I simply cannot get enough of D?Onofrio. I have seen him in some clunker films; I?ve seen him in roles where I walked away thinking, ?What the Hell was I thinking?!??or more to the point, ?What the Hell was he thinking?!?? This is NOT one of those films?nor is this one of those roles. I brought this movie home
expecting a sort of attempt at Warhol-meets-Fellini-esque fair. Boy, was I off base. This is an immensely deep and oft-as-not deeply painful character study that forces the at-home voyeur to look inside the darker shadows of his or her own soul at times, to look at the most vulnerable - and thus, well-hidden ? facets of our humanness, but it?s of its own vein entirely. This film is character-driven, and it strives neither to idealize nor to indemnify either primary character (or their motivations) at all, just to illuminate them. It explores the things that make us tick, in the post-modern reality TV-driven, voyeuristic society we have created. The beauty is, it creates fictional characters who are far more real, touchable, enviable, pitiable and personal than any single seasonal product presented for our viewing enjoyment since the boon of this frenzy. I think this film is pretty Avant Garde in that it explored this phenomenon before it became the huge cash cow that it now is: pre- Survivor, Bachelor/Bachelorette et.al., ad nauseum?On the surface, this film is?well, it?s pretty shallow. But the character interpretation and execution brings a depth to the movie that makes it very much worth exploring. It?s about fear and desperation and shame. It?s also about judgment. It?s about how the choices we make to let people into our lives affect us far more personally than we sometimes like to think. And for that matter, how personal the very act of choosing to let someone in really is. Camera, played by Hope Davis, is a guerilla filmmaker who quietly charges into her latest subject, Guy?s, life one morning as he walks onto the street. He first expects he?s the subject of a Candid Camera prank, then of a stalker, and finally a mere object. Camera follows his every move, refusing to reveal her name, why she?s filming him; but she also refuses to stop filming. Guy?s life falls far short of idyllic anyway: he?s holding onto his job, his girlfriend and even his home by a thread. Camera?s arrival and subsequent pursuit sees to the effective dissolution of the things that sustain in his life, but he becomes obsessed nonetheless with the appeal of being watched. Camera vacillates between manipulation of his feelings and becoming an unsuspecting victim to her own.D?Onofrio?s art is that of bringing utter humanity to the darkest of monsters?or is it the other way around? Therein lies the beauty: I have never, ever encountered characters that can somehow grate so much that I want to shake the teeth from their skulls, while I want to just hold them and make it all okay, at the same time. I vacillate. I?ve watched my share of the current RTV fare: I can start out empathizing with a character and decide that I just don?t like them; I can start out hating a character and decide I wouldn?t mind having that person as a buddy (even if, in small doses); but I just can?t hold empathy for long enough either way to feel such conflict for any of them, really ? and theses are ?real people?. In this movie (like a couple of others that have made me a staunch fan of D?Onofrio?s), I want to smack him AND hug him. I want to be offended sometimes, but I just can?t because the things he expresses and the ways in which he expresses them are so intrinsically honest and real and?just human. This is a hard film to get your hands on here in the U.S., but if you have the opportunity, I?d highly recommend it. But be prepared to stare some of your darkest demons right in the eye for about ninety minutes: there is no escaping them in this vehicle.
April 23, 2004
