Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I ran into Helen Mirren at the Four Seasons last week when I was there interviewing Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. She was there for the CLEARING junket. As we rode down in the elevator, I told her that I’ve been a fan of her work since I was very young. She asked what the first film of hers I saw was. “EXCALIBUR, actually,” I replied.
”Many young men seem to mark that as a milestone,” she answered, smiling knowingly at me, and I admitted that the film’s rather frank sexuality had indeed marked my 11-year-old mind. It was just a quick exchange, but she struck me as the very definition of a “class act.”
So how’s the film she was there promoting? Beaks seemed underwhelmed by it at the LA Film Festival. Let’s see what this reader thought:
Hi, Harry,
I am a longtime reader of your site, first time writing to you.
I saw The Clearing, and thought you might want to hear a little about it.
I have been seeing the trailer for this film for a while, and have had mixed feelings about whether to see it, but figured with Helen Mirren, Willem DeFoe, and Robert Redford, how bad could it be.
Well, I was a little, how shall I say it.....bored.
The basic storyline is rich WASP businessman with cold wife gets kidnapped in his own driveway by a working class man who has been laid off. The movie cuts back and forth between the businessman (Redford) getting marched through the woods and how his wife (Mirren) is dealing with this. The timeline for the two storylines is a little different, with the marching-through-woods line lagging a bit behind the how-will-she-handle-it line, which is the only interesting thing about the movie.
The performances are good, but no one ever seems to show any real emotion. There are a lot of close-ups of characters reacting and struggling with their composure, but no one loses their stiff upper lip, except the son. Helen Mirren successfully conveys a women who never has a hair out of place, who maintains perfect grooming and is the perfect hostess even while her husband is in mortal danger.
When Redford is kidnapped, his wife first assumes when he is late getting home for a dinner party, that he is just being selfish. Then, when she realizes he is indeed missing, she calmly calls the police to report it. Even when dealing with the FBI agent, who tells her that her husband continued his affair after the time he told her it was over, she is cool and collected. A little emotion would have been welcome. The only time she breaks is for a short moment, after the ransom is delivered, and she realizes her husband is dead. There are a lot of shots of Mirren staring into space and resting alone in her bed.
Willem DeFoe is always good. But there was no real menace here. His kidnapper is an everyman, with no real motivation except a vague unhappiness with the way his life is going.
Redford never exhibits the desperation of someone who thinks he is probably going to die. He calmly writes a short good-bye note to his wife and counsels his kidnapper to use caution when mailing it, so the postmark can't be used to find him. Redford's appearance is distracting as well, with what appears to be an odd wig and a poorly done facelift.
The ending felt tacked on, and a little too neat. "Did you want to get caught?" The fantasy Mirren has at the end felt lifted from Under the Sand.
Anyway, I would not recommend seeing this film, unless you get in for free.
if you use this, please call me
Bookish Girl
Ahhh... Bookish Girls are the best, aren’t they? Thanks for the review.
"Moriarty" out.
