Death and the Maiden
by Roman Polanski
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ben Kingsley, Jonathan Vega, Krystia Mova, Sigourney Weaver, Stuart Wilson (II)Director: Roman Polanski
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Movie Reviews of Death and the Maiden
Movie Review: like a distant star in a black heavens . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to say, writing this from my POV does not come easy. And given that it has been some time since the last entry, probably nobody will ever read this.
Much like a being a prisoner in a cell with a tiny window that has no glass.
I watched this in the company of a trained psychiatrist, specializing in Post Traumatic Stress. I have worked in hospitals with rape victim wards. I have worked with rape victims in the Martial Arts. And I personally knew people who experienced torture in Chile under Pinochet and who were fleeing for their lives even as most Americans knew nothing of the "disappearances". And I have worked with many SA torture victims in writer's workshops. So I guess I have to say the film certainly did not bore me.
From experience I can say the language and dialogue is spot on. Anyone who doubts can dip into the Gulag Archapelago, easily obtainable at Amazon.com. You, like me, probably will not be able to finish reading the entire thing, however.
My companion's viewpoint is that Sigourney has managed to come out ahead of a lot of people put in the situation of the character she portrays. Yes, she is right. Yes, she is wrong, in another sense. Yes she is mentally ill, but she is well above the rest in coping behaviors. Her actions are entirely believable for an individual and entirely believable in a general social context. That phrase will never ever leave me: "In here, I am in control! You do what I say!" That is entirely classic, no matter what country, no matter what language used.
This is an uncomfortable film and not intended for an evening of light entertainment. There is, from personal observation, this sense of a "tape" of memories that keeps getting played over and over and which the victim cannot -- and ultimately will not -- break or erase so as to start all over again. There is no resolution, really, except just getting on with life. No justice can bring relief although the illusion of justice doing so remains.
The film is troubling, but very real, in that no answers are given for the individual or for society. As Kingley's character says, "If I am innocent, you kill me! If I am guilty, you kill me! What difference does it make?!"
About the only thing in the script I would fault (skip this par. if you have not seen the movie) is the final confession, for -- again by personal experience -- the torturer never really admits any weakness, but insistently presses upon the necessity of his actions as a consequence of superiority. Yes, I have met the other side as well. I would hope no one here ever ever meets the kind of people I have met, but you can read Eichmann's testimony from the Nurnberg trials and see what I mean.
In any case, I would note the differences between opinions expressed in this space seem divided largely along lines of experience. Like many political issues. Either you have really been there or not.
At this late stage, I would echo my companion's thoughts that the main thing to gather here is that Ms. Weaver portrays a character who still possesses the ability to feel something, as expressed in her love for her husband. I guess I have to say that this possibility -- given that torture shows no sign of coming to an end and we have many many victims yet still alive among us -- is the light of a distant star, giving some hope to others. Since the Academy has turned its back on Weaver -- unjustly more than once, as previous commentators have noted -- perhaps the film can be used in a therapeutic venue.
Pinochet, as of this date, is well over 80 years old and in poor health. Only now are they coming to bring those criminals to the courts in Chile, with some sympathetic help from Spain. But most of them will be dead of old age long before they face any real trial. Relief must be found elsewhere and other than turning yourself into the monster that made you.
Peace.
Summary of Death and the Maiden
A marriage becomes strained when the wife is confronted with a man she is convinced tortured and brutalized her when she was in jail years earlier.Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's stunning play about the legacy of torture has more in common with the director's first film, Knife in the Water (with all the latter's unnerving ambiguities about power, sexual transgression, and confused alliances among three people) than a straightforward political parable. Sigourney Weaver (a bit underwhelming in this role, but good overall) plays a former political prisoner in an unnamed South American country that has gone democratic. She is married to a government official (fine work by Stuart Wilson) heading up official inquiries into the practice of torture under the former regime. Still shattered by her experience, Weaver's character seeks safe haven in closets of the cliff-top house she shares with her husband. But when the latter comes home in the company of a seemingly nice fellow (a brilliant Ben Kingsley), she believes she recognizes the stranger as the interrogator who raped her repeatedly in prison. She violently takes him hostage, and what ensues is a hurricane of fury and confusion, as Kingsley's terrified character denies all accusations, Wilson's guilt-ridden spouse can't decide whom to defend, and Weaver turns her psychosexual rage into a weapon of humiliation. Dorfman adapted the screenplay himself, but there's no question that Polanski is leading us down a familiar path of human betrayal and terror that he crossed in such films as Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, and Bitter Moon. At times stunning in its bluntness and compelling to the last, Death and the Maiden literally takes us to the edge of oblivion, where--in Polanski's films--the hardest truths always seem to fall into a heretofore unknown perspective. --Tom Keogh
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