THE DUKE WATCHES
THE WOODSMAN
THE WOODSMAN
What a damn fine time this is for the cinema, is what. What a
brilliant, daring, inventive period we’re finding ourselves in
the middle of. The flicks that are getting folks talking, getting
folks saying shit like “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that right
there” ain’t stuff about a man blows some things up and then runs
away and then some terrorists chase him so he has to go back and
shoot them and then find his daughter, maybe. The things that
folks are remembering are the flicks that challenge them, that
make them think for a damn moment.
Now I ain’t saying there’s a thing in the world wrong with, say,
Commando, or Lock Up or Hard Target. Chances are, though, they
don’t inspire a lotta debate, except maybe if you wanted to talk
about the way that the opening shots in Commando are as
homoerotic as anything ever flung into the old Queer Cinema
bucket.
Look at the lists scattered across the web-net concerning The
Best Flicks Of 2004. Hell, look at The Duke’s why don’t you? Look
at those titles, man. Fahrenheit 9/11, Eternal Sunshine Of The
Spotless Mind, The Incredibles, 21 Grams, The Passion Of The
Christ. Diverse, challenging, thought-provoking flicks that sit
alongside the best of the blockbusters (Spider-Man 2, I’m looking
at you, is what, although, to be honest, I’m paying most
attention to the red-headed minx to your left) as things that
everybody wants to be yacking about. Not just the filmic-
criticism fraternity, or the intellectual cognoscenti, but
everyone. They’ll go see Hellboy smash some squid-beasts the fuck
up, then they’ll go learn about Al Jazeera or some shit.
Anyhow, point is that as the audiences are becoming more
inquisitive, more adventurous, so too are the features. A film
like The Woodsman would have been pretty-much unthinkable five
years ago. Now, here it is, sitting alongside all those other
character-driven gems like The Machinist and Anchorman – The
Legend Of Ron Burgundy, another flick to be debated in pubs and
crack-dens and wherever else you folks hang out of an evening.
What The Woodsman also goes ahead and illustrates, is that taboos
are being broken left and right nowadays, but it only hits a
fella in the guts when it’s done for a reason other than the
pursuit of cheap shocks.
Like that brilliant, masterful Brass Eye episode that everyone
was so annoyed about a couple years ago, The Woodsman deals with
the subject of paedophilia. Whilst Brass Eye used razor-sharp
satire to force us to question the media’s portrayal of it all
(“This man has dressed up as a school to lure children” and so
on), The Woodsman utilises something perhaps even more radical,
i.e., the motherfucking humanity.
What it concerns itself with, is that Kevin Bacon stars as
Walter, a convicted paedophile who’s just been released from
prison, trying to find his way in society once more, whilst
attempting to contact family members, specifically his sister,
who have long since washed their collective hands of him.
Through time he develops a romantic relationship with workmate
Vickie, a woman who recognizes that Walter is housing some
particularly dark secrets, but has no idea just how dark. The
scene where Walter confesses to her, staring out the window onto
a play-park across the road, is particularly harrowing. “I
molested little girls” he says, tumbling over the words in a bid
to get them out his throat as quickly as possible.
Even more harrowing, though, are the visits from Mos Def’s Sgt.
Lucas, a brilliant, searing performance from a fella last seen
prancing around in The Italian Job. The scenes become even more
uncomfortable when one tries to decipher just who the hell we
should be feeling sympathetic towards. We’re forced to view
Walter as a human being, a man who lacked the strength for to
face down his demons, but at the same time, it’s hard not to feel
that Lucas is justified in his disgust. His occasional meetings
with Walter are dripping with tension, as he muses on the fact
that, really, no one would care if he flung Walter the hell outta
the window. Just one more piece a shit, he shrugs. “I don’t know
why they keep letting freaks like you out on the streets” he says
later. “Just means we gotta catch you all over again.”
It’s one of these meetings that gives the film its title, too.
Lucas tells of an instance when he was confronted with the body
of a sodomised child. “Broken”, he says, before pondering the age-
old tale of Little Red Riding Hood, how a woodsman appeared in
time to cut her, unscathed, from the wolf’s stomach. “Ain’t no
fuckin’ woodsman in this world”, he spits.
Fairy-tale elements embellish the proceedings in other areas,
too. When Walter befriends a 12-year-old girl, in some of the
film’s most heart-wrenching scenes, she notes that his being away
for so long sounds like he “were banished”.
Other than fairy-tales, there’s a fair old touch of Nic Roeg’s
Don’t Look Now about it all. That there was another flick about
how the harm of a young girl haunts the protagonist, and the
first sexing sequence in The Woodsman is a virtual shot-for-shot
remake of the classic during-and-after sequence in Roeg’s film.
