Wentworth Miller apparently circulated his script for STOKER pseudonymously. Sometimes that is a wise thing to do. As an actor, which Mr Miller is (THE HUMAN STAIN, PRISON BREAK) you create a certain identity, a screen persona. Writers create a persona too, their literary self. One conveys action, the other thought. There have been examples of writers who became actors: Gore Vidal springs to mind, or Salmon Rushdie playing himself in BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY. Only a handful have travelled in the opposite direction. When writers become actors, essentially they convey their ‘interview self’ as a character, they play up their celebrity. When actors become writers, they negate their identity, their celebrity, though trade on it, as for example Steve Martin or Molly Ringwald have done (as authors) for brand recognition.
I have no idea whether STOKER represents Wentworth Miller’s farewell to acting. It is a strange personal statement. STOKER is a slice of Southern Gothic that has some of the baggage – the faint whiff of garlic – of a vampire movie. Yet, in the end, it is a serial killer movie. If and when I write that great book I know I have inside of me – though some days it feels like a shopping list – I don’t think it will be a genre story. It will be some sort of personal statement, ‘the summer that everything changed that actually lasted thirty years’ (I’m a bit slow in the personal development department).
Yet Mr Miller gives us an impersonal and disappointing tale of the returning black sheep that brings out the worst in a relative. You can summarise it easily. Pop (Dermot Mulroney) goes out hunting animals to stop himself doing something really bad. After he dies in mysterious circumstances – to the characters, not the audience – the returning never-before-seen Uncle (Matthew Goode) leads our heroine (Mia Wasikowska) over to the dark side. According to Mr Miller’s screenplay, evil is genetic. Uncle killed Pop’s other brother as a kid because he felt left out – it’s tough being the middle kid. Consequently, he got sent off to a real expensive institute. For reasons not entirely clear, he finds out he has a niece and writes to her as if from Europe. Yet all the letters are stamped with the institution address – and none bear foreign stamps. In any case our heroine does not see Uncle’s letters until she enters Pop’s study long after his death. There they are, tied up in a bow (really?) She is initially intrigued then realises the façade which apparently her mother (Nicole Kidman) bought. Meanwhile, the body count rises. First the housekeeper, then our heroine’s great aunt (Jacki Weaver) and then a kid from school all get Uncle’s strangulation-by-belt treatment (hence the 18 certificate). In the end, our heroine kills her errant Uncle and becomes a serial killer herself. ‘Lady, do you know how fast you were going?’ a policeman asks. ‘Fast enough to get your attention,’ she replies before attacking him. Good exchange in a trash movie, but not worth the preceding 100 minutes.
Mr Miller’s script is given some degree of respectability by the director Park Chan-wook, best known for OLD BOY, SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE and LADY VENGEANCE. When the studio sought out his services, it represented further evidence of Hollywood’s Asia pivot that has so far yielded two China-US co-productions, LOOPER and IRON MAN 3, and a Korean director, Kim Ji woon directing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback flick, THE LAST STAND. (Note to Arnie: don’t put last in the title of your movie; remember LAST ACTION HERO?) Park manages some tricksy shots, specifically the shoe montage representing Uncle’s gift to our heroine as she grows up (almost worth the price of admission). She thinks her birthday presents are from Pop, but we discover the truth. However, style cannot disguise a lack of substance, specifically the thin characters and improbable plotting. You are surprised at how easily Uncle manages to track down Great Aunt.
Interestingly, LOOPER was more successful in China than in the rest of the world, mainly because it treats that country uncritically. This appears to be The Deal. Hollywood is using foreign directors to challenge American values, its so-called ‘Great Power’ status. Yet Hollywood wants to absorb the opposition, to make itself greater and more pervasive.
I don’t think we are yet able to determine the effect of this latest adaptation exercise. Hollywood has always co-opted artists from other cultures to shape movie style – film noir was developed by German expressionism being co-opted by the studios; German directors like Josef von Sternberg and Billy Wilder found work in America. Even melodramas were shaped by émigrés such as Douglas Sirk. If Warren Beatty had had his way, François Truffaut, not Arthur Penn, would have directed BONNIE AND CLYDE; as it turned out, the nouvelle vague sensibility still found its way into the movie as well as into films like BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and M*A*S*H*. Many of these movies reposition movie stars; they give them an injection of glamour. The only movie star in STOKER is Nicole Kidman. She seems to be hankering after a Tennessee Williams type-role. To her I say, get thee to a theatre, rather than take a nothing part in this. Her character as the stay-at-home alienated mom didn’t ring true.
STOKER has had some enthusiastic reviews, offering the veneer of something different. I was alternately disappointed and bored. As always, the box-office is the test. If successful, we may discover what other Southern Gothic tales Mr Miller has hidden in his word processor.
