DIRECTOR
Roman Polanski
SCREENWRITERS
Rafael Yglesias
Ariel Dorfman
based
on the play by
Ariel Dorfman
PRODUCERS
Josh Kramer
Thom Mount
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Tonino Delli Colli
MUSIC
Wojciech Kilar
EDITOR
Hervé de Luze
CAST
Sigourney Weaver (Paulina Escobar)
Ben Kingsley (Dr. Roberto Miranda)
Stuart Wilson (Gerardo Escobar)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 103m
U.S. release: January 1995
Video availability: VHS
Other Roman
Polanski films
reviewed on this site:
- The
Ninth Gate
|
It's
easy to forget that Sigourney Weaver started out as a comic actress
in off-Broadway plays (mainly by Christopher Durang). Physically,
she's well-designed for comedy, particularly when she towers
over her male co-stars. Yet her body has proven itself equally
adept at drama. Weaver, of all American actresses, has perhaps
the most elastic and expressive physique, whether crouching among
the primates (and gradually becoming simian) in Gorillas in
the Mist, or tight with anguish and purpose in the Alien
series. In Death and the Maiden, the hard-driving and
intimate new thriller directed by Roman Polanski, we know Weaver
is playing a woman struggling with memories of torture even before
she opens her mouth, and maybe even before the camera moves in
to consider her haunted features. It's in the way she holds her
body, as if to reassure herself that it's now hers again. It's
in the panicked way she runs from candle to candle during a power
outage, blowing them out when headlights approach. And as the
story unfolds and Weaver surrenders herself to ferocious rage
and disgust, her body, paradoxically, becomes more fluid, relaxed,
as though her wounded flesh were animating itself to seek vengeance,
beyond her conscious control.
Death and the Maiden, adapted by Ariel Dorfman and Rafael
Yglesias (Fearless) from Dorfman's play, uses a minimalist
thriller set-up to explore the psyche of the torturer as well
as the tortured. The story takes place in an anonymous Latin
American country after the fall of a brutal dictatorship. Paulina
(Weaver), we learn, got involved in radical activities as a college
student. Pressed to name her boyfriend Gerardo (Stuart Wilson),
a writer for a revolutionary paper, Paulina refused and was beaten,
raped, and subjected to grisly electroshock torture. We don't
see any of this in flashback, but we will hear plenty about it
in the scenes to come. Gerardo, now married to Paulina, has just
been appointed head of a commission looking into tortures resulting
in death. That's not good enough for Paulina (whose torture resulted
in a life of fear and anger); she wants absolute justice. Weaver
makes us feel Paulina's disappointment in her husband (who, working
within this new bureaucracy, probably could never act fast enough,
decisively enough, to satisfy her). And there's a suggestion,
later elaborated on, that Gerardo feels unworthy of her. He knows
he couldn't have endured what she endured to save him.
Fate, however, delivers satisfaction into Paulina's lap -- in
the person of Dr. Roberto Miranda (Ben Kingsley), who gives Gerardo
a ride home one rainy night. Miranda, who seems decent and middle-class
and bland, congratulates Gerardo on his fine work rounding up
those horrible torturers. Paulina, though, smells a rat -- literally.
She picks up his scent, hears his voice from the next room, and
convinces herself that Miranda was the one who raped and tortured
her (she had been blindfolded during each session). Viciously,
she turns the tables, subjecting Miranda to her own brand of
humiliation, intimidation, and interrogation. What's so powerful
and daring about Death and the Maiden is that it gradually
begins to play like a deeply sick romance -- and a romantic
triangle. The well-meaning, ineffectual Gerardo can never know
what Paulina went through. Only Miranda knows -- only Miranda
has attained that level of diseased intimacy with her. If, indeed,
he is guilty. Polanski, the great living bad boy of international
film, eroticizes this central conflict every chance he gets.
The movie isn't offensive, but it's potent enough to scare off
the faint of heart. In scene after scene, Polanski kicks the
movie up to a level of emotional violence rare in English-speaking
films.
Paulina keeps insisting that Miranda confess; Miranda puts up
a wall of heated, appalled denials. She's very convincing. So
is he. On one level, Death and the Maiden is a gripping
suspense machine: Is he guilty or not? If so, what will she do
to him? Does she have a right to take revenge even if he is
guilty? Is she right or is she crazy? Is she both? Polanski is
right at home in this claustrophobic setting, as he was in his
bookend paranoid classics Repulsion and The Tenant;
he digs in with both hands. I was one of very few viewers not
disgusted or offended by his previous film, Bitter Moon,
which I consider perhaps the finest anti-romantic comedy ever
made. Polanski can lull you inside a mindset you've been conditioned
to denounce. You find yourself not condoning it, exactly, but
understanding it, coming close enough to shudder, acknowledging
that evil is not Other but simply an aspect of humanity. In Death
and the Maiden, Polanski and Dorfman have the titanic balls
to address what torture does to its perpetrators as well
as its victims -- not in a touchy-feely, "I was abused as
a child and that justifies the evil I do" way, but in a
clear-eyed manner that carves away our doubts. A climactic monologue,
delivered on a cliff against a gray sky and crashing waves, is
chillingly direct in its assessment of what leads a certain type
of person in a certain situation to enjoy inflicting pain. It's
like an extension of John Huston's line in Polanski's Chinatown:
"Most people never have to face that at the right time and
place, they're capable of anything."
The movie is a peerless example of alchemy. Roman Polanski has
taken a vaguely political tract and transformed it into something
darker, more open, Polanski-esque. I left feeling chilled and
disturbed and highly exhilarated, my senses heightened. Death
and the Maiden never lets you off the hook -- it leaves you
twisting on it helplessly. And it has the most evocative final
shot -- the three characters exchanging cold glances at a concert
-- I've seen at the movies in years. |