Unlike fairy-tales, though, The Woodsman has no truck with happy
ever after. There’s a hint of a life that may well be obtainable
for Walter, but director and co-writer Nicole Kassell never
cements the notion. It’s possible, but it's just as possible that
Walter will re-offend, and that he’ll be flung in prison for the
rest of his life whilst his victim, or victims, endure years of
therapy to even partially undo the damage he has inflicted.
The question he wants answered, the thing that keeps him going
when he wants to fling himself in front of a train, is the notion
that one day he’ll be fixed. “When will I be normal?” he asks the
prison therapist. It’s a question the therapist can’t answer, and
Kassell never even attempts.
The Woodsman raises these issues, and humanises the type of
individual so often scrawled on a screenplay as a half-arsed,
lazy personification of some diabolical evil or other, but it’s
entirely commendable, and for a first time director, an
incredible achievement. This ain’t like in Todd Slondz Happiness,
when the paedophile character was just one more “shocking”
element in a flick that said nothing more than you would find on
one of those Slipknot t-shirts about “People Are Shit” and so on.
The only scene that even threatens to tilt in that direction
involves Walter observing another paedophile enticing a young boy
into a car. As the event plays out, we hear Walter’s commentary,
like as if it were a football game. As the reviewer in Sight And
Sound pointed out, though, this is just one more attempt by
Walter to disassociate himself not just from the events going on
across the street, but also from the crimes he too has committed.
A fella just can’t heap enough praise on the performances in this
damn thing. Kevin Bacon is superb, the three-dimensional
equivalent of the predatory demon he played in Barry Levinson’s
Sleepers. Kyra Sedgwick is just as fantastic as Vickie. Mos Def
is a motherfucking revelation, is what. And, in perhaps the most
challenging role, Hannah Pilkes as Robin, the child who befriends
Walter for a time, is utterly brilliant, easily the best child
performance since that flick about Haley Joel Osment sees Bruce
Willis.
The Woodsman is unflinching, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable
viewing a lot of the time, but for every scene when a fella has
to force himself to look, it rewards you with something truly
beautiful. Controversial is what it is, but this is far from
empty attention-grabbing. This is utterly astounding, is what it
is, and not something a fella is likely to forget in a hurry.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
brilliant, daring, inventive period we’re finding ourselves in
the middle of. The flicks that are getting folks talking, getting
folks saying shit like “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that right
there” ain’t stuff about a man blows some things up and then runs
away and then some terrorists chase him so he has to go back and
shoot them and then find his daughter, maybe. The things that
folks are remembering are the flicks that challenge them, that
make them think for a damn moment.
Now I ain’t saying there’s a thing in the world wrong with, say,
Commando, or Lock Up or Hard Target. Chances are, though, they
don’t inspire a lotta debate, except maybe if you wanted to talk
about the way that the opening shots in Commando are as
homoerotic as anything ever flung into the old Queer Cinema
bucket.
Look at the lists scattered across the web-net concerning The
Best Flicks Of 2004. Hell, look at The Duke’s why don’t you? Look
at those titles, man. Fahrenheit 9/11, Eternal Sunshine Of The
Spotless Mind, The Incredibles, 21 Grams, The Passion Of The
Christ. Diverse, challenging, thought-provoking flicks that sit
alongside the best of the blockbusters (Spider-Man 2, I’m looking
at you, is what, although, to be honest, I’m paying most
attention to the red-headed minx to your left) as things that
everybody wants to be yacking about. Not just the filmic-
criticism fraternity, or the intellectual cognoscenti, but
everyone. They’ll go see Hellboy smash some squid-beasts the fuck
up, then they’ll go learn about Al Jazeera or some shit.
Anyhow, point is that as the audiences are becoming more
inquisitive, more adventurous, so too are the features. A film
like The Woodsman would have been pretty-much unthinkable five
years ago. Now, here it is, sitting alongside all those other
character-driven gems like The Machinist and Anchorman – The
Legend Of Ron Burgundy, another flick to be debated in pubs and
crack-dens and wherever else you folks hang out of an evening.
What The Woodsman also goes ahead and illustrates, is that taboos
are being broken left and right nowadays, but it only hits a
fella in the guts when it’s done for a reason other than the
pursuit of cheap shocks.
Like that brilliant, masterful Brass Eye episode that everyone
was so annoyed about a couple years ago, The Woodsman deals with
the subject of paedophilia. Whilst Brass Eye used razor-sharp
satire to force us to question the media’s portrayal of it all
(“This man has dressed up as a school to lure children” and so
on), The Woodsman utilises something perhaps even more radical,
i.e., the motherfucking humanity.
