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The Pledge
According to the film trades, director Sean Penn fought bitterly for months with Warner Brothers about how to release The Pledge.
Penn had warned that this wasn't a mainstream Hollywood movie, aimed at megaplex crowds accustomed to such movie verities as warm characters and happy endings.
Penn wanted the movie released slowly, as an art film, so it would have time to build and find its audience, so people would be prepared for it.
The danger, he cautioned, was that people would flock to The Pledge thinking it a showcase for just another Nicholson tough-guy performance, as in A Few Good Men.
Assuming Penn did argue this way, he was right. But he lost the fight against the dependably venal Hollywood studio execs, who wanted the movie released as widely as possible before people realized how brilliantly unconventional and depressing it is. Trailers for The Pledge were blatantly misleading, suggesting a cop-on-the-trail-of-a-vicious-killer adventure ("I made a promise!") In the two theaters where I saw the movie, people had obviously been fooled, and there were lots of squirming kids.
As a result, unprepared audiences are reportedly struggling with this chilling movie, which is not lighting up at the box office, as Sean foresaw.
The Pledge is an anti-mainstream mainstream movie.
Faithful in spirit to the story written by the broody Swiss novelist Friedrich Durrenmatt, it's told in an almost European style (they can make bleak movies there) free of formulaic marketing notions of how much grimness American ticket-buyers can bear and will pay for. In the U.S., the idea seems to be that movies are an escape from reality, not a portrayal of it.
The Pledge conjures up Atom Egoyan's wonderful but determinedly grim The Sweet Hereafter, released in l997. That movie was marketed just the way Penn wanted The Pledge to be -- in small theaters in selected cities. It exceeded expectations, whereas The Pledge can't possibly succeed as the blockbuster Warner Brothers pretended it would be.
This is a haunting movie about isolation, obsession, aging and madness. Nicholson delivers one of the great performances of his life as retiring Reno police detective Jerry Black, who leaves his own retirement party to investigate the murder-mutilation of a little girl and, in more than one sense, never comes back.
Black becomes obsessed with the idea that a vicious rapist-murderer is stalking young blonde schoolgirls who wear red dresses. His ex-colleagues believe the murders have been solved and that he's going crazy and getting senile.
Black buys an old gas station and bait shop at the epicenter of the area where the victims have vanished or been murdered. Though he poses as a retired cop who is now an angler, it gradually becomes clear to the audience that he's anything but retired, that he is honoring his pledge on his "eternal salvation" to the mother of one of the victims: he will find the killer. A host of top-notch actors drop in briefly and shine while they do: Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Wright Penn, Sam Shepard, Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren, Mickey Rourke.
Don't expect a light-hearted moment in this movie -- the colors are muted, the climate harsh and forbidding. The open shot is eerie and depressing and it just gets worse. There is an incredibly powerful cinematic moment on a turkey farm where parents learn their daughter has been slaughtered. Nicholson incorporates loneliness and alienation into his language, facial expressions and body posture. He is wrestling with all sorts of demons, from retirement and aging to the kind of obsession that seems credible for a conscientious detective in these circumstances.
Nicholson's detective visibly begins to wear under the strains of his life. He looks grizzled, chain-smokes, walks stiffly, forgets words and thoughts. Gradually -- in the kind of plot development unimaginable in most mainstream Hollywood films -- we come to realize that he is prepared to make any sacrifice, including any chance at a new life, and the people he most loves, to bring the killer to justice.
The movie has trouble ending, and gets a bit improbable. And even the most discriminating movie-lovers aren't always psychically prepared for a movie as unsparing as this one. You keep expecting the film to lighten up, to give us a ray of hope, for the Nicholson character to get on with his life, to see the light, for justice to prevail. But Penn has gone for unyielding honesty and fidelity to a story.
Like The Sweet Hereafter, -- whose influences seem distinctly present here -- the movie's message is that life is a real horror sometimes and, as one character points out, God can be greedy. There are devils out there, as Detective Black tells the bereaved mother. But if you can handle The Pledge -- the (minimal) gore isn't the problem here, but the truth behind it -- you won't regret it. It's a beautiful, worthwhile and fascinating movie, the kind Hollywood isn't supposed to make anymore.
Wow, a First Post.
