| Reviewer Roundup |
| 1. |
 | Harvey Karten |
| review follows |
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| 2. |
| Steve Rhodes |
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Review by Harvey Karten
3 stars out of 4
Men are more violent than women by far, but since hell hath no
fury like a woman scorned, watch out for the fair sex or do you
think Clytemnestra, Medea, and Lady Macbeth are merely
fictional characters and Lizzie Bordon just the title of a song?
Kathryn Bigelow illustrates the fury of women convincingly,
entertainingly, and with remarkable faith to an actual case of axe-
murder. She weaves the historical past & fictionalized present into
a thoroughly modern yarn about the growing tension of an enraged
female when in close quarters with the objects of her disaffection.
Based on best-selling novel by Alice Shreve and adapted for the
screen by Alice Arlen, Kathryn Bigelow's smoldering tale of
hatred, envy and murderous rage shifts regularly from the year
2000 to the year 1873 and back, both settings filmed in the area
of Halifax but actually occurring on Smuttynose Island off the New
Hampshire coast.
The historical record indicates that Maren Hontvedt (Sarah
Polley) traveled from her native Norway to America with her
husband, not particularly pleased with her rocky digs and not
overly enamored of her much older spouse. Truth to tell, she's
had a hot thing going with her brother back in Norway, a passion
that is illustrated clearly when her brother, Evan (Anders W.
Berthelsen) goes to Smuttynose on a visit with his bubbly wife,
Karen (Katrin Cartlidge). Fuming that her prosperous brother
threw her over for an urbanized woman, Maren takes a Medea-
style revenge, blaming all on a poor Rasputin-looking shlub
(Ciaran Hinds).
The principal benefit of fiction is entertainment, of course, but
closely behind that is its capacity to teach us about the human
condition, or more specifically to allow us to relate our own
emotions to those of the characters in the novels and movies.
When in the modern part of the story Jean Janes (Catherine
McCormack) takes off with her Pulitzer-prize winning poet
husband Thomas (Sean Penn) to write and photograph a
magazine story about a double-murder in 1873, she may have
known the feelings erupting beneath Maren's taciturn and
innocent-looking surface, but only intellectually. After all, how
many people can really feel the incredible rage that would lead
one to murder in the heat of passion? But when her own marriage
undergoes a challenge on board the boat operated by her brother-
in-law, Rich (Josh Lucas), then she knows what Maren felt with a
capital K-N-O-W-S. The cause of this anger? Rich's girl friend
Adaline Gunne (Elizabeth Hurley) flirts mischievously with Jean's
husband, lying bare-breasted on the deck of the boat sensually
chewing an ice cube and rubbing it across her body while looking
coquettishly at Thomas who, it turns out, had once been an
acquaintance of his some time ago. Thomas is hardly
unresponsive.
Since the action in 1873 takes place almost completely within a
rugged cabin and on a brief stretch of rocky territory just outside,
and given that the goings on in the year 2000 are restricted to a
boat, the claustrophobic settings furnish all the needed motivation
for the rising anger felt by Maren 130 years ago and by Jean in our
own time. The murders that took place then are a mirror of the
tragic course of events that will take place on Rich's boat in the
here-and-now. Kathryn Bigelow's weaving of the two eras to show
their similarities is, as the cliche goes, seamless. Sarah Polley
takes top honors, speaking English with a clipped, Scandinavian
accent, a picture of innocence which gives credence to the adage,
"Watch out for the quiet ones."
As for the mysterious title, we need only read Ms. Shreve's
novel, written five years ago, which states on page 192, "I think
about the weight of water, its scientific properties. A cubic foot of
water weighs 62.4 pounds. Seawater is 3.5 percent heavier than
freshwater; that is, for every 1,000 pounds of seawater, 35 of
those will be salt. The weight of water causes pressure to
increase with depth." Deep emotions? Mucho pressure.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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out of 4