What it concerns itself with, is that Kevin Bacon stars as
Walter, a convicted paedophile who’s just been released from
prison, trying to find his way in society once more, whilst
attempting to contact family members, specifically his sister,
who have long since washed their collective hands of him.
Through time he develops a romantic relationship with workmate
Vickie, a woman who recognizes that Walter is housing some
particularly dark secrets, but has no idea just how dark. The
scene where Walter confesses to her, staring out the window onto
a play-park across the road, is particularly harrowing. “I
molested little girls” he says, tumbling over the words in a bid
to get them out his throat as quickly as possible.
Even more harrowing, though, are the visits from Mos Def’s Sgt.
Lucas, a brilliant, searing performance from a fella last seen
prancing around in The Italian Job. The scenes become even more
uncomfortable when one tries to decipher just who the hell we
should be feeling sympathetic towards. We’re forced to view
Walter as a human being, a man who lacked the strength for to
face down his demons, but at the same time, it’s hard not to feel
that Lucas is justified in his disgust. His occasional meetings
with Walter are dripping with tension, as he muses on the fact
that, really, no one would care if he flung Walter the hell outta
the window. Just one more piece a shit, he shrugs. “I don’t know
why they keep letting freaks like you out on the streets” he says
later. “Just means we gotta catch you all over again.”
It’s one of these meetings that gives the film its title, too.
Lucas tells of an instance when he was confronted with the body
of a sodomised child. “Broken”, he says, before pondering the age-
old tale of Little Red Riding Hood, how a woodsman appeared in
time to cut her, unscathed, from the wolf’s stomach. “Ain’t no
fuckin’ woodsman in this world”, he spits.
Fairy-tale elements embellish the proceedings in other areas,
too. When Walter befriends a 12-year-old girl, in some of the
film’s most heart-wrenching scenes, she notes that his being away
for so long sounds like he “were banished”.
Other than fairy-tales, there’s a fair old touch of Nic Roeg’s
Don’t Look Now about it all. That there was another flick about
how the harm of a young girl haunts the protagonist, and the
first sexing sequence in The Woodsman is a virtual shot-for-shot
remake of the classic during-and-after sequence in Roeg’s film.
Unlike fairy-tales, though, The Woodsman has no truck with happy
ever after. There’s a hint of a life that may well be obtainable
for Walter, but director and co-writer Nicole Kassell never
cements the notion. It’s possible, but it's just as possible that
Walter will re-offend, and that he’ll be flung in prison for the
rest of his life whilst his victim, or victims, endure years of
therapy to even partially undo the damage he has inflicted.
The question he wants answered, the thing that keeps him going
when he wants to fling himself in front of a train, is the notion
that one day he’ll be fixed. “When will I be normal?” he asks the
prison therapist. It’s a question the therapist can’t answer, and
Kassell never even attempts.
The Woodsman raises these issues, and humanises the type of
individual so often scrawled on a screenplay as a half-arsed,
lazy personification of some diabolical evil or other, but it’s
entirely commendable, and for a first time director, an
incredible achievement. This ain’t like in Todd Slondz Happiness,
when the paedophile character was just one more “shocking”
element in a flick that said nothing more than you would find on
one of those Slipknot t-shirts about “People Are Shit” and so on.
The only scene that even threatens to tilt in that direction
involves Walter observing another paedophile enticing a young boy
into a car. As the event plays out, we hear Walter’s commentary,
like as if it were a football game. As the reviewer in Sight And
Sound pointed out, though, this is just one more attempt by
Walter to disassociate himself not just from the events going on
across the street, but also from the crimes he too has committed.
A fella just can’t heap enough praise on the performances in this
damn thing. Kevin Bacon is superb, the three-dimensional
equivalent of the predatory demon he played in Barry Levinson’s
Sleepers. Kyra Sedgwick is just as fantastic as Vickie. Mos Def
is a motherfucking revelation, is what. And, in perhaps the most
challenging role, Hannah Pilkes as Robin, the child who befriends
Walter for a time, is utterly brilliant, easily the best child
performance since that flick about Haley Joel Osment sees Bruce
Willis.
The Woodsman is unflinching, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable
viewing a lot of the time, but for every scene when a fella has
to force himself to look, it rewards you with something truly
beautiful. Controversial is what it is, but this is far from
empty attention-grabbing. This is utterly astounding, is what it
is, and not something a fella is likely to forget in a hurry.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
