Schrader's new film 'Affliction' cuts, but only skin-deep

By Tam Notosusanto

JAKARTA (JP): The world in Affliction is a gloomy New Hampshire town coated with snow-white somberness. It is a seemingly quiet and still world that camouflages the unhappy lives of its denizens. It is an unhappy world of one man in particular, Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte), who takes us on a slow, painful excursion of deep wounds and gradual destruction.

From the very start, writer-director Paul Schrader throws hints that this is not going to be one blithesome ride. As we go through the opening credits, we see still photos of houses and roads, beautifully blanketed by snow but empty looking and barren. Then we have our very first scene: a grueling car trip in which Wade attempts, unsuccessfully, to coax his young daughter, Jill (Brigid Tierney) into attending a kids' Halloween party she has no desire for.

His rocky relationship with his daughter is the least of all the things that make him such a sad-sack loser. Wade still has to cope with a traumatic divorce. Every day, he slugs through his dull double-duty as a town policeman and an employee of a local businessman. He surrenders himself more and more to booze. And the ghastly images of childhood abuse now and then pop up in both his nightmares and daydreams. The only sanctuary that Wade can find comfort in is his patient girlfriend, the diner waitress Margie (Sissy Spacek).

But suddenly, the curious death of an out-of-towner injects vigor to Wade's life. He is suspicious with the testimony of his coworker, Jack (Jim True), that businessman Evan Twombley accidentally shot himself in the woods while the two of them were deer hunting. It gets more interesting as he learns that Twombley's son-in-law stands to inherit a fortune, and that there is a possibility Wade and Jack's employer has something to do with the "murder".

The discoveries send Wade on an investigation, and for once in his life, he experiences self-importance, dreaming of becoming some kind of a hero once he is able to crack this case. In one touching moment, Wade spills his guts and his new-found hope in a long-distance call to his younger brother, Rolfe (Willem Dafoe): "I've always felt like a whip dog, I've growled before, but I've never bitten."

This sudden empowerment also has an impact on other aspects of his life. Wade finally decides to do things that he has always been hesitant to do. He makes efforts to seek custody of his only child; and he proposes to Margie. It certainly looks like Wade is going to make it after all.

But there's a demon from the past he still can't escape. It's his elderly father, Glen (James Coburn), a spiteful old man who has left a history of bruises on his two sons and still verbally abuses them through their middle age. The death of his mother leaves Wade with the obligation of tending to his father, and this could not have occurred at a worse moment in his life. His investigation, reaching a dead end, has driven him with blind obsession, and as he goes over the edge, he is losing everything he has: his job, his little girl, his lover and even his sanity.

Affliction is a finely etched study of the impending, inevitable doom that seems to be destined for the poor souls too unfortunate to be able to survive it. It has the absolute resemblance to the beautiful Canadian film The Sweet Hereafter, released one year before, which also subtly discusses fate and man's vain struggle to flee it. Russell Banks wrote the novels that are the bases of both films, and his stories are evidence that he is a master storyteller of human tragedy.

Unfortunately, writer-director Schrader fails to deliver what was supposed to be a powerful motion picture. Banks' material is strong and intense, yet the film lacks punch and dawdles toward a terse climax. Schrader, best known as the screenwriter of Martin Scorsese's legendary masterpieces, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and director of Cat People, The Comfort of Strangers and Light Sleeper, keeps Affliction crawling, dragging, giving the audience a chance to see every joint that the picture has.

But that is not where the film's problem lies. Schrader just can't make up his mind of which among the three aspects of Wade's life he wants to put under the microscope: the investigation, the custody battle or the relationship with his father. The latter would have made us more informed of how Wade inherits the family curse of violence and a short temper, a little more than the brief, grainy film stock in which James Coburn smacks little Brawley Nolte (for the second time -- after Mother Night -- playing his father's younger self).

Schrader prefers to give equal footing to all three, resulting in a superficial, semi-intense film, with Coburn's Oscar-winning turn as an abusive drunkard appearing as an uninteresting, one- dimensional ogre. There's one great thing to watch though: Nolte's multilayered performance as a man who is slowly coming apart. The rest of the movie cuts, but only skin-deep.