Tim’s Pics #2: “The Gift” (2000)

 

This is going to have to be an occasional series. More than any other person in my world, Tim Kozlowski has seen an immense number of films, many of which I haven’t. I will also argue that his taste is impeccable. And to be sure, we may not agree on the quality of a film. Chances are good, though, that if he has a recommendation, it’s worth following up on. In fact, he should be writing his own blog!

This is the second movie I am taking a look at here that the esteemed Mr. K has suggested (the first being "Dodsworth"). Sam Raimi’s a genius, for sure, and “The Gift” has him working from Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson’s script. It’s a solid piece of Southern Gothic mixed with well-rendered characters at the center of which is psychic Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett once again delivering a master class) who as one character tells her, is the heart of the small town in Georgia.

Despite Raimi’s pedigree for horror, suspense, and general creepiness, this is Raimi the poet. The Spanish moss hanging from entwined branches of arboreal cupolas against a moonlit sky, mangroves like sentinels aligned along a river’s length, and the general sense of languor permeate the film. There is a pensive air throughout and Annie’s “gift” isn’t played fatuously or even treated as all that unusual. It may be mocked by the local sheriff (J.K. Simmons turning in another fully fleshed character that would have otherwise been a sketch in lesser hands) or the defense attorney who attempts to belittle Annie’s contribution to the murder case around which the plot revolves; but we see the toll it takes on her repeatedly as the story moves along.

As with the best of the genre, the film isn’t really about the protagonist’s power; it’s about the trauma and misery that riddles the characters’ lives. It’s here that Thornton and Epperson’s script gives full voice to the afflictions we visit on one another and the sometimes fatal consequences those entail. From Keanu Reeves’ wife-beating abuser to Giovanni Ribisi’s (in a defining role; this could have gone so very wrong and Ribisi brought an enormous range of emotion to his role) Buddy, no one is without unresolved issues, often deep ones. Especially not Annie, who has yet to come to terms with her husband’s death.

Annie’s clients come to her for therapy as much as for any prognostication she can offer and it is her empathy that drives the film while leaving you to wonder why she won’t just talk to her oldest son, who’s practically begging her to, about his dad. What Raimi captures – and it’s there in the script – is how definitive a parent’s power is in a Southern upbringing. As a kid, you might question your folks, but you were unlikely to gain any traction from that questioning and a curt dismissal was often the best you could expect (speaking from experience). Similarly, here, Blanchett is never nasty to her eldest, but she pays his concerns so little mind that the offhand cruelty feels almost out of character. It is, but not because of him, it’s patently because she’s not ready to deal with her loss.

If this isn’t enough to handle, there’s Hilary Swank’s Valerie Barksdale whose face is battered by her husband Donnie. Keanu Reeves is scary good as a bullying fundamentalist Christian philanderer who has no problem forcing his way into Annie’s house to threaten her and her boys and warning her to stay away from his wife. She’s told Valerie to leave Donnie, to get help and so on, but we know how toxic these relationships are and both Swank and Reeves are able to convey that sense of not being able to change their behavior.

Then there’s Buddy, who may be somewhat developmentally challenged but you can read the abuse in his eyes. He sees Annie as his only friend, the only person he can talk to, and she senses that there is a deep issue between him and his father. He denies that there’s a problem and gets upset when Annie presses too hard at him.

As we meet each of these characters, there’s a kind of hermetic closeness that settles around Annie. Even the antagonistic elements seem drawn to her beyond their control but not in any overt sense present in the script. Even when we step out of this circle and begin to be introduced to the wider community via a party at the town’s country club, there’s a dreamlike air over the proceedings. We’ve caught glimpses of Annie’s vision earlier when she meets Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear, the sincerest nice guy actor around) and his fiancée Jessica (a too briefly seen Katie Holmes) and can safely surmise that they’re going to encounter some issues. (Look, that’s understatement; trust me, what they’re headed for is extreme unpleasantness.)

At the country club, Annie has a vision of a more mundane sort when she sees Jessica getting ready to get it on with the town’s powerful lawyer, David Duncan (Gary Cole – goddamn! He is soooo good at playing these shits!) in the bathroom. Later, she comes outside and chats with Wayne and doesn’t, of course, let on about what she’s seen. However, you know it’s going to come out sooner or later.

Indeed, no secret stays put in a small town for very long and it doesn’t help when there’s someone for whom there are potentially no secrets.

Soon enough, we discover Jessica’s gone missing and the sheriff, Wayne, and her father come to Annie for help. She gives a fairly unsuccessful reading but later encounters Jessica’s chained and bloodied corpse floating in the space above her. She has already had a nightmare of being strangled after he encounter with Donnie, and while initially pleasant, had a conversation with her deceased grandmother (Rosemary Harris!) warning her of a coming storm. It’s safe to say that Annie’s gift isn’t always welcome.