One can consider a hollywood film to be an extended phenotype. It is the modern extension of our instinct to tell stories and educate of old, but stripped of any real worthwhile qualities. If only Hollywood were not dominated by commercial concerns, and existed to create good films for their own sake, I don't think this vacancy and and the other problems I have mentioned would be a problem.
The United Kingdom has, of late, set up a highly succesful method of making films which is government funded, though indirectly. Government owned television stations, such as Channel 4, make excellent films such as Trainspotting, Shallow Grave and 4 Weddings and a Funeral. These films are designed to be good to watch, not to make money. And they represent the true counterculture sweeping the film world from Europe (Dogme 95 is another example).
It would be good if America, through PBS, were to implement a similar profit free, for the love of it system. It would give us some innovative and interesting films, and a relief from Hollywood.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
and in fact, theirs doesn't read like mine, as shud be instantly obvious..but if it did, how do you know they're not plagiarizing me?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Movies and Music and other arts can promote and create aand change the social climate we live in. Things like social dysfunction can be promoted, accidently or otherwise.
Geeks are protrayed as criminal hackers, for example. Or the general population is examined in depth for the essence of True Evil, while downplaying the inherent complexity ordinary lives have, and downplaying the presence of the natural good that people also have. This can lead to things like the alienation and separtion documented in HELLMOUTH.
So little things like the movie reviews can have a deeper meaning.
More than mere entertainment when viewed in the context of the broader culture in which we live, and the ends that we struggle for, outside the context of the corporate "Lab Rat" management philosophies.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
um, how does this movie qualify as a /. topic?
/.ers wanted to discuss movie reviews I'm sure they could find a WB, E! or some such drooling fan web board.
Is there anything remotely nerdish about the film?
Is there anything about this film except that JonKatz likes films in general and this one in particular?
If
Topic moderation should be introduced...
A college football team faces a new coach and interpersonal conficts, as well as personal problems for individual team members. They fight their way through close games with larger schools all the way to the BIG Game... which they lose because this movie is about the other team and their personal challenges and triumphs.
A fucked up and misogynistic teenager manipulates and occasionally date rapes teen girls until he either 1) gets the shit kicked out of him by one's older brother, 2) gets send to JV and sexually assaulted by an older boy, 3) gets aids and dies a nasty death because he doesn't get tested and find out the truth until its too late, 4) we don't know because this is a "gritty realistic" movie that ends after only one day during which he didn't suffer any consequences.
Every story is a little slice. There are very few movies where you couldn't play the "well, if this was THEIR movie" game and see it completely differently. The thing is that a couple of centuries (if not millenia) of writers have had the intelligence to know who they are writing for and pick the slice and the endpoint that their readers/viewers are looking for and will enjoy the most. The greek tragedies were just what they said. They were no more "realistic" in their morbidity than the comedies were in their expansive happy endings. They were just written for different audiences and expectations.
So if I as a reader/veiwer enjoy one kind of ending point, and find another to be unneccassarily depressing or for that matter find that that particular slice isn't one I will spend my recreational time on, I no more deserve to be told that I "can't handle the realism" or "want a holywood ending" than the guy who hates romantic films and wants the "holywood ending" of lots of violence and gore.
