The Woodsman
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Movie Reviews of The Woodsman
Movie Review: Skeletons in the closet.....
Summary: 5 Stars
Bravo, Bravo, Bravo! "The Woodsman" is a great human drama! I had read so many reviews that this movie was "disturbing" and that it "sympathized with child molesters"??? What a load of garbage!
Some people just don't know how to interpret a film in the way it is meant to be represented. It seems like every time a film is made that tackles "real life issues"; people duck and cover-or worse, they start criticizing and tearing it down.
Simply put, this movie is brilliant...and I will explain why:
"The Woodsman" is about ADDICTIONS, not pedophiles. A pedophile is used as a metaphor in this film, but the underlying message of the movie is all about addiction.
A lot of people have addictions that may not be good for them or for others that surround them. In fact, everyone has at one point succumbed to temptation of one sort or another. Some people have addictions that hurt themselves or the people around them, and others have "healthier" addictions that don't hurt anybody. But we all have them. Some smoke, drink, steal, compulsively lie, or even abuse others. Some people get in trouble for not being able to resist their temptations; and therefore may pay the heavy and well deserved price. People who DO succumb to their not-so-healthy addictions often find a way to learn to cope with them. However; some people NEVER learn to resist their addictions-and pay throughout their lives without ever learning the meaning of self control.
Keep that in mind while watching "The Woodsman". Because that is what this film is REALLY about-a man who is trying to resist his addictions and the temptation he feels after regaining a chance to join society after being released from prison.
I'm not going to tell the story of "The Woodsman" in this review, because no matter what could be said in writing, this is a movie that should be watched and experienced for yourself.
This is not a film for children, or people looking for mindless action or comedy. This is a REAL drama. An adult, honest, and fantastic movie that just soars.
Kevin Bacon is such a brilliant actor. Here is a movie star millionaire who could do any kind of movie he wants. The fact that he will work for NOTHING and take on such roles as this- just proves his dedication to the craft of acting and of film making. Kevin and his wife Kyra Sedgwick also helped to finance this little film and get it off the ground.
"The Woodsman" is the best movie I have ever seen with a husband and wife team acting together. Normally, two married (or even dating) actors is a recipe for disaster in a movie. These two play SO well off each other in these gritty roles that as the viewer you will completely forget that they have been married for years and that they are very successful Hollywood movie stars.
This movie should have gotten some Oscars, or at least some nominations. The "Academy" just really sucks sometimes! To nominate such movies as "Finding Neverland" or "The Aviator" and their male leads and to have ignored Kevin Bacon and "The Woodsman" only goes to show how far Hollywood has NOT come in recognizing fantastic works of art.
I loved this movie. It was captured beautifully. HIGHLY HIGHLY recommended for people who consider themselves intelligent movie goers that like honest, well written, and extremely well acted films.
Movie Review: "I'm not a monster"
Summary: 5 Stars
Taking its name from the character from Little Red Riding Hood, this thought provoking, slick film deserves high praise, and kudos must be given to director Nicole Kassell, for tackling such a controversial topic. But admiration should be mostly reserved for The Woodsman's lead actor Kevin Bacon. He gives an absolutely astounding performance and he really should be accepting the golden statuette for Best Actor on Oscar night. He most likely won't - but he should. Complete with a grey, sickly pallor and sunken cheeks, he furiously inhabits all the frustrations, desires, and pent-up angst of a man who is given a second chance through freedom and who is trying desperately to achieve redemption. This is a slick, somber, and totally involving movie where life is hard, and where the terrible mistakes of the past are inescapable.
Walter (Kevin Bacon) has just been released from prison after twelve years. He was convicted of child sex offenses, but now he has been given a second chance. He's adjusting to his new job at a lumberyard and has found an apartment across the street from an elementary school. He regularly visits his psychiatrist and his loyal brother-in-law (Benjamin Bratt) drops by for a beer from time to time out of a sense of family loyalty. An eerily reflective police officer, Inspector Javert (Mos Def) also visits him. Inspector Javert, burned out by the horrors of the job sees Walter as a freak and doesn't trust that he will stay straight.
Walter walks through life as a solitary, sad individual attempting to wall up his predatory addictions. He eats lunch alone at work, and catches the bus home. But he's a character who gains our sympathy, particularly when he attempts to pick up the pieces of his life and starts a tentative romance with Vickie (a wonderful Kyra Sedgwick), who sticks with him even after she learns the worst. Both Vickie and Walter are damaged goods, and there's a real sense of two disparate, broken souls finding each other.
