08/31/2011
Review by David Anthony
Helen Mirren. Those two names are generally sufficient for me to make up my mind to see a film. Frequently all else falls lower down my screen, so to speak. In the case of The Debt, story, plot and characterization each immediately and persistently force themselves front and center upon the consciousness of the viewer. Why use plot and story in the same sentence? After all, are they not interchangeable? Plot refers to the bare essence of a tale, ideally reducible to one sentence. Story is how it is developed. Cinematic trailers typically disclose just enough of a plotline to suggest its storyline.
The plot of The Debt concerns a mystery in the past of three Mossad(Israeli secret service) agents deployed to apprehend an infamous high profile Nazi war criminal. The story is the action that actually unfolded—or did not—in prosecuting the event.
The Debt refers to what is owed the six million victims of Hitler’s genocidal plan for a “final solution” of the so-called “Jewish problem” through the literal liquidation of a people called a race. The notion of the debt is what survivors and descendants of the murder victims feel they owe relatives who made the ultimate sacrifice for them.
The film however, takes this further, for it addresses tragic memory and mystery in depicting a fictitious instance in which indebtedness is understood on another level.
The Debt is both gripping and haunting, from start to finish and worth a serious look. It is not for the faint of heart, as it contains graphic and gruesome violence, but such scenes are all in service of story and plot. Dame Helen is her absolute best, as usual.
A week ago my colleague Dennis Morton spoke about the new Irish film, The Guard. Starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, it presents a no holds barred barroom brawl of a movie which shows Eire and its people with the gloves off. It shies away from nothing, no sordid stereotype nor slur is unslung. Gleeson’s crass constable, sergeant Gerry Boyle, fuses Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Cramden and Art Carney’s Ed Norton of The Honeymooners with Archie Bunker. There is no pc pussyfooting here.
But this is no spinoff or retread of anything North American, in television or film.
From a raucous embrace of race and racism to Gleeson’s gimlet-eyed guffawing at Barack Obama himself, anything and anyone can be skewered on a spit for roasting. Billed as a comedy, The Guard is hardly that, perhaps a “dramedy,” that, dripping in sarcasm, nonetheless has its share of tender moments. Gleeson’s cop, as raunchily and rottenly as he rants and raves, is far more complex and compassionate than he seems on the surface. Therein lies the might and majesty of writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s tour de force script. Forget Mad-Eye Moody for now. See it.
For the KUSP Film Gang, this is David Anthony