is less memorable but entirely convincing.
As with PULP FICTION, one hesitates to recommend this film to anyone sensitive to violence in movies. But DEATH AND THE MAIDEN is powerful, intelligent, and suspenseful for those willing to try it. I rate it a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
.
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