One of the great attributes of this film is that Walter is never judged. He's never romanticized or transformed into a leering villain, especially during one pivotal scene where he befriends a little girl in the park (an amazing Hannah Pilkes). The viewer is encouraged to have a mixture of reactions to him - disgust, empathy, sadness, and melancholy. The people that Walter meets all react to his situation in quite different ways, some are sympathetic, while others are appalled, and some merely pay him lip service while failing to truly understand his conflicted desires and needs.
The atmosphere of austere urban grimness effectively adds to the story and also to Walter's interminable suffering. Kevin Bacon should be commended for taking on a difficult role. He gives us a complex, unsettling, and quite startling performance that is full of haunting emotional nuances. And the performance does much to bring us closer to understanding how these people think and operate. What is also remarkable is that Bacon has found a way, without the slightest hint of vanity or ostentation, to convey the inner life of a man who is almost entirely shut down. This is an uncompromising, character-driven story told with intelligence, restraint, and honest emotional clarity, and it is without a doubt one of the best films of the year. Mike Leonard December 04.
Movie Review: Incredible script...superb acting
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, that the film is about a pedophile has already been covered. (At least one reviewer called pedophila a "disease." Since I object to the over-use of that word, I didn't like that review much.)
Bacon plays a guy who just got out of 12 years of prison after having "molested girls," as he himself says to a young woman colleague who takes a liking to him.
Bacon's acting is spectacular. You can see he's struggling with his condition, probably asking himself why he seems driven to it. He continues to ask--of himself and his therapist, "When will I be normal?"
As a favor, he gets a job in a lumber mill. A young black woman takes a liking to him. When he doesn't return the attraction, she goes on the web and finds that he's a convicted child molestor, then exposes him as such, excusing her personal vendetta in that, "They [the other employees] need to know about him." The script cleverly fit in that some other employees were the parents of young girls whom they adored; they, of course, were the ones particulary incensed when they found out the Bacon character was a pedophile.
Later in the script, Bacon exposes his struggle to his brother in law, also the fawning father of a young daughter. The brother on law says that if Bacon even thinks of doing anything with his daughter, he'll kill him.
The sister, by the way, wouldn't even communicate with Bacon any more. She has a distant appearance at the end of the film, a symbol, in essence, that his will be a long term recovery process, of his struggle with pedophilia AND his 12 years in prison.
One of the scenes that moved me was when Bacon met a young girl in the park. She was a bird watcher. Bacon asked her if she'd like to sit on his lap--the watcher anticipates that regression, I did anyway. Then the young girl says no, and starts to cry. It seems her father has her "do that" at times. Ah. So maybe the Bacon character isn't as "abnormal" as he thinks! (I recalled in that scene a conversation I had with a good friend nearly 30 years ago. He ran an institution for kids and denied my stereotype at the time, that incest/pedophilia was something you'd find in the rural South among the uneducated. He'd found that it's more common than many would think among those of whom we don't hear because their warm, close, middle-class families would never talk about it, even if they know anything about it!)
The woman colleague, with whom he's moving in at the end, was perhaps his saving grace. She cares for him, led him through some hard parts of the story despite his having rejected her (assuming, it seems, that she'd already rejected him as so many others had.)
Yes, it's a disturbing story, not just from the standpoint of a repulsive condition such as pedophilia, but from the way we treat prisoners.
Bacon's acting was so outstanding, I'm astonished that he hasn't been nominated at Best Actor. (One reviewer said the academy found the film too distasteful for that. I'm inclined to want to pick up the play; if nothing else, I'd like to see how it transformed from a play into a fine film.
Don't underestimate the quality of the film/story because of the academy's ignoring it. It's an excellent film for which the actors and director should be recognized.
Movie Review: Beautifully and sadly real
Summary: 5 Stars
Never has a drama thumped me at the core as this one. The movie was more real than anything else portrayed about this issue yet as wonderfully done as if it were an greatest artist's fiction.
An irony...all the story and characters in this movie were fiction. However, this film shows more truth and reality about the pedophile than the so called reality series, To Catch A Predator.
I think this fact has mostly to do with those portrayed on that series are not one in the same as Kevin Bacon's character. Bacon's character portrays one of society's most common yet misunderstood issues, the American pedophile. To Catch a Predator portrays lonely, STUPID, low life men who aren't popular with the ladies and would rather meet a virgin online than allow their cheap selves to buy hookers or risk HIV. Seriously, think about it. They don't call it perverted justice for nothing.
Back to the film. The Woodsman is to pedophile as to The Beautiful Mind is to Schizophrenia. After seeing The Beautiful Mind with Russell Crow, a person with schizophrenia became more than just the insane, screaming, possessed village idiot in our minds. He became human.
In the Woodsman the pedophile became more than just a lusting creepy devil posted on your state's web site. He became human.
Kevin Bacon's character demanded and forced us to share his soul with his. To make us feel as he felt and suffer as he did.
There are so many great scenes in the movie. My favorite three:
When the police sergeant tearfully complains that this world is without Woodsmen. The scene begged our society, asking, how can we live ourselves knowing that we live in a world where there are men who can commit such evil to children?
The other scene I loved was towards the end. He is with the girl alone in the park and he begins to give in to his desires. She is happy with him and he honestly believes she will enjoy sexual advances. Yet, when he sees in her eyes and tremble from all the pain her Father caused her, he resolves to not do the same. It seemed that the love he felt was stronger than his desire to take advantage of her, it showed the separation between him and true monsters out there...a destination few in society recognize. He showed that in spite of his criminal record, he of all people was a, "Woodsman."
And of course, he took this realization to the next level in my third favorite scene. He trashed and beat the Candyman character to a pulp and that action ultimately led to that creep being arrested for previous exploits against children.
The Woodsman forced and made us understand that not all pedophiles fit the class of the sterotype and that those who actually do harm children are in a class of their own. The movie helped make sense a very dark issue, that the majority of pedophiles evidently suffer the same emotions, feelings, and conflicts that alcoholics, drug abusers, or even what homo sexuals go through in conservative communities.
It is a beautiful and sad movie. That such a film did not win an Oscar gives the most creditable evidence that the academy is ruled by politics rather than artistic distinction
props to Mr. Bacon and the writers of The Woodsman.
Movie Review: About a Monster Trying Not To Be a Monster.
Summary: 5 Stars
Stigma of being a known as a pedophile leaves a burnt scare on the forehead of the person, as he or she tries to reenter society. Even after having been rehabilitated and serving the punishment society leaves no room for error, as every step, every movement of the person is being monitored in fear of the person committing the same crime again. In prisons, these criminals are locked away in a different section, as even the general convict population despises the convicts that have committed crimes against children. It is understandable to see how society hates these criminals who prey on the innocent and the dependent. The Woodsman illustrates how one pedophile is reentering society after a having served 12-years while struggling to understand himself.
Kevin Bacon provides a gutsy performance as Walter (Kevin Bacon), a pedophile on probation, as he tries to find a way to fit into society while being banished. Walter's family does not want to have anything to do with him, his counselor drives him into deep inner guilt, and a police officer named Sergeant Lucas harasses him in his own home. Constant fear that people would find out truth grabs Walter, as he is fully aware of the public notion of pedophiles. However, amidst this dark time Walter meets Vickie (Kyra Sedgwick). The two of them initiate an intense relationship, yet he also fears what she might think if she finds out about him.
Fear from the society keeps Walter isolated, as if his personal beliefs and notions build tall walls around him protecting him from society. Occasionally, he gets to look over the wall, as Vickie visits with him. Nevertheless, Sergeant Lucas keeps him reminded of what people think of him, as his counselor continues to induce additional guilt within him. Yet, Walter also understands Sergeant Lucas and the counselor, as he is aware of the horror children experience through people such as himself.
The title of the film, The Woodsman, originates from the Grimm Brothers' Red Little Riding Hood, as it refers to the woodsman that saves the little girl from the wolf's stomach. There is a scene in the film where Walter is in a park and a young girl approaches him. At this moment, the audience should pay close attention to the color of the girl's jacket, red, referring to the fairy tale previously mentioned. Cleverly, this film uses the old fairy tale through the mise-en-scene and the dialogue in the film, which displays the sharp script.
The director Nicole Kassell takes a huge chance making a film about such an explosive topic, which many look upon with much hatred and anger. However, she succeeds in developing the story into something more than a mere illustration of some kind of monster. Instead, she takes a humane approach, as Walter struggles with his behavior, thoughts, and persona while trying to find a way to fit into society in an acceptable manner. Aptly, Kassell brings the audience a story about monsters, but also a question of human ambiguity, as life is not as simple as making people either good or bad. In the end, the audience will have to experience a truly heartbreaking story about a monster trying not to be a monster.