As the story unfolds, Jessica’s body is found in the pond on Donnie’s property and he is quickly arrested for her murder. It isn’t long before he’s tried and sentenced and in one of those moments where my suspension of disbelief was strained more than by Annie’s second sight, was why the judge didn’t throw the case out when it came to Annie’s testimony. A mistrial would have been likely because the police were pursuing an investigation based on an unprovable basis. While it is in keeping with how accepted her ability is by the film’s logic, I still had to work to stay with the trial from that point.

The first day of the trial is the opening arguments and examination and cross-examination of Donnie. Coming out afterward, Annie encounters Buddy who begs her to listen to him. He is extremely upset and the bad thoughts are coming more and he finds himself touching himself when he thinks about his father. She’s repulsed, tells him things will be fine but that she can’t really talk to him because she’s going through a lot, as well.

Later that evening, Annie gets a call to go to Buddy’s where he’s tied his father to a chair and is flogging him violently, payback for the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. Buddy screams at Annie his sense of betrayal and at his mother the recriminations a lifetime in coming. His mother had not called the police because Buddy said he’d kill his father if she did, but at this point, that becomes moot when he douses the old man with gasoline and sets him alight. Buddy is remanded into custody, his father is on the way to the ICU, and Annie has to testify the next day.

Donnie is sentenced, of course, and Jessica later sees that he is innocent. She calls on David Duncan to reopen the case, but when he resists the idea, she mentions that she saw his quickie with Jessica and would go public with if he didn’t. It’s at this point that the script falters.

The issue with this particular form of the Gothic tale is that it’s extremely difficult to handle the deus ex machina of the paranormal with the same degree of gravity of the “real” world and/or vice versa in order to make both narrative aspects work. I don’t faulty anyone involved by this point, but the spinning plates are out of sync with one another. When Wayne come to Annie to impress on her to do a reading, you already know he’s the culprit. You do. If you don’t, you really haven’t been paying attention. Not because he’s done anything overt, but because he hasn’t. I honestly didn’t buy his dissolution after Jessica’s body was found as much more than him realizing what he had done. But to be sure, this misses the point. Or at least, I think it misses the point that Thornton and Epperson were getting at; everyone in this film among the main characters is or has been damaged.  

And again, at the center of all these storms is Annie. Of course, when Wayne suggests that he and Annie go back to the pond so she can reconnect to the energy there, he knows she’s going to see the full story play out. He knows he’s going to see Jessica mocking him, flaunting her affair with Donnie and demeaning his masculinity, and throwing in his face that the only reason they were getting married is because her father likes him. Of course, he kills her in a fit. And so on. If I don’t sound enthusiastic at this point, it’s because I’m not. This wasn’t the longest stretch in the film, but it felt like it. And worse, it felt like it because it was telegraphed.

He strikes Annie hard enough to draw blood and we see his arm coming down to deliver the final blow that we had seen in her visions and we see Buddy halt the strike and knock Wayne out. Once Wayne is secured in the trunk of Annie’s car, Buddy confesses he escaped the holding facility he was in, tells Annie that she was his only friend and he loves her. Parked in front of the police station, she tells him he’ll have to go back to the facility, he agrees and when she turns around before going in.

In catching up with the sheriff, we learn that Wayne has confessed to everything and he tells Annie that it couldn’t have been Buddy that saved her since he had committed suicide at six o’clock that evening. She produces a small baby’s kerchief she had given Buddy earlier in the movie that he returned to her and the scene ends.

I want to pause for a minute. A lot happened in the denouement that would have been tough for any filmmaker to handle. As I mentioned, the reveal that Wayne had done Jessica in wasn’t particularly revelatory. The wrap up exposition was shot beautifully (the movie is gorgeous, thanks to Raimi’s long time DP, Jamie Anderson) but the momentum was unsustainable and frankly, wasn’t there. I realize that we are looking at a “horror” film to some degree, but folded into is suspense that has long since dissipated and I can think of a couple of other ways this could have played out more efficiently and as dramatically, given the strengths of the performer.

Yes, the confrontation on the pier on the pond was necessary, but the exposition could have happened sooner with Wayne’s attack filmed at a faster and more brutal angle and rate. Yes, Buddy by this point,  had to be included (but here again, there could have been earlier, other choices made with his character that might have compromised or erased his significance; as much as I loved Ribisi’s performance, I could see other options available without losing the supernatural element). It is simply a clunky conclusion to a fairly packed narrative. And there’s the rub: “fairly packed” borders on overstuffed. It’s a matter of trying to do too much with what’s at hand and having said that, it’s wise that Raimi did take his time and let the story unfold as leisurely as he did.

So did the denouement derail the film? No. It actually did not. The final shot is short but emotional; we see Annie with her boys at her husband’s grave in a group embrace that holds a tremendous amount of weight as Raimi moves in for a tight shot. I came away with a sense that this family, these characters had crossed a hurdle. There will still be issues, but a significant one has been met and it may extend to Annie becoming more effective in her role as that town’s soul.