I doubt The Pledge is any more unflinchingly realistic than When Harry Met Sally. Its just picking a side of a story that most people don't find enjoyable. If it can pull it off, great, but if it fails thats its fault as a movie, not ours as veiwers.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Lots of people have expressed interest in a place to talk about tech culture, movies, TV shows..So since there are very few movies dealing straight out with tech..sci-fi, antitrust, we broadened it to see if there are people on a sunday morning who want to talk about pop culture, a huge tech interest..seems there are. Some movies will be more head-on than other..antitrust..others are just interesting..the readers get to decide..I don't feel hidebound by Kremlin-like definitions of what's ideologically acceptable. And for the record, most reviews are done after I get a lot of e-mail from people who plan on seeing them and want to talk about them..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
unbelieveably horrible this movie is when you get to go see it. The ending of the movie is told below however it is not a spoiler because it is near impossile to spoil something which is already completely rotted through. I honestly cannot remember any other movie i've seen recently that can top this one for it's excrutiating banality and sheer stupidity. It's truely terrible, and if it werent for being with a friend when I saw it, I wouldve undoubtedly walked out. There are so many cliches in this movie I could not begin to count them all, but what the hell, lets try anyway; at one point Nicholson's character uses a map of the murders to determine where the killer will strike next(ohh brilliantly original plot device there eh?)and then you see nothing of the map for the rest of the movie. That one not overused and dull enough for you? oh well then don't despair, recall the "Jerry Black" detective character? it's his last day on the job you see, they've even thrown him a retirement party! but wouldnt you know it he just HAS to solve one last crime that pops up right before he leaves. wow! I've never seen that twist used in a movie before! (kill me now please). Still interested in seeing it? let me help. When Black tells the family of the first victim what happened to their daughter, the mom character deadpans her lines to the camera an formulaically has a breakdown right on queue(the father also fills his expected duty by throwing a fit at Black when he's told that it might not be the best thing for him to see his daughters chopped off head right now). 5 minutes later the mom then makes the detective SWEAR ON HIS LIFE WHILE HOLDING A CRUCIFIX THAT HE WILL FIND THEIR DAUGHTERS KILLER!(incredulous much?) the rest of the "movie" seems to wander along at a turtles pace revolving around the "dont take candy from strangers" type childish storyline. Black eventually uses his girlfriends daughter as bait for the killer(that could happen! right?!) and nearly catches him before the killer dies in a car wreck(with a comically hackneyed portrayal of a burning body in the car for extra emphasis). Do yourself a favor and substitute seeing this movie by poking yourself in the eye with a sharp stick.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
The film is devestating, its vision of humanity as bleak as anything in thirty years.
Aesthetically, it's very compelling -- highly nuanced performances by Jack Nicholson and Robin Wright Penn being its strongest points.
The tension is managed perfectly. I found it, at times, nearly unbearable.
In terms of the script, which, as you might expect from a film directed by Penn, is literate beyond reproach, I think it's worth noting that this novel adaptation is strikingly different from much recent Hollywood fare not only because it's terribly dark. It's also a portrait of psychological repression -- a theme that informed much of the best mid-century American and British cinema (think Hitchcock, Kazan, Preminger, et. al) as well as film noir, but which became passé the further Hollywood in the 70s and 80s moved from examining character and instead toward embracing sensation (for which you can thank Messrs. Spielberg, Lucas, etc.). This would be of limited interest were not the entire story dependent upon what Nicholson's character hiding the truth from himself...
There is another enormously powerful subject here, too: the effect of police work upon the police. What happens when you see too much evil? With our cinema too much given over to the triumphalism and cartoonish representations of cops in Drug War America, this is a subject begging to be explored.
The final shots of the film may leave you in agony. Beware, casual moviegoers! This isn't the spookhouse make-believe of "Hannibal." Real monsters are much scarier.
One other interesting thing about this film it that it makes one wonder about the nature of destiny, genius, talent, madness, the self. This film reminds me of the notion that the variety of beliefs and personalities out there may just be simply the result of an inherently chaotic universe. We are very much affected by the circumstances of our lives.
You don't believe me?
What if the killer HADN'T died in that car crash? What if he had actually made it to the little girl, drawn a knife, and attempted to molest/kill her? Maybe all of Nicholson's ex-colleagues would have stopped considering him a madman and would have blessed him for the genius in his passion. His live-in girlfriend may have still resented him for putting her daughter at risk.. but I think she would not have considered Nicholoson a crazy nut.
Do you think that maybe then Nicholson would not have gone mad? Instead he would have perhaps made peace with himself in his old age. Toni Morrison once observed that it is very American to not give credence to the notion that people are often the sums of what the world makes of them. It's the external directly shaping the internal. It happens more than we like to think in our highly individualistic culture. (The reason why it's unamerican to admit this is that it's the scariest thing for you to tell the quintessential American--someone who's had the beautiful American dream of liberty and individuality stuffed down his throat all his life that maybe he isn't as original as he thought he was--that maybe some or a good part of who he is comes from the external world.)
I think that if the killer could have somehow managed to make it to the little girl, everything could have turned out differently. It's funny how fate works.. and how sometimes destiny throws us a bone and sometimes it doesn't. We as a society praise obsession when it yields visible immediate and usually monitary results. Everything else is crazy or nonsense. But ask yourselves -- what is the difference between madness and genius? I tell you that the two are very closely related!
That being said, this movie is not only visually very captivating, but it explores some human themes--some questions about the self--that are not often explored in the mainstream. I am glad to have seen it!