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Roman Polanski was the correct person to direct this film, based on (and looking very much like it was) a three-character play set in a confined house, because he understands how to make his mark with notice but care with the camera, and for skill at holding firm on the guessing games without interference. He has here a strong script already, but little touches seem to still be his handiwork all the same; the opening itself leaves a lot of room for interpretation as to what this film will be as it's just classical musicians playing Schubert. Then little movements of the camera, the glances and timing, it's all appearing as if it's Polanski updated for the 90s with a slightly wound edge of political subversion on the edges. But, again, it's more for his style and choice of actors that makes this such a qualified success as such a "talky" psychological thriller. Talky, by the way, as just a euphemism for it being very complex in what has to be monologues, grandstanding, over-long deception, the moments of someone trying to weasel out or get out of something that needs to be shown in this case. It's clever work of dramatic maneuvering of siding on one or the other on not just a moral issue, but on the very idea of it being extremely, crushingly human.
As said, the actors are a huge factor to Death and the Maiden working as well as it does with characters that teeter on madness, truth, and the power of revenge. All actors are in top form, really, as Weaver has that ultra very tough self that one's seen in many action/science fiction movies, and at the same time taps into sadness, irony, and cold moments of anger that goes past the usual model in a contemporary play. She's out for vengeance against a man she finds is somehow connected to her lawyer husband, that she was raped by this man while trapped and tortured for days randomly. Kingsley plays the accused, who spends a lot of the movie tied to a chair pleading with innocence in an everyman quality that is ultimately a deception unto itself; he's so proficient at playing good people that it's usually hard to see him as more crooked underneath than he is, and the little moments, however slight, that give him away. Stuart Wilson also has his sparks of interest as the doubting and most reason-minded of the three, and keeps it bound to being so logical that he keeps balance but is also a possible tipping scale, a feat that Wilson rises up to as also a sympathetic actor.
Occasionally the script gets weighed with tiny fragments that aren't totally necessary (the revelation of Gerardo's infidelity at a point in the story that already has enough emotional baggage riding on should have been tossed aside by the usually economically minded storyteller Polanski). But they're not many, and overall the sensibility in Death and the Maiden is a combination of actor ferocity and a wise use of events and attitude leaning towards multiple levels of interpretation, with slices of Polanski's sick sense of humor thrown in (eg the sudden burst of heavy metal music as the electricity comes back on and the 'kidnapee' tries to escape). The end itself is entirely plausible simply because of Kingsley being so easy (however not easy outside of the surface appearance) in playing the reversal, and the final decision that brings rhyme to reason. It is, in essence, appropriate.
score 9/10
Quinoa1984 12 May 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1654671/ |
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29-11-2019 23:02:02