Thank God for the war in Iraq so that we can have movies as important as "The Messenger."
That's how it feels.
In the "The Messenger," Montgomery (Ben Foster) is returning home from the war only to be put on casualty notification work with Stone (Woody Harrelson). That's the setup. In the same way that Avatar's plot is the setup for special effects, The Messenger's is the setup for tears - tears bought, not earned. It promises to give us the real deal on grieving families and soldiers returning home, but in it's overwritten, overstylized way, it's really only about one thing: the audience member's susceptibility to shameless emotional manipulation.
Foster is a shell-shocked vet and Harrelson is a career soldier who's never seen action. Harrelson deals with his work through denial, Foster - the hero of the story - through a certain brand of, what I would call, "righteous nihilism." Foster had a girl he left home, played by Jena Malone, who shows up in the beginning for some nude scenes - shot from behind, with the nudity obscured just enough to keep this arty and tasteful. Malone and Foster have a conversation about marriage that turns out (in a clever gotchya! moment) to refer to Malone and her new fiancée, not Foster.
Foster was injured in the war. His left eye is dried out and he must give it constant eye-drops, providing a nice visual metaphor for a man who's been hardened and has to force himself to cry. Charlie Kaufman already used this image for laughs in "Synecdoche, NY," and I think he had the right idea. Foster apparently has another injury in his leg, but it doesn't seem to effect his walking and indeed it's rarely brought up.
The casualty notification scenes each come with their own gimmick. A dead soldier's pregnant girlfriend Foster and Harrelson have to awkwardly wait with while the soldier's mother comes home from the convenience store. A man who's surprised to find out his daughter didn't tell him she married the dead soldier before he left. A man who requires a translator. They accidentally run into a parent in a gas station, right before they were supposed to call on him, which in this movie is like the equivalent of a mad killer jumping out from the side of the screen in a horror movie.
They only have two standard runs that I recall, both with celebrities. The first is Steve Buscemi, as a father, who responds to news of his son's death by gazing tearfully off-screen and speechifying: "Look at that tree..." The second is Samantha Morton, as a widow. She handles it as politely as she can, and Morton handles the scene like a professional. A romance starts brewing between her and the Foster character. But it's forbidden, forbidden!
I knew I was in trouble about ten minutes into this dreck when Foster argues he can't do the work because he's not religious and Harrelson responds somberly, "You're not there for God. You're not there for heaven." Morton, later on, talks about finding her husband's shirt in the closet. This is what she says: "It smelled of rage and fear. It smelled of the man he had become." It's the kind of script that, if you had no taste, you'd think it deserved an Oscar nomination.
This mannered quality isn't only in the way it's written, but in the way it's shot. For the most part it's filmed with a stable, occasionally moving camera - except for the casualty notification scenes, which are straight-up hand-held shaky-cam. This is to communicate the...shakiness of the emotions, I guess. There's a long (and I mean long) conversation between Foster and Morton that's shot in one take, but it feels like the director was thinking, "I wanna try out one of those cool long take things like Mike Leigh does."
It's not all bad. The performances by Harrelson, Morton, Malone and Buscemi are effective (I'm still not sold on Foster, with his attitude, who comes off more like the lead singer of a really "dark" rock band than like a soldier who's seen action). The last half hour, when it leaves the casualty notification stuff behind and focuses on the main characters, works pretty well. There's a final monologue that illustrates what it's trying to illustrate without getting too poetic about it.
But by that point I was already too angry. I hated...most of this movie.
5/10
That's how it feels.
In the "The Messenger," Montgomery (Ben Foster) is returning home from the war only to be put on casualty notification work with Stone (Woody Harrelson). That's the setup. In the same way that Avatar's plot is the setup for special effects, The Messenger's is the setup for tears - tears bought, not earned. It promises to give us the real deal on grieving families and soldiers returning home, but in it's overwritten, overstylized way, it's really only about one thing: the audience member's susceptibility to shameless emotional manipulation.
Foster is a shell-shocked vet and Harrelson is a career soldier who's never seen action. Harrelson deals with his work through denial, Foster - the hero of the story - through a certain brand of, what I would call, "righteous nihilism." Foster had a girl he left home, played by Jena Malone, who shows up in the beginning for some nude scenes - shot from behind, with the nudity obscured just enough to keep this arty and tasteful. Malone and Foster have a conversation about marriage that turns out (in a clever gotchya! moment) to refer to Malone and her new fiancée, not Foster.
Foster was injured in the war. His left eye is dried out and he must give it constant eye-drops, providing a nice visual metaphor for a man who's been hardened and has to force himself to cry. Charlie Kaufman already used this image for laughs in "Synecdoche, NY," and I think he had the right idea. Foster apparently has another injury in his leg, but it doesn't seem to effect his walking and indeed it's rarely brought up.
The casualty notification scenes each come with their own gimmick. A dead soldier's pregnant girlfriend Foster and Harrelson have to awkwardly wait with while the soldier's mother comes home from the convenience store. A man who's surprised to find out his daughter didn't tell him she married the dead soldier before he left. A man who requires a translator. They accidentally run into a parent in a gas station, right before they were supposed to call on him, which in this movie is like the equivalent of a mad killer jumping out from the side of the screen in a horror movie.
They only have two standard runs that I recall, both with celebrities. The first is Steve Buscemi, as a father, who responds to news of his son's death by gazing tearfully off-screen and speechifying: "Look at that tree..." The second is Samantha Morton, as a widow. She handles it as politely as she can, and Morton handles the scene like a professional. A romance starts brewing between her and the Foster character. But it's forbidden, forbidden!
I knew I was in trouble about ten minutes into this dreck when Foster argues he can't do the work because he's not religious and Harrelson responds somberly, "You're not there for God. You're not there for heaven." Morton, later on, talks about finding her husband's shirt in the closet. This is what she says: "It smelled of rage and fear. It smelled of the man he had become." It's the kind of script that, if you had no taste, you'd think it deserved an Oscar nomination.
This mannered quality isn't only in the way it's written, but in the way it's shot. For the most part it's filmed with a stable, occasionally moving camera - except for the casualty notification scenes, which are straight-up hand-held shaky-cam. This is to communicate the...shakiness of the emotions, I guess. There's a long (and I mean long) conversation between Foster and Morton that's shot in one take, but it feels like the director was thinking, "I wanna try out one of those cool long take things like Mike Leigh does."
It's not all bad. The performances by Harrelson, Morton, Malone and Buscemi are effective (I'm still not sold on Foster, with his attitude, who comes off more like the lead singer of a really "dark" rock band than like a soldier who's seen action). The last half hour, when it leaves the casualty notification stuff behind and focuses on the main characters, works pretty well. There's a final monologue that illustrates what it's trying to illustrate without getting too poetic about it.
But by that point I was already too angry. I hated...most of this movie.
5/10