Stoker
(2013)
(SPOILERS) I didn’t much care for Oldboy. I should qualify that. I thought it had an arresting premise,
and Chan wook-Park worked wonders during the early stages. But, once his
protagonist had escaped his prison (and that
incredible fight scene), the structure gradually fell apart for me. It careened
into a hysterical (not as in funny) and overwrought conclusion, both in terms
of story and the director’s OTT staging. I’m sure many would argue for its
brilliance for that very reason, but I felt that I’d been promised something
intricate and was then served a rather daft and cod-operatic denouement. I know
it’s heresy to say anything negative about Oldboy,
but there you are. Stoker’s the first
of his films I’ve seen since then, and it continues to eke out territory of
dark secrets and fucked up families. It has also a fairly standard plot, one
you could imagine adapted by another director to middling results. So this
means that Park is the star of the show; it’s his densely textured treatment of
the material that makes it stand out. I’ve seen comparisons made to Hitchcock’s
Shadow of a Doubt, but the most
obvious parallel to the suspense master is that Park takes a solid but
unremarkable script and works an at times breath-taking magic on it.
Stoker was penned
by Wentworth Miller, star of the sublimely dumb Prison Break. He has cited Shadow
of a Doubt as an inspiration for the screenplay (along with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, hence the title/surname of the
main characters), down to both pieces featuring a character named Uncle
Charlie. There isn’t much depth to his story, or to the characters. Part
psychological horror and part domestic drama, we’re never encouraged to quite
see this as a readily identifiable world. Much of that may be the hazy, heightened,
dreamlike mood with which the director suffuses Miller’s. But it’s also down to
the gothic theatricality of the source material.
Mia Wasikowska plays India Stoker, a gothically
self-involved girl whose father Richard (Dermot Mulroney) dies in a car
accident on her 18th birthday. Her relationship with her highly-strung
mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) is difficult, and the arrival of Richard’s
previously unknown brother Charlie (Matthew Goode) serves to make matters more
fractious. Charlie shows disturbing attentiveness towards India, who rejects
his overtures of friendship. In quick succession the housekeeper and a relative
go missing, both of whom knew something of Charlie’s history. Then India
discovers the housekeeper’s body in the freezer.
And so parts of this play out like a standard thriller, if a
fairly twisted one in terms of untoward familial relations (no surprise, coming
from the director of Oldboy). The
scene where Charlie confronts Aunt Gwendolyn (Jacki Weaver) could come straight
out any slasher movie, complete with a rundown motel as backdrop (the grime she
encounters in her room is almost visceral, so used is she to a more comfortable
lifestyle). When India visits the basement, it’s a dark, foreboding environment
liable to contain a bogeyman. The school bullying she endures is the only plot
thread to break through the claustrophobia of the family home, but even that is
heavy with the threat of violence and violation.
When Charlie appears in the woods, as if by magic, to kill
the boy attempting to rape India, Park allows it play out in a fairly
methodical fashion. Bad things always happen in woods. Even the timely arrival
of Charlie is the stuff of Hollywood clichés, if lent an unsettling symbiotic
quality by the recognition between the two. It’s only afterwards that the
scene, replaying through India’s mind as she showers off the mud and blood,
takes on an extraordinary quality. What begins with a girl reliving a brutal
attack becomes one of autoerotic ecstasy as she admits her arousal at Charlie’s
murderous impulses.
We follow India’s viewpoint throughout, so we are encouraged
to identify with her withdrawn yet distinctive gaze. One gets the impression
that Miller is a keen follower of Dexter,
since the childhood flashbacks strongly echo that series ; India’s father perceives
her impulses and trains her accordingly. Of course here there is the dual
purpose of making her a hunter, to prepare for any eventuality involving her
uncle.
So much of the film is the stuff of familiar plot mechanics and
clichés that it really shouldn’t work as well as it does. Charlie as a
murderous child isn’t exactly knew, and the sudden revelation of where Charlie
was this entire time works entirely because of the flourish Park lends it. And
his release on India’s 18th birthday recalls the time-coded banality
of Michael Myers, playing up the horror tropes. When India asks, “I’m curious about what happened to Jonathan”
we segue into a full account; this is Miller opting for the full Monty rather
than subtle hints and unravelling. Sot too, certain developments don’t invite
close scrutiny (he has remained in a mental hospital all this time but is
remarkably capable, be it in the kitchen or sexcapades with Evelyn).
Park perhaps overuses the reflective flashbacks but tonally
it is enriching. Stoker is a feast of
imagery, pulling us into India’s thought processes; painting a vase in art
class, she depicts the pattern inside, rather than the still life itself.
Having stabbed a school bully with a pencil, India later sharpens it in a peel
of crimson shards. The piano duet with Charlie is stunningly depicted, as India
reaches a euphoric state (they play a piece by Phillip Glass, who was
originally set to provide the whole soundtrack). Like her uncle, we have learnt
that India doesn’t like to be touched, making the moment even more powerful
(there may be a suggestion that she is on the autistic spectrum, but this is
really secondary to her primary motivation of self-actualisation). Combing
Evelyn’s hair, the camera trains down and dissolves seamlessly into a field of
tall grass as India recalls a hunting expedition with he father. Then there’s
the incredibly unsubtle symbolism of a spider crawling up her thigh and Charlie unfurling his belt as if in prelude to a sexual encounter (Park’s
film persistently teeters on the brink of blackly comic absurdity).
At times Park brings the attentiveness to the microcosm we
expect from Nicolas Roeg, but combined with the macabre dissonance of David
Lynch. He’s unable to conjure the resonance of either, because the subject
matter is so run-of-the-mill, but one cannot deny he milks the screenplay for
every nuance and then some. Yet, despite
the more Grand Guignol aspects, he also tempers himself in a manner absent from
Oldboy; this is about repressed
emotions finding release, and Park restricting himself on that level serves the
piece. The pacing and editing are astonishingly confident, flowing and ebbing
or torrenting as appropriate. The sound work is similarly acute, with a fine
score from Clint Mansell.
Park has cast his film well, but it’s Wasikowska who really
stands out. Hers is a captivating performance, remote and delicate yet
confident and intense. Her large dark eyes are a well of unknowable depths. Yet
we identify with her, even as she unfurls herself as a fully-fledged psychopath
in the final scene (featuring Ralph Brown, Danny from Withnail & I). This is the sort of role Winona Ryder would have
given her eye teeth for back in day, and there’s a trace of Lydia from Beetlejuice in India’s brooding
insightfulness. But I can’t imagine Ryder reaching the heights or depths
Wasikowska explores here. Goode is good, although he announces himself as suspicious
from his first scene; it serves to underline the tensions of a film that manages
both incredible subtlety and a crashing lack of it. As for Kidman, Evelyn’s
brittle insecurity (not as young as she was, jealous of her daughter and
showing zero reserve in making her intentions towards Charlie known) seems like
the perfect fit. Except that there’s never a trace of sympathy for her; perhaps
this lop-sidedness is an intentional consequence of India’s point of view.
Stoker is no masterpiece. Its gothic potboiler roots are far
too manifest. But Park has invested it with such style and warped beauty that it
nearly escapes its limitations. And for Wasikowska, hitherto a very pretty but
relatively unchallenged performer, this is an incredible calling card.
****
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