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Affliction (1997) by Michael Atkinson Affliction was a big-time Oscar nominee and a small-time Oscar winner (leathery old James Coburn got a Best Supporting Actor statue), but no honors were ever likely to make it a box-office hit. A dead-serious wallow in the muck, it's no one's idea of a party renter, either---unless it's a party of family therapists. This is a movie about suffering, self-destruction, suffering, poverty, psychological trauma and more suffering. Kick back with a bottle of cheap whiskey and have a bawl. Since Affliction is such an unfashionable trip into the Land of No Serotonin, the surprise is not that it did poorly at the box office, but that it got made at all. This is, in fact, the second of Russell Banks's bleak novels to reach the big screen (the first was 1997's melancholy The Sweet Hereafter). Directed by Taxi Driver-scripter Paul Schrader, Affliction recalls the fervent hyperrealism of the '70s, when people like Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman could become movie stars playing characters who struggled through desperate lives without the benefit of Spielbergian spunk or an Armani wardrobe. As Wade Whitehouse, a lost, angry New England lout on the verge of a complete meltdown, Nick Nolte proves he could've competed with the best of the '70s generation. Wade has an ex-wife who hates him and a preteen daughter he can't connect with, a dead-end job and, worst of all, a lifetime spent under the tyrannical foot of his violently rummy father (Coburn). The movie follows Wade's efforts to give his ruined life a sense of purpose by trying to discover how a local bigwig got shot in a suspicious hunting accident and by attempting to get legal custody of his daughter. But this is not a plot-driven movie, it's a character study, an in-your-face look at a man burning alive in a fire he couldn't help starting. Nolte may never get a role as tough and rangy as this one, and he handles it like he's been living this sorry prick's life out himself. PAGE 1 | 2 |
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The entire cast is excellent, except for Willem Dafoe as Nolte's intellectual brother. Every time he opens his mouth, you want Nolte to fill it with a meaty fist. Coburn was perfectly cast as the aging Gargantua---he not only looks like he could be Nolte's father, he's one of the few movie actors his age who could physically intimidate Nolte. Mary Beth Hurt is chillingly abrasive as the ex-wife, Sissy Spacek lingers as Wade's neglected girlfriend, and Brigid Tierney is heartbreaking as Wade's closed-up little girl. Affliction tells no lies, and doesn't skimp on the cold truth of how families can sometimes chew on their own extremities like trapped animals. Sure, it's depressing, but it's required viewing for anyone who pines for the days when all Hollywood stars wanted to do was play real people. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum. PAGE 1 | 2 |