Affliction (1997)

From the first minutes of this film I found myself more aware of the script's shortcomings than the action. I kept thinking, "These poor actors are trying their best, but I just don't see why the characters are saying that." But I soon discovered that I would never understand why any of the characters do anything in _Affliction_. Why is Margie so smitten with a loser like Wade? Why are Jill's parents so dang old when Wade mentions he got married when he was just a kid? Why does Rolfe suggest a conspiracy theory regarding the shooting "accident" and then later describe the plot as existing only in his brother's imagination, as if he had nothing to do with it? Why do the flashbacks suggest bad camcorder more than forty year old memory? And is it just me, or does Wade's boss have a weird accent? In this film Schrader has created a mess of underdeveloped plot lines which he can only salvage by tacking on a voiceover at the end to finish up the story and try in vain to explain to us why we should care. The alcoholic father is a one-dimensional monster (despite Coburn's noble attempts, I found myself praying that someone would kill him early into the movie), and the protagonist is so multidimensional that he is impossible to grasp. Mostly, I just didn't care what happened to any of these people. After shelling out nine bucks at the box office, I couldn't bear to leave, but I'll confess I did whip out a magazine and try to read, but it was just too dark (a good description of the film overall). The last time I was so bored by so much gratuitous familial dysfunction was when I saw _The Sweet Hereafter_, also based on a Russell Banks novel. I think Mr. Banks and Mr. Schrader each need to cough up $4.50, and maybe I'll forgive the waste of my time.

PS Yes, Nolte gave a great performance, but alas there is no Oscar for Best Actor in a Bad, Bad Movie.

Fmovies: A portrait of a violent destructive father, almost giant-like, whose behavior is threatening and whose words crash against and down upon his sons, dashing them to smithereens, mentally and physically. The father has successfully destroyed his sons, in a long process which began when they were young boys, who stood and watched their father in a hot temper strike blows upon their mother. The sons are unable to touch him, to feel any emotions towards him, but fear and loathing. The father instills fear in the viewer of the film. He is scary. There is nothing to redeem this father. The son who escapes tells this story as the narrator. The scalding and searing hatred and loathing that each holds to some degree for the other is viewed against stark black and white photographs of a New England winter. Seething unrelieving pain is the film's central character. The father and son anesthetize pain in alcoholism, which the narrator-son manages to just escape. Torture, brutal and mental, is shared in this sad family and memories of it loom large and don't go away. The mother's world is silent, and viewing this film, the viewer is just rendered silent: there are no words to describe the lives of the father and his two sons. Wasted, brutalized, and lost are not enough. How many families are there living as the Whitehouses do in our world? Calculating this pain and sadness is the film's bottom line. Metaphors for these realities bounce about and jar the viewer: the son's rotten tooth, the pleasure the father expresses in giving pain to his two sons, the vocabulary of brutality that destroys the human spirit.

I have seen this movie in bits and pieces, because it was difficult for me to watch it all the way through and digest it all at one time.

Paul Schrader's movies can have a dark, unsettling edge to them, and this movie is no exception.

Maybe because I brought personal baggage to the table while watching this, is why this movie gripped me so much. I have alcoholic relatives in my immediate and extended family, and I have seen what their anger and destructive behavior hath wrought.

Nick Nolte and James Coburn's characters made me squirm. Coburn received a best supporting Oscar for his role, and it is well-deserved. His character is a mean, vengeful, hateful alcoholic who inflicts his pain on others and afflicts one of his sons, Wade, played by Nick Nolte.

Very gripping and intense family drama.

Affliction fmovies. "Affliction" doesn't have an immediate plot. It's mostly a delve into a man's (Nick Nolte) psyche, a divorced alcoholic man who was abused as a child by his drunken father (James Coburn). He tries to cope, he tries to make something of himself by attempting to solve a hunting accident which he thinks is really a murder. He claims that after this, everyone will remember him as a hero.

Luckily the audience isn't made to believe Nolte's cause, to us he looks just as mad as he does to the characters around them. This is well done, because it could've been presented as some big twist at the end.

Anyway, the "mystery" element to the film isn't that important. It's mostly about how hard - and almost impossible - it is to prevent an emotionally abused man to make the same mistakes his father made. This idea is presented well, but by the end it just feels so thick and depressing that it's hard to take anything from the film, because you don't want to remember it.

Acting-wise the movie is quite good. Nolte delivers what I think is his best performance here, with a quiet desperation wonderfully put out by his eyes, voice, face, and so on. James Coburn does his usual well, but I have to question just why he won an Oscar for this. Don't get me wrong, he was a terrific actor and his performance in this is great, but he's not in many scenes, and the scenes he is in are mostly just a variation of the same thing: Coburn drunkenly and violently mumbles at his sons and eventually starts to yell and thrash. This is all well and good, but his scenes never go beyond that, except for (maybe) at the end when he spews his own sort of twisted philosophy to Nolte.

Other great performances come from Sissy Spacek as Nolte's increasingly uneasy girlfriend. Also Willem Dafoe as Nolte's brother who is so concerned with being quiet and not problematic that he cant prevent the build-up of violence and abuse in his family. I'd say that this performance is more Oscar worthy than Coburn's.

This is a good movie with a great message, but it doesn't put enough on the table, 7/10.

This is the best film I've seen for a while. I don't understand all that whining and complaining about the weak plot or how depressing the film was. Well life is depressing at times. And more than tells a story, Affliction draws a beautifully sharp picture of one desperate, troubled but goodhearted man's breakdown. Nolte's acting is awesome and he sets into the role perfectly. I think he should have won the Oscar, although Coburn was great too and deserved his price. With it's snowy scenery and small town murder mystery Affliction shares similarities to Twin Peaks. I also like films that include some kind of a statement towards the world around us, and that's what Affliction does.

Based on a novel by Russell Banks who also wrote "The Sweet Hereafter", and directed by Paul Schrader of "Raging Bull" and "The Mosquito Coast" fame, the winter landscape and cold bleakness of the town sets the tone for this exploration of the dark legacy of what it is to be a man.

Nick Nolte stars in this dark story of a the lone policeman in a small New Hampshire town investigating a hunting accident. James Coburn is excellent as Nick Nolte's father, a brutal and angry old man who typifies a sick machismo which has in turn afflicted his son. His acting is extraordinary as is Nolte's although their styles are different. Noltle is subtle; his facial expressions are controlled and typical of a man who has learned to hold in emotion. Coburn's face, on the other hand, is more deeply expressive; his eyebrows move, his mouth hardens, his eyes glare.

This is the kind of dark, brooding movie that I like. For a brief few hours I enter its world and get completely absorbed in the characters in the way I did with "A thousand Acres" or "The Horse Whisperers". Like these films, there are no easy answers and the conclusion does not wrap up in a neat little Hollywood package that is soon forgotten.