| |
| ||||||
|
the indian runner
Once upon a time — about fifteen years ago — Sean Penn proclaimed that he was finished with acting. At least, that’s one of the times that he did so. But in 1991 he had a fresh reason for his decision: he was going to direct. By and large, actors-turned-directors turn out unremarkable projects, but every so often one of them surprises. It’s usually those you least expect who turn out to be pretty damned good. One of my favorite such examples is Kevin Costner, who caught everybody off guard with Dances With Wolves the year before, and then went on to direct the well-intentioned but ultimately too-flawed-to-succeed The Postman; six years later, with Open Range, he proved that his sophomore movie was the fluke. But even I have to concede that Costner is no match for Sean Penn, who since 1991 has directed three movies of surprising depth and patience. Until recently I had only seen Penn’s second and third films, The Crossing Guard and The Pledge, respectively; his debut, The Indian Runner was ridiculously hard to track down, and appears to have only just been released on DVD. I have much respect for those latter movies, in which Penn coaxes stunning performances out of his cast (which both times included Jack Nicholson).
The Indian Runner didn’t disappoint. It’s a story that manages to be both relentless and impossibly sad, and yet doesn’t trip over either aspect of itself. I was pleased to see David Morse given a starring role; he’s long been one of my favorite character actors. Penn also cast Viggo Mortensen, long before Aragorn was anywhere near the A-list. The two play brothers who have each fallen on separate sides of the line separating success from failure, and deliver wonderful performances. No surprise there, as we’ve observed over the years; the two have gone from underappreciated to familiar, and yet haven’t lost the steam they show here. The movie plays out against a bleak and impassive winter landscape; you’ll be chilled just watching it. In a way, this could be a Russell Banks story brought to life; the movie shares the visceral, hard beauty of Affliction or The Sweet Hereafter, two Banks adaptations that take place in small towns buried in white. As the film opens, Joe Roberts (Morse), a deputy policeman, chases a fugitive across icy back roads; his siren carries for miles across the snow. His quarry stops, opens fire; Joe is forced to kill him, a decision that sits uncomfortably in his gut and sours his outlook. It’s in this condition that he’s forced to meet his brother, Frank (Mortensen), the long-lost prodigal/black sheep, home for the first time since 1965.
Their reunion is joyful but short-lived; Frank arrives in the middle of the night, and the next morning announces that he’s leaving:
The boys have all their lives gone their separate ways; the differences between them are simple. Joe is a good man; he’s a cop, does the right thing. Frank went to Vietnam because there aren’t that many choices for not-so-good men; back in the world, he’s unchanged. That his brother has become a policeman is only the most obvious example of their separate paths. Frank was right; their parents do not take it personally that he didn’t come home to see them. They are a sad pair. The movie’s most unexpected casting choice is Charles Bronson, who plays the boys’ father. This isn’t the same Bronson of the years gone by, whether you grew up watching him in The Magnificent Seven or Death Wish. This is a quiet performance, that of a man disquieted by his failures as a father, of a man without hope. His wife is played by Sandy Dennis, also something of a Hollywood legend; she died in 1992, and The Indian Runner was her last film. Here she’s the picture of the long-suffering wife and mother, torn between her two boys. When she passes away suddenly, her death decays the orbits of her sons and husband and becomes the catalyst for what might have eventually happened anyway.
The story is nothing new: people don’t change, that seems to be the gist of it; that sometimes the love of family and a good woman just can’t do the trick. It is unsentimental and unromantic; what you see is quite simply what you get. Nobody is a hero, not completely; likewise, nobody is a total villain. There are unequal amounts of good and ill in each character here, with the possible exception of Patricia Arquette’s innocent, joyful Dorothy, who doesn’t have to work to find pleasure in the smallest things; the pleasure comes naturally to her, and the light in her eyes is the most genuine thing in the movie. The movie is loosely based on the lyrics of an old Bruce Springsteen song, but there’s really not much loose about it. “Highway Patrolman” tells the story of two brothers, Joe and Frank, who stand on opposite sides of things like family, and the law. In the song Joe pursues Frank to the Canadian border, then pulls to the side of the road and watches his brother go. The movie adopts Springsteen’s general thrust — that sometimes family runs deeper than right or wrong — but avoids labeling Frank as a bad seed (even though almost anybody else would). And in the moment that should be the happiest of Frank’s life, he’s drunk and, as Joe says, on a tangent:
For one brother, family is all there is; for the other, it’s a curse he can’t shake off. Life does a real number on them; how they spin it, and how it spins them, never feels familiar or cliched. Raw honesty runs deep in this movie, and redemption is something that is always up in the air, until it just isn’t anymore.
