So I saw Secret Window the other day...
Mar. 23rd, 2004 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ldhenson...and thus follows a review that turned out eight times longer than I originally intended.
The upshot: I liked it. But I wanted to like it more.
I guess I'll start by saying I thought better, at least, of the movie after I had a few days to mull it over than when I was actually sitting in the theater watching it. Which isn't to say I didn't have a good time watching it, because I did. But some of the pieces fall more clearly into place with some thought afterwards.
I've never read the original Secret Window, Secret Garden. So I'm taking the movie purely on its own.
First off, Johnny Depp does a terrific job. Rainey is not, on paper, a character I find particularly engaging. His day-to-day existence at the start of the movie is a lethargic one. He doesn't come up with any clever plans and in fact makes some downright odd decisions (more on this later). He's not a particularly nice or noble guy (just a more or less inoffensive one), nor is he a particularly bad one (up until the end, of course). All this adds up to a lead character who shouldn't be able to carry nearly as much of the movie as he's required to...except Depp somehow makes it work. And he does it not by diluting any of those aspects of Rainey that I mentioned above, but by sprinkling just enough surprises and flashes of humor--and flashes of menace--throughout to keep you invested in what happens to Rainey next.
That's actually quite remarkable. Rainey's basically a milquetoast whom I don't especially like, but Depp makes him a milquetoast whose fate I'm still interested in. And his transformation(s) at the end are clear and sharp without going over the top.
Many reviews seem to be of the opinion that the movie's great up until the Big Plot Twist, at which point it fizzles. Before I saw the movie, I didn't think much of that sentiment; afterwards (and during), I think I see what they're saying.
I, too, was pretty dismayed when Shooter is revealed to be Rainey himself, because the movie up to that point has been doing a great job of building the tension consistently. There's obviously something spooky and probably not quite natural happening throughout the first 85% of the film, but the twist takes a huge and sudden leap into otherworldliness, and it's too jarring. When the reveal happened, I had the distinct sense that I had stepped into another movie.
Actually, I think the twist could probably have worked had director Koepp turned down the visuals of the reveal by several notches. Yes, seeing the house split in two is very cool, as is watching Rainey approach himself the wrong way around in the mirror (even cooler), and be confronted with a duplicate version of himself (played with satisfyingly subtle differences by Depp). The visuals even make sense symbolically. But they're just too much, too overblown, verging on cartoony. They don't mesh well with the tone set by the remainder of the movie. I'm annoyed when a movie fumbles its twist and doesn't give it sufficient punch to justify its setup; SW certainly gives it punch, but perhaps too much, or at least not in the right direction.
Seriously, a more understated reveal could've saved it, or at least made a big difference. Rainey's discovery should come as a shock, but why not confront him with inescapable evidence that Shooter is himself, and let that carry the moment? It would fit better with the more down-to-earth tone of the rest of the movie.
Which is too bad, because as a twist (discounting the visuals), I think it works. It's set up very well--mostly--by the preceding part of the movie, via clues that don't scream "CLUE!" going forward but do so in retrospect--a very difficult trick to pull off.
Most obvious clue-in-retrospect: Rainey talking to himself--in fact, it's the first thing you hear. I love this for its sheer innocuousness, and how it plays with the fact that voiceovers--even arguing-with-oneself voiceovers--are such an oft-used device in books and films that the audience accepts them without question.
Also: The (beautiful) opening shot of the cabin, which takes us through a large mirror to focus on Rainey's reflection--and then the action starts. The remainder of the movie takes place in the realm of the reflection. I noticed this in the theater, but discounted it as a stylistic device. Very cool to find out at the end that it actually meant something.
The Pall-Malls, smoked by both Rainey and Shooter, as well as Rainey's repeated assertions that he doesn't smoke, even when he clearly sneaks plenty.
The housekeeper. I didn't think of it while watching the movie, but I'm pretty sure now that she's just another figment of Rainey's imagination--or rather, another facet of his personality. He tries to hide his smoking from her when, as her employer, he should have no reason to. She tells him things he wants to hear, insisting that his wife is in the wrong. And, having fulfilled her function--retrieving the manuscript, and not believing his protests that Shooter isn't his pseudonym--she disappears for the rest of the movie. But here's the most telling thing: her last words are "You're a good man," to which Rainey distractedly replies, "So are you."
Rainey's flashback to Amy discovering the window. It's presented in a way that, on first viewing, implies that he's already killed her. Only you find out, some minutes later, that she's still alive. Only you find out, at the end of the movie, that your first hunch wasn't too far off.
