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Writer
/ Director - Rebecca Miller
Director of photography
- Ellen Kuras
Editor - Sabine
Hoffman
Production designer
- Mark Ricker
Producer - Lemore Syvan IFC Films.
112 minutes. Rated
R.
STARRING: Daniel Day-Lewis (Jack Slavin),
Camilla Belle (Rose Slavin), Catherine Keener (Kathleen), Paul Dano (Thaddius),
Ryan McDonald (Rodney), Jena Malone (Red Berry), Jason Lee (Gray) and
Beau Bridges (Marty Rance).
It happens
again and again--the human endeavor to establish utopia.
The process begins
innocently enough. A few people, led by conscience, react against some
aspect of society and determine to make a better world. They might be
reacting against corporate greed, religious intolerance, bigotry,
pollution, sexual misbehavior, political corruption. It doesn't matter
much. What happens is that they decide to separate themselves from the
problem, to "start the world over," to lay down laws that will
make the world safe for good people to enjoy life untroubled by the
wicked.
But there's a problem. Separatism can only serve to
shut out certain varieties of evil ... if it even accomplishes that.
Human beings bring evil with them wherever they go. You can bet that if
you're building a wall to shut something out, you're bound to find
yourself trapped inside with whatever darkness emerges from your own
people.
Many of these utopia-quests pledge to restore the
quality of life they once knew in a "better" time." Why? "The '50s were a much more innocent time," some will say. Others
will be nostalgic for the '80s. Scripture, on the other hand, counsels us not to talk as if
past times
were better than these. It's a strange proverb, but there it is.
In Rebecca Miller's new film The
Ballad of Jack and Rose, the main character is clinging to the
"free love" idealism of '60s hippie culture. He is the last remaining
resident of a commune on an island off the northeastern coast of the
United States, and he is grieving as the hopes and dreams of that period
slip away, just as his own life is slipping away under an unstoppable
tide of physical corruption.
Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis) sits on the idyllic hillside near his
bunker-like home and watches as the 21st Century encroaches on the
borders of his home. He knows his idea-driven neighborhood is running on
fumes, and he knows there's little he can do to stop the housing
developments, the conformity, the materialism climbing toward him like a
tide of termites. But that doesn't stop him from taking out his rifle
and firing some shots off at some of those homes under construction.
His daughter Rose watches in a mix of sadness,
amusement, and admiration. She has grown up here with her father, and
it's just the two of them. She has seen his disillusionment, but she has
also come to savor the last days of this quiet, natural, wild
wonderland. This is their Eden, or so Jack would like her to believe.
But just as Jack compromises his own ideals by
sneaking away to carry on an affair with a sympathetic and spirited
woman (Catherine Keener), so this Eden is about to be compromised.
Or rather, as Rose will learn and
Jack will be forced to admit, this manmade Eden isn't so innocent after
all. For wherever human beings go to try and create a utopia, they will
bring evil with them, and they will become the very thing they've tried
to escape. That was the message
of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, and it's definitely the
lesson here. Miller's storytelling, clearly inspired by her father's
life as a playwright in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, creates a marvelous,
rich, heartbreaking story that feels like a form of autobiography
crafted into a fusion of fairy tale and cultural commentary. The way she
leads us quietly through a troubling tale of a nearly incestuous
relationship between father and daughter wisely refuses to turn its
characters into monsters... it does something much better. It portrays
Jack and Rose as three-dimensional human beings, one a teacher who
slowly realizes he's slipping into the clutches of his own evil nature,
and the other a student who realizes that her conscience disagrees with
the instructions of this giant that she loves.
Daniel Day-Lewis gives the first great performance of
2005 as Jack, making him endearing and frightening, principled and
pathetic, a visionary and a tragic hero, a Lear that's a little too in
love with his daughter. Camilla Belle is sufficient as Rose, clear-eyed,
pale with innocence, fragile, and yet fiercely intelligent. Catherine
Keener is somehow more attractive than ever before as Jack's spirited
lover Kathleen.
But the film's most memorable and surprising performance
comes from Ryan Macdonald as Rodney, the oldest of Kathleen's two boys,
who comes to the commune and quickly catches on to the trouble brewing
there. Paul Dano, who plays his wicked younger brother Thaddius, is
equally convincing as a devil-in-the-making who lures the curious Rose
out of her innocence and sets off the anger that's been building in
Jack's heart. Miller has sharp
instincts as a storyteller, but her weakness is in loving her strong
metaphors too much. Yes, we get that this is Jack's idea of Eden. Do we
really need Rose to struggle with her innocence at the site of a tree
that has a snake living underneath it? Does she really need to dress
like Little Red Riding Hood?
But these are minor complaints. As heavy-handed as the symbolism
becomes, it certainly does its job. The true masterstroke of Miller's
storytelling comes in the conclusion, when she avoids the cop-out of
condemning contemporary culture, and takes a much braver step, a step
backwards... letting us see the larger picture: that both the future and
the past as rife with corruption, that human beings cannot create heaven
on earth.
Where, then, does hope come from? The
film doesn't seem to offer a clear answer. But there may be a hint in
the moment when Jack comes to realize his own fallibility, when he puts
his head in his hands and cries out, "God forgive me!"
It's almost impossible for those who have followed
the career of the playwright Arthur Miller, Rebecca Miller's famous
father, to watch this film without considering what it implies about the
director's relationship with, and perception of, her father. In
interviews, Miller is fairly tight-lipped on this subject. It's not very
useful, or respectful, to speculate much on that question. But it is
worth noting that while Miller's daughter has clearly inherited her
father's talents for compelling an audience's attention, she has
fashioned that talent into a unique voice, one that hits notes both
subtly poetic and tremendously dramatic. There are hints of
Shakespearean tragedy throughout The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and
there is a naturalistic style that recalls the films of Terrence Malick.
This is only her second film (her
first, Personal Velocity, was memorable as well), but Rebecca
Miller is easily in the company of Sofia Coppola as one of the most
engaging and fascinating American women making movies today. I am eager
to see what she does next. |
