THE MESSENGER

Written by Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman
Directed by Oren Moverman
Starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton


Dale Martin: Why are you here? Why aren’t you dead?

THE MESSENGER opens on an eye. This is an eye that has clearly been through difficult terrain and has seen its fair share of unnecessary horror. Its sadness and despair hang in its pupil, weighting in down as the tears inevitably fall from the corners. The worst of it is, that this eye hasn’t seen anything yet.


The eye to this particular world belongs to Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster). Will has been wounded in batter in Iraq and has been sent back to the United States to take on new responsibilities while he heals and completes the duration of his term with the army. Let alone that he doesn’t want to be back to begin with, he soon gets an assignment that he can’t stand. It is now his job to announce the deaths of American soldiers to their next of kin with the deepest of sympathies from the U.S. government. To you or me, this might seem like a relief but it isn’t long before Will wants back in the field.


He is literally the bearer of bad news and this is a burden that is shouldered bravely and strongly by a mature Foster. As Will, he is more contained than usual, holding his angst inside instead of letting it all out spastically. Like the character he is playing, Foster appears to have lived a little more and subsequently learned some more about life’s hardships. Working opposite veteran character actors, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton, certainly doesn’t hurt either. Harrelson is his commanding officer and his own command of his internal conflict reminds us just how dynamic he is as an actor. Morton meanwhile pulls out a heartbreaking performance out of very little screen time as a new widow, unsure of how to proceed with her life.


Foster’s newfound control is certainly put to good use in THE MESSENGER. The army has a very strict policy about how the news of a dead soldier is to be delivered. First of all, it must be done in a timely fashion. With so many ways to get news out there today, if the army doesn’t get to the next of kin fast enough, they could just end up seeing live footage of the death online. Secondly, the job is to deliver the news, offer condolences and provide direction for the bereaved. At no time though is one allowed to console with a comforting touch. The worst news imaginable is delivered and sympathy is expressed but never shown.


Naturally, the news is never taken that well. Whoever hears it can sense that whoever is delivering it isn’t as sincere as they appear. The same can be said for first time director, Oren Moverman. Moverman presents himself as another messenger, just of a different kind. As THE MESSENGER exposes the desolate lack of emotion expressed by the army at these horrifying moments, Moverman hopes that we too will get his message of futility. Unfortunately, despite some great moments and performances, it is just as easy to see through Moverman as it is to see through the army.

Black Sheep TIFF Review: THE UNLOVED

I didn’t write it down but the number of displaced, unwanted children in the UK according to the epilogue in actress-turned-director, Samantha Morton’s THE UNLOVED, was a shockingly appalling number, I assure you. The reason I didn’t write it down is because I needed to get out of that theatre so badly. Unwanted children is a serious subject and Morton has always proven herself to be a very serious actress. THE UNLOVED however is so intensely serious in both its creation and topic that it only serves to put its audience off instead of getting them involved.


There really isn’t a story to speak of. Morton just follows a lovely little eleven-year-old girl named Lucy (Molly Windsor) who has just been beaten by her father and who is estranged from her mother. She is subsequently placed in a government-owned child-care house and we in turn watch as she is exposed to theft, drugs and sex between some of the guardians and the older kids living in the house. She basically comes and goes as she pleases and all her social worker can do is try to get through to her that she really shouldn’t wander off. There are of course well-intentioned folks working in the house as well but the overall experience is pretty near deplorable. There is clearly a better upbringing to be had.


Lucy is basically the observer and subsequently she passes on her child’s perspective to us but we never get it. What we do get is what seems more like Morton’s perspective of what’s going on. Morton understands how bad the situation is and, as adults, we can see for ourselves and figure it out pretty quickly. If she really wanted us to break over what we were seeing though, she might have let Lucy do more of the looking.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

Written and Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis and Catherine Keener


Caden Cotard: We’re all hurdling towards death and yet, here we are, each of us knowing that we’ll die and each of us hoping that we won’t.

It doesn’t take a genius to acknowledge Charlie Kaufman as a genius or something awful close to it. Genius can move the world forward and illuminate the darkest of spaces. Genius can also go right over the heads of all those who are not as fortunate to be counted among the world’s smartest. I don’t mean to imply that Kaufman intentionally speaks over the heads of his audience in his directorial debut, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, but rather that he simply didn’t communicate his insight as succinctly as he could have. Kaufman was smart to surround himself with a cast of actors talented enough to pull off the enormously ambitious scope of his project, but despite raising many an intriguing question, he provides very few answers.


Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a Schenectady, New York, resident and theatre director. We meet Caden on what could be pretty much be any morning, it would seem. He is reading random headlines from the paper; his wife, Adele (Catherine Keener) is staring blankly out the window, and their daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein) is contentedly eating her cereal, watching cartoons and asking if she should be concerned about the colour of her poop. It is on this morning, the morning like all the others, that Caden’s life takes that last step over the edge and begins falling to its inevitable demise. His body betrays him with inexplicable afflictions; his wife betrays him shortly after and runs off to Europe with their daughter; and it isn’t long before he is crying in the middle of sex. Anyone in Caden’s position would probably question their reason for living but once Caden gets started on this slippery slope, he realizes just how hard it is to get back up and out.


Caden and Kaufman are not so far from each other. They are both men stuck in their own heads who cannot fully function in society with all its rules and expectations. Caden proceeds to begin mounting his masterpiece when his life falls apart in order to climb out of his own hole. The concept, if you can call it that, is essentially a recreation of everything that is happening in Caden’s life. Seeing it in front of him is supposed to make it all make sense. All it does though is encourage is obsessive self-thinking, to say nothing of the self-loathing. Meanwhile, Kaufman, the man who concocted this complex web, gets tangled up in how intricate it all is. Caden hires an actor to play himself, an assistant and an actress to play that assistant. Before you know it, there is another actor who has stepped in to play Caden and he is bumped to the role of a cleaning lady. It’s art imitating life trying desperately to make sense of what the art really means. Kaufman throws so many concepts up on the screen and alone, some of them are calming while others are chaotic, but never do all of them come together to say anything clearly.


Watching SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is like being trapped in Kaufman’s mind for a couple of hours. There is beauty everywhere around you; there is insight to be imparted at every turn. There is also too much to process in just one sitting. That being said, sitting with it too long only leads to many more unanswered questions and Kaufman has been sitting with it non-stop for years now. He fell deep into the dark caves of his mind and gave us what he could to make sense of it but it wasn’t enough. And if Kaufman can’t make sense of his own genius mind, I’m not sure how he expected us to do it.