The points-of-view. Outside of Rainey, Amy, and Ted, no one else gets a scene to themselves. Related to this, there's also the scene where Rainey wakes up after passing out beside Greenleaf's car, to find Shooter standing over him. At the time I was puzzled as to why a man as angry as Shooter would leave his unconscious prey untouched for hours, but...Not to mention that Rainey doesn't show security guy his bruises.
And lastly there's Rainey's reaction to the stalking on the whole. He makes a number of highly unusual decisions. After the threats, the attacks, the killing of his dog, his first step is not to phone the cops, or jump in his car and head into town. He leaves his front door open. He goes outside at night, when he knows he's being stalked, with nothing more than a flashlight. He dismisses his security guy after he checks the grounds--a clearly useless check, since he (Rainey) knows Shooter isn't setting booby traps but rather getting on and off the property at will. He doesn't, when his security guy fails to show up for their meeting, call the motel, despite knowing exactly which motel it is. His first thought, when finding out Shooter's manuscript matches his story, is not that Shooter simply copied his story, which is after all published and available for anyone to read (and copy); nor does he ask Shooter for proof that the manuscript really was written in 1997. He doesn't look at the copyright page in his hardback anthology, which would surely list the publishing dates for the short stories contained within. He doesn't go to his literary agent for proof. And he takes an incredibly circuitous route to find a copy of the magazine, when one could more quickly check a large library, contact the magazine itself, or--tada!--look it up online. After all, if Rainey's as popular an author as the movie implies, there should be info everywhere. (How many Stephen King fan pages are out there?)
All in all, Rainey's actions led me to mutter to myself, over and over again during the course of the movie, "Why on earth is he doing that? That's just insane!" Which, of course, it was. (But more on this later.)
Now that's a delicate balance. Give me a protagonist who makes stupid decisions repeatedly, and I'll probably lose interest, or in worst case scenarios actually start rooting for the bad guy. I came real close here. Credit Depp, I think, that I didn't.
Which leads me, though, to parts where the setup sadly doesn't work as well. Rainey making irrational decisions--okay. That makes sense, if it's meant to be a clue that he's a few crayons short of a full box. But then Amy later makes a decision fully as boneheaded as any of these. Upon finding the cabin trashed--and I mean trashed--and having heard Rainey admit that he has an enemy, and having had her house burnt down...what does she do? Goes blithely into the cabin and wanders around. Look, no-one would do that. It severely undercuts the notion that Rainey's actions were on some level understandable, and makes it look like the script really doesn't know what it's doing by falling into a horror-movie cliche as silly as this one. So maybe I'm giving them too much credit for the whole Rainey's-actions-were-a-clue thing.
Neither does Amy run like hell after seeing "shoot her" carved into the walls (the wordplay-lover in me was pretty gleeful about that one), or even after seeing her ex-husband's changed demeanor. Really, how much more prompting do you need?
Also among things I'm not sure work: Some of the other characters are a little "off," possibly functioning as red herrings. For instance, the lawyer is a little less than professional. The sheriff brushes Rainey off. The fireman is unbelievably callous. The security guy sleeps on the job. Are these supposed to add to the strangeness of the proceedings? Are they subtle clues that Rainey's perception of these people (since Rainey is present in all of these scenes) is unreliable? Maybe, but they're a little too vague to work.
Maybe the sheriff brushes Rainey off because he suspects something, but that doesn't make sense: you don't brush off someone suspicious, you keep them talking; and anyway there's no basis for suspicion at that point.
Yeah, and are we supposed to believe Rainey got rid of all the "shooter"'s carved, like, everywhere into his loft? I guess he could've gotten a new desk, but are you telling me he redid all the wood paneling by himself, too?
Again, it's too bad the twist feels like a poor payoff, because there are some nicely-done bits at the end. There's Rainey's new look, complete with chipper attitude and cheerful voice. There's the bit about the salt (which I confess I might not have gotten if someone in the audience hadn't muttered "Morton Salt"), which is a nice followup to Amy's useless protests that "You're Mort Rainey."
Aw, I don't know. I'm thinking, too, that it's not such an effective payoff for a character whose appeal mostly relies on Depp's (considerable) charm for more than an hour and a half. Think if Rainey had spent some time setting clever traps for Shooter, only to be stymied and grow increasingly anxious as Shooter refuses to be caught. But that's approaching it from a different direction. You don't need your basic Hero Character...as long as you do something appropriately interesting with him.
