Stoker (***)

With this quasi-Gothic horror drama, Korean auteur Chan-wook Park makes his English-language debut. Given that his action film Oldboy is one of the most widely seen Korean films internationally, the move seems nearly inevitable. But where that film (and the Vengeance trilogy, of which Oldboy is the middle offering) relies on kinetic energy, this is quite the opposite. Stillness and quiet are the hallmarks of this creepily mysterious tale of a  family coping with the loss of a husband and father.

Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska play mother and daughter. They don’t talk much, and certainly not loudly. Their new houseguest, Charlie Stoker (Matthew Goode), is the brother of the deceased, and he doesn’t say too much either, but, though he’s been abroad for 20 years, now seems to be everywhere. We presume the mystery will have something to do with the manner of the death, which was not natural, and what kind of character Charlie Stoker is, but it unfolds slowly, though not dully. Art directed to within an inch of its life, Park’s carefully composed shots (mostly in a large house) and the spare dialogue create suspense rather than bore. Wasikowska’s intense stare (and she is the star of the movie) seems to penetrate the screen.

Still, you have to like this kind of thing, where even the characters are stylized, where (for example) an 18-year-old waits days (half an hour into the movie) to ask why she hadn’t known her father had a brother. Park’s lingering close-ups are so artful that one is very conscious of them. The dialogue is not just quiet, but unnaturally so. Where one reacts viscerally to Oldboy, reactions to this are likely to be more detached. In terms of story, there is a reasonable payoff. As a decorative object I much admired this film; Park is obviously skilled, but on the whole I wished he had not displayed those skills so obviously.

IMDb link

viewed 3/28/13 7:10 at Ritz East and reviewed 3/28/13

Martha Marcy May Marlene (***3/4)

I know this indie drama was effective because I was still a little unsettled ten or fifteen minutes after it ended. It would be incorrect to say it was about a cult (a word the film itself avoids), or why someone would join one. It is instead about a transition back to normalcy; the curious title intends to evoke the fragile state of one uncertain of herself. If this were a war film one would say it is about PTSD. Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) has just left, maybe escaped, after a time with the group, and is staying with her sister (Sarah Paulson).

Flashbacks depict the place she has just left, an upstate New York farmhouse. The dozen or so folks there seem like latter-day flower children practicing a back-to-nature sort of self-reliance. John Hawkes plays the leader, whose palpable creepiness (to me, anyway) is the only sign, at first, of things gone amiss. You’ve seen these kind of flashbacks before, where the scene in the present merges into a similar-looking one in the past. But first-time writer-director Sean Durkin does it about as well as I’ve seen, so that it takes you a few seconds to realize the scene has moved from the sister’s house to the farmhouse. As for Martha, the past blurs with the present, and reality with paranoia.

Durkin gives hints about Martha’s back story in her interactions with the sister, who is living with her fiancé (Hugh Dancy). The story is about family dynamics and Martha’s erratic behavior. But the mood comes close to psychological horror. Or suspense, more than horror. In any case, Durkin and Olsen give us one of the most subtle, yet gripping portrayals of a damaged individual.

IMDB link

viewed 8/22/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening]