Movie Review: The Secret Life of Words
Aug. 12th, 2007 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicThe Secret Life of Words (2005, Spain/Ireland, dir. Isabel Coixet)
I picked this up today because it had Sarah Polley in it—Sarah, who should have been on my top five list, shame on me—Sarah, who becomes more and more amazing with everything she does, such as pulling off an extremely demanding and understated role and doing it with a convincing accent. Based on the cover, I was expecting a moderately good drama/romance with some older man/younger woman stuff. I was not expecting one of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching movies I've ever seen.
Maybe I should have expected that a movie produced by Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her, Bad Education) in cooperation with (among others) the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims would be a powerful experience. But this—it was—adjectives don't do it justice, but they're all I have. Incredible acting from Polley (who received a Best European Actress award from the European Film Academy for her role) and Tim Robbins (who was truly captivating, and I've never been particularly drawn to him before) all the way down to the smallest roles in the cast. A perfect pace; the movie took its time always, but never lingered too long, never plodded. Beautifully filmed. Beautifully written. Emotionally... wrecking; it lulled me in the beginning only to leave me crying into the pillow I was clutching by the end. Themes and symbols woven throughout with a deft hand; subtle, but able to be picked up, pieced together and interpreted. It's a movie about love; loneliness; pain; self-imposed isolation; connection; silence; guilt; trauma; recovery; trust; remembrance.
The story is about a young woman named Hanna (Polley) who takes a mandatory vacation from her job at a Northern Irish factory and ends up on an oil rig nursing a man, Josef (Robbins), who was badly burned in a drilling accident. Hanna hardly ever speaks or smiles, wears a hearing aid that she turns off when she doesn't want to listen to the world, suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, has no friends or family save one woman she calls from time to time and hangs up on without speaking, and generally lives a simple, Spartan life. Josef—blind, bedridden and in pain—likes to talk. The two grow closer over the days in which she treats him and prepares him to be airlifted to a hospital on the mainland.
The rig's running on a skeleton crew, having been temporarily shut down pending an investigation because of the accident. Along with Hanna and Josef, there is Simon, the Spanish cook; an English oceanographer who's on board ostensibly to measure the impact of waves on the rig long-term but whose passion lies in studying the adverse effects of the rig on local ocean life; the (Scandinavian?) captain of the crew, at home alone in the middle of the sea, waiting to see where the company will send him; a pair of English workers who find love in each other while they're miles and miles away from their families; and a goose, brought on board by a man who died in the accident. All of these characters have their moments in the movie to become people; brief portraits of men who live far away from civilization. The rig itself becomes a character too, as well as a home and a symbol.
But the focus of the movie is on Hanna and on Josef, as it should be, and I can't say much about them because so much of the movie hinges on what they don't say that to give any of it away would be a crime. Just. It is a powerful story of characters from many countries, each with reasons of their own to be alone, who come together to illustrate a story that is both deeply personal and a meditation on humanity and history and love.
The moral: If you haven't seen it, go.
I picked this up today because it had Sarah Polley in it—Sarah, who should have been on my top five list, shame on me—Sarah, who becomes more and more amazing with everything she does, such as pulling off an extremely demanding and understated role and doing it with a convincing accent. Based on the cover, I was expecting a moderately good drama/romance with some older man/younger woman stuff. I was not expecting one of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching movies I've ever seen.
Maybe I should have expected that a movie produced by Pedro Almodóvar (Talk to Her, Bad Education) in cooperation with (among others) the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims would be a powerful experience. But this—it was—adjectives don't do it justice, but they're all I have. Incredible acting from Polley (who received a Best European Actress award from the European Film Academy for her role) and Tim Robbins (who was truly captivating, and I've never been particularly drawn to him before) all the way down to the smallest roles in the cast. A perfect pace; the movie took its time always, but never lingered too long, never plodded. Beautifully filmed. Beautifully written. Emotionally... wrecking; it lulled me in the beginning only to leave me crying into the pillow I was clutching by the end. Themes and symbols woven throughout with a deft hand; subtle, but able to be picked up, pieced together and interpreted. It's a movie about love; loneliness; pain; self-imposed isolation; connection; silence; guilt; trauma; recovery; trust; remembrance.
The story is about a young woman named Hanna (Polley) who takes a mandatory vacation from her job at a Northern Irish factory and ends up on an oil rig nursing a man, Josef (Robbins), who was badly burned in a drilling accident. Hanna hardly ever speaks or smiles, wears a hearing aid that she turns off when she doesn't want to listen to the world, suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder, has no friends or family save one woman she calls from time to time and hangs up on without speaking, and generally lives a simple, Spartan life. Josef—blind, bedridden and in pain—likes to talk. The two grow closer over the days in which she treats him and prepares him to be airlifted to a hospital on the mainland.
The rig's running on a skeleton crew, having been temporarily shut down pending an investigation because of the accident. Along with Hanna and Josef, there is Simon, the Spanish cook; an English oceanographer who's on board ostensibly to measure the impact of waves on the rig long-term but whose passion lies in studying the adverse effects of the rig on local ocean life; the (Scandinavian?) captain of the crew, at home alone in the middle of the sea, waiting to see where the company will send him; a pair of English workers who find love in each other while they're miles and miles away from their families; and a goose, brought on board by a man who died in the accident. All of these characters have their moments in the movie to become people; brief portraits of men who live far away from civilization. The rig itself becomes a character too, as well as a home and a symbol.
But the focus of the movie is on Hanna and on Josef, as it should be, and I can't say much about them because so much of the movie hinges on what they don't say that to give any of it away would be a crime. Just. It is a powerful story of characters from many countries, each with reasons of their own to be alone, who come together to illustrate a story that is both deeply personal and a meditation on humanity and history and love.
The moral: If you haven't seen it, go.