Allow me to finish up with an extremely superficial observation: that look on Depp has never done much for me, but by the end of the first quarter hour he had me sold.
The upshot: I liked it. But I wanted to like it more.
I guess I'll start by saying I thought better, at least, of the movie after I had a few days to mull it over than when I was actually sitting in the theater watching it. Which isn't to say I didn't have a good time watching it, because I did. But some of the pieces fall more clearly into place with some thought afterwards.
I've never read the original Secret Window, Secret Garden. So I'm taking the movie purely on its own.
First off, Johnny Depp does a terrific job. Rainey is not, on paper, a character I find particularly engaging. His day-to-day existence at the start of the movie is a lethargic one. He doesn't come up with any clever plans and in fact makes some downright odd decisions (more on this later). He's not a particularly nice or noble guy (just a more or less inoffensive one), nor is he a particularly bad one (up until the end, of course). All this adds up to a lead character who shouldn't be able to carry nearly as much of the movie as he's required to...except Depp somehow makes it work. And he does it not by diluting any of those aspects of Rainey that I mentioned above, but by sprinkling just enough surprises and flashes of humor--and flashes of menace--throughout to keep you invested in what happens to Rainey next.
That's actually quite remarkable. Rainey's basically a milquetoast whom I don't especially like, but Depp makes him a milquetoast whose fate I'm still interested in. And his transformation(s) at the end are clear and sharp without going over the top.
Many reviews seem to be of the opinion that the movie's great up until the Big Plot Twist, at which point it fizzles. Before I saw the movie, I didn't think much of that sentiment; afterwards (and during), I think I see what they're saying.
I, too, was pretty dismayed when Shooter is revealed to be Rainey himself, because the movie up to that point has been doing a great job of building the tension consistently. There's obviously something spooky and probably not quite natural happening throughout the first 85% of the film, but the twist takes a huge and sudden leap into otherworldliness, and it's too jarring. When the reveal happened, I had the distinct sense that I had stepped into another movie.
Actually, I think the twist could probably have worked had director Koepp turned down the visuals of the reveal by several notches. Yes, seeing the house split in two is very cool, as is watching Rainey approach himself the wrong way around in the mirror (even cooler), and be confronted with a duplicate version of himself (played with satisfyingly subtle differences by Depp). The visuals even make sense symbolically. But they're just too much, too overblown, verging on cartoony. They don't mesh well with the tone set by the remainder of the movie. I'm annoyed when a movie fumbles its twist and doesn't give it sufficient punch to justify its setup; SW certainly gives it punch, but perhaps too much, or at least not in the right direction.
Seriously, a more understated reveal could've saved it, or at least made a big difference. Rainey's discovery should come as a shock, but why not confront him with inescapable evidence that Shooter is himself, and let that carry the moment? It would fit better with the more down-to-earth tone of the rest of the movie.
Which is too bad, because as a twist (discounting the visuals), I think it works. It's set up very well--mostly--by the preceding part of the movie, via clues that don't scream "CLUE!" going forward but do so in retrospect--a very difficult trick to pull off.
Most obvious clue-in-retrospect: Rainey talking to himself--in fact, it's the first thing you hear. I love this for its sheer innocuousness, and how it plays with the fact that voiceovers--even arguing-with-oneself voiceovers--are such an oft-used device in books and films that the audience accepts them without question.
Also: The (beautiful) opening shot of the cabin, which takes us through a large mirror to focus on Rainey's reflection--and then the action starts. The remainder of the movie takes place in the realm of the reflection. I noticed this in the theater, but discounted it as a stylistic device. Very cool to find out at the end that it actually meant something.
The Pall-Malls, smoked by both Rainey and Shooter, as well as Rainey's repeated assertions that he doesn't smoke, even when he clearly sneaks plenty.
The housekeeper. I didn't think of it while watching the movie, but I'm pretty sure now that she's just another figment of Rainey's imagination--or rather, another facet of his personality. He tries to hide his smoking from her when, as her employer, he should have no reason to. She tells him things he wants to hear, insisting that his wife is in the wrong. And, having fulfilled her function--retrieving the manuscript, and not believing his protests that Shooter isn't his pseudonym--she disappears for the rest of the movie. But here's the most telling thing: her last words are "You're a good man," to which Rainey distractedly replies, "So are you."
Rainey's flashback to Amy discovering the window. It's presented in a way that, on first viewing, implies that he's already killed her. Only you find out, some minutes later, that she's still alive. Only you find out, at the end of the movie, that your first hunch wasn't too far off.
