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Anne Reid’s gutsy, masterful
performance in the title role of The Mother throws down the gauntlet
in this year’s Oscar race. She plays a newly widowed woman who gets entangled
with a married man… almost half her age… who also happens to be her
daughter’s boyfriend.

            May
(Reid) is understandably shaken by her husband’s death and goes to stay in
London with her self-absorbed kids, presumably in hopes of some comfort. But
her son Bobby is caught up in his work and uninterested family, while her needy
daughter Paula is involved with Darren (Daniel Craig of Sylvia), the contractor building Bobby’s solarium. Paula enlists
May to get a feel for Darren’s intentions and May becomes drawn to the brooding
handyman, who makes her think there might be life after death.

            Don’t
think The Mother is some feel-good
romp, however. It’s messy and uncomfortable, full of frustrating and puzzling
behavior. None of the characters here are particularly likeable — the most
sympathetic one is screwing the man her daughter loves — but they are,
refreshingly, warts-and-all real.

            Director
Roger Michell, who was also responsible for Persuasion,
elicits flawless work from his entire cast, which is no doubt made easier when
the script is by Hanif Kureishi (My
Beautiful Launderette). And watch for the inventive camera work by Alwin
Küchler, as he doesn’t usually go for the obvious shot.

            You’ve
probably noticed that when critics refer to an actor’s bravery in a role, what
they’re really saying is “I can’t believe someone so old/flawed took her
clothes off.” (And I use “her” because, sadly, we are all far more critical of
women.) I definitely appreciate the filmmaker’s desire for realism — at some
point in the day, everyone gets naked — but is onscreen nudity necessary, or
does it distract the moviegoer right out of the story? Or, worse, is it a
simple marketing decision designed to get tongues wagging and people in seats?

— Dayna Papaleo

“Wuh?”

            If
many brains producing the same thought simultaneously can produce a collective,
audible sound, that’s the one I heard as the lights went up at the screening for
the new Robert Redford flick The Clearing.

            At
first the film exudes the same quiet grace of its characters’ affluent lives,
with a low-key, studied intent. I was willing to ignore some early red-flag,
familiarly hokey dialogue as things moved swiftly into the kidnapping plot that
finds rich guy Redford wrested from his life by Willem Dafoe.

            A
wife and children remain, hostages of the threat that the man they never fully
had the attention of will never grace them again. This boring family, now
headed by Helen Mirren, go through the paces of dejection and occasional anger,
and it’s all restrained in a civilized kind of way. The daughter, just off a
plane to be with her family, even has headphones around her neck. I guess a
plane ride is still boring without them even when your father has been kidnapped.

            The
week or so of their waiting to see what will develop with the aloof kidnapper
and the sweet time he takes with his demands is one half of the movie. No
surprises or interesting developments occur whatsoever, unless you haven’t seen
the trailer, in which case I guess you are in for one mild surprise. There is,
however, some more hackneyed dialogue, as well as the eventual foothold of the
terse, percussive music more commonly found in the credits of cop shows like
NYPD Blue.

            This
is intercut with the other half, which, instead of a week, awkwardly takes
place over only a day. This is the first day of the story, from Redford’s point
of view as he is led through the woods by a chatty, mysterious Dafoe. This
section offers whatever pleasures there are to be had, including a great moment
as Dafoe is putting tennis shoes on Redford, whose hands are bound. Redford
looks on with incredulity at the ridiculousness of it, and then up at the
beauty of the trees and sky, taking in the concreteness of the moment, fixing
the scope of it in his mind.

            Watching
his character’s confident, professional charm trying to undo the ties of
Dafoe’s resolve is another encouraging element, but this sputters out in time
along with every other promising facet of the film. The massive surprise is
that there are zero surprises in store, nothing you haven’t already hashed out
for yourself from the beginning. I’m not talking about being able to guess the
big reveals at the end-there just are none.

            The
big point of the film? That despite his flaws and absences, Redford’s character
still loves his wife very much. But that’s something they make clear within the
first five minutes of the movie. The Clearing is strangely
pointless, but with fine performances from all three veteran actors, it’s at
least a Whiffle Ball with class.

            You
can’t possibly miss the point of this week’s other kidnapping feature, Try
and Get Me! (1950). Didactic to the point of lunacy, it’s a movie with
a message — one it delivers in as delightfully ham-handed a way as the
industrial films being churned out for classroom instruction in the same
period. While only the beginning and end of the film live up to the wild
expectations of the title, there’s plenty to enjoy in between.

            Lloyd
Bridges, as a too-slick criminal with no conscience, turns in a performance
which lunges from snappy and electric to just plain over the top. He talks
Howard, a sad sack with money troubles, into being his cohort, and leads him
into a misbegotten kidnapping scheme that goes wrong right away. Before the men
can be tried, a gossip columnist whips the town into a frenzy with his
editorializing, and soon the town is storming the police station with lynching
on the brain.

            The
earnest melodrama of much of the picture is propped up by Bridges, a
deliciously weird performance by the woman who plays Howard’s date, and by it’s
own cheesy overemphasis on the moral lesson — not to mention the brutally
stark ending, which takes the cheese right out of the burger.

            Jeff
Bridges will introduce his father’s film, which screens at the Dryden Theater
on Saturday, July 24, and later that night will be back at the Dryden for “An
Evening With Jeff Bridges.”

— Andy Davis

This article appears in Jul 21-27, 2004.