| | 
 Subscribe to RSS feed My Flickr photostream My Twitter feed  exit musicwaiting, seeingthat faint sensation of losskninjathe boondock skeinshow to be betterthe chime-maker’s nemesissome things change, some don’t, etc.ohh hahh ohh hahhdamn you, mollyView complete archive
  Lust, CautionDouble IndemnityIron ManForgetting Sarah MarshallThere Will Be BloodGone, Baby, GoneLive Free or Die HardThe Indian RunnerThe Iron GiantContactAn Inconvenient TruthX-Men: The Last StandSuperman ReturnsEnigmaNobody's FoolLook, Up in the SkyNumb3rsMission: Impossible IIIHeavenThe AbyssThe Constant GardenerThe Mosquito CoastThe HustlerLimboGrizzly ManThe VerdictSuperman ReturnsElizabethtownBattlestar GalacticaYou Can Count on MeRolling Roadshow 2005The American PresidentMy DVD collection
 01. dreaming of falling02. marvelous descent03. a conversation04. the colors05. huffnagle island06. a hundred million07. sixty-six stories08. anyone earthbound09. a girl named eleanor10. a route obscure and lonely11. a certain stillness12. this is jack13. wide flat lands14. going home15. girl unscrewed16. slow rehabilitation17. twenty-three stories18. a far-off point19. fifteen years quiet20. a one-beer fella21. luminescence22. one-sided conversation23. hearts big and stupid24. nineteen seventy-eight25. first light26. a hundred years27. too long to stop now28. plainswept29. a widower in training30. spies and assets31. thirty years and then some32. leaping over couches33. cricket song34. eleanor's first kiss35. like so much ballast36. too much37. the longest wait38. the second ice storm39. rocket summer40. waiting41. wax wings42. breakup43. tough beans43. the heavy gray sea
| |  welcome to sxswthe last omelettesummer of '69firewalker with melady bewarehow to drink winefish waffle beanbagssmells like granny fannysimple requeststudent of okinawan historyoperation dinner outstraight on til morningbillions and ... eh, whateversighton the subject of overtimepermafrostedthis morning on the waythree days laterrally, monkeygrowing shamessmall moves, captainbored beyond beliefso well, so strong, so slowthat was a good dayamazing storiescracked your codevarieties of experiencehate it when she does thatmost likely to wear tightsshould've been a cowboymean old menand scenetime-traveling head-puncherwhat're the odds?big k daysthis base will explodno place like50/100/buh-byefurther baseball conversationslongest last rites everwatch the skieswho needs sleeprogue agentred shag carpet and iced teafuck you, murphyslow driftpyro, singular possessivedecompositionwide-eyed wonderoctober morningnational pasttimewordplaymovie buff extraordinairean approximate transcripti wonder if neil simon had a catteach my feet to flyunexploredold girlfriend
  AchewoodAlligators in a HelicopterArt of the Title SequenceThe Big PictureA.V. ClubBinary BonsaiBluishorangeBrand NewCollision DetectionConsumeristCynical-C BlogThe Daily FigureFacetiously MeFast CompanyFirelandFool's ParadiseFtrainHacking NetflixIn the Kitchen with KristieIn One Ear...Looks Good Works WellKathleen EdwardsMark SimonsonOblivioOne Good MoveOur Secret HandshakePhotoshop DisastersPhysical InterfacePosterwireRoger Ebert JournalRyan KeberlySarah's SketchesThe Snowsuit EffortThree-Letter Word for ArtTomorrow MuseumTraditionally Modern DesignsUnreasonable FaithWarpspireWired - EpicenterWired - Geekdad The Eleanor SketchesMy FlickrSketch GalleryThe Dialogue ArchivesManualBest Fiction, Vol. 1DS on Archive.orgHosted by Kionic 9rules member | |
| ||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