The points-of-view. Outside of Rainey, Amy, and Ted, no one else gets a scene to themselves. Related to this, there's also the scene where Rainey wakes up after passing out beside Greenleaf's car, to find Shooter standing over him. At the time I was puzzled as to why a man as angry as Shooter would leave his unconscious prey untouched for hours, but...Not to mention that Rainey doesn't show security guy his bruises.
And lastly there's Rainey's reaction to the stalking on the whole. He makes a number of highly unusual decisions. After the threats, the attacks, the killing of his dog, his first step is not to phone the cops, or jump in his car and head into town. He leaves his front door open. He goes outside at night, when he knows he's being stalked, with nothing more than a flashlight. He dismisses his security guy after he checks the grounds--a clearly useless check, since he (Rainey) knows Shooter isn't setting booby traps but rather getting on and off the property at will. He doesn't, when his security guy fails to show up for their meeting, call the motel, despite knowing exactly which motel it is. His first thought, when finding out Shooter's manuscript matches his story, is not that Shooter simply copied his story, which is after all published and available for anyone to read (and copy); nor does he ask Shooter for proof that the manuscript really was written in 1997. He doesn't look at the copyright page in his hardback anthology, which would surely list the publishing dates for the short stories contained within. He doesn't go to his literary agent for proof. And he takes an incredibly circuitous route to find a copy of the magazine, when one could more quickly check a large library, contact the magazine itself, or--tada!--look it up online. After all, if Rainey's as popular an author as the movie implies, there should be info everywhere. (How many Stephen King fan pages are out there?)
All in all, Rainey's actions led me to mutter to myself, over and over again during the course of the movie, "Why on earth is he doing that? That's just insane!" Which, of course, it was. (But more on this later.)
Now that's a delicate balance. Give me a protagonist who makes stupid decisions repeatedly, and I'll probably lose interest, or in worst case scenarios actually start rooting for the bad guy. I came real close here. Credit Depp, I think, that I didn't.
Which leads me, though, to parts where the setup sadly doesn't work as well. Rainey making irrational decisions--okay. That makes sense, if it's meant to be a clue that he's a few crayons short of a full box. But then Amy later makes a decision fully as boneheaded as any of these. Upon finding the cabin trashed--and I mean trashed--and having heard Rainey admit that he has an enemy, and having had her house burnt down...what does she do? Goes blithely into the cabin and wanders around. Look, no-one would do that. It severely undercuts the notion that Rainey's actions were on some level understandable, and makes it look like the script really doesn't know what it's doing by falling into a horror-movie cliche as silly as this one. So maybe I'm giving them too much credit for the whole Rainey's-actions-were-a-clue thing.
Neither does Amy run like hell after seeing "shoot her" carved into the walls (the wordplay-lover in me was pretty gleeful about that one), or even after seeing her ex-husband's changed demeanor. Really, how much more prompting do you need?
Also among things I'm not sure work: Some of the other characters are a little "off," possibly functioning as red herrings. For instance, the lawyer is a little less than professional. The sheriff brushes Rainey off. The fireman is unbelievably callous. The security guy sleeps on the job. Are these supposed to add to the strangeness of the proceedings? Are they subtle clues that Rainey's perception of these people (since Rainey is present in all of these scenes) is unreliable? Maybe, but they're a little too vague to work.
Maybe the sheriff brushes Rainey off because he suspects something, but that doesn't make sense: you don't brush off someone suspicious, you keep them talking; and anyway there's no basis for suspicion at that point.
Yeah, and are we supposed to believe Rainey got rid of all the "shooter"'s carved, like, everywhere into his loft? I guess he could've gotten a new desk, but are you telling me he redid all the wood paneling by himself, too?
Again, it's too bad the twist feels like a poor payoff, because there are some nicely-done bits at the end. There's Rainey's new look, complete with chipper attitude and cheerful voice. There's the bit about the salt (which I confess I might not have gotten if someone in the audience hadn't muttered "Morton Salt"), which is a nice followup to Amy's useless protests that "You're Mort Rainey."
Aw, I don't know. I'm thinking, too, that it's not such an effective payoff for a character whose appeal mostly relies on Depp's (considerable) charm for more than an hour and a half. Think if Rainey had spent some time setting clever traps for Shooter, only to be stymied and grow increasingly anxious as Shooter refuses to be caught. But that's approaching it from a different direction. You don't need your basic Hero Character...as long as you do something appropriately interesting with him.
Allow me to finish up with an extremely superficial observation: that look on Depp has never done much for me, but by the end of the first quarter hour he had me sold.
