Affliction (1997)

What happens when directors attempt to make a serious film about the evil that Men do? The result is often a sentimental, self-sentimental even, account of the Eternal Nature of Men, men who long for .... but who ... . One could say that Affliction (Paul Schrader again!) shares one or two traits with that genre (the conclusion of the film is very much in line with conventional ideas about the ways in which masculinity is doomed, but trapped in an unchanging loop of violence and cruelty), but not in a way that would overshadow the multiple reasons why this is a good film. Let's start with the style. Set in a wintry landscape, a small town in New Hampshire, the god-forsaken countryside that we know but never get tired of, the film moves patiently into a nightmare that never ends. The camera never loses its patience, the music makes the atmosphere even more harrowing (though it sometimes borders on the overly dramatic). Nick Nolte & James Coburn - diabolic.

Nolte plays the police officer, Wade, whose life turns from bad to worse. He wants custody of his daughter even though he cannot socialize with her without making the situation unbearable. He thinks he digs up some serious Bad Stuff, looking for what he thinks is a murderer. When he goes to visit his parents with his girlfriend, they find that the father has been to drunk even to acknowledge that the mother is dead. Wade sets out to take care of it all: to fix custody of his daughter, to fix a god damn toothache, to get clear about who killed that union man - and to take care of his father. - - OK, in some respects, this is a familiar story: cop loses it, reality -> twisted fantasies. But what could have become a cliche is handled extremely well here, so that even I at least is immersed in this strange landscape that reminds me of both Twin peaks and the equally excellent moral drama A simply plan. We see Nolte's character and we see a man in whom all levees are about to break. He does this kind of thing a million times better than for example Jack Nicholson would do. I wouldn't say he is subtle, but somehow, this explosive energy is real.

The merit of the film is that it goes through with dealing with many themes at the same time. It is the story about a man on the brink of hysteria, but also a town on the brink of destruction. It is a story about trauma but also about the way bad relations are multiplied. As if this were not enough, there is a philosophizing voiceover - an intruder into the quiet pace of the film, a perspective stamped on the images with the air of 'this is the truth'. Voice-overs almost never contribut something important and nor does it here.  

What is captivating here is the way Nolte's Wade drifts further away from reality and is more and more one with his toothache. The world is synonymous with his toothache. The past blurs with the present and the elderly father's grin is just the same as in Wade's memories. Wade might be the most world-weary existence captured on film.

The thing is, that in the end, Affliction exudes sadness, not sentimentality.