When the moment comes, we're not quite ready for it. Neither are the characters. A security guard whose wife has been shot dead is looking into the eyes of the man who shot her. His journey was not to find out who killed his wife as much as why she died; when asked if he wants to kill his wife's killer, he simply says I'm not a murderer.'
`Fear X,' directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and written by Refn and Hubert Selby Jr., is a story about a troubled, obsessed man looking for a reason for the great injustice that has struck his life. His name is Harry (Selby Jr. likes characters called Harry, for reasons best known to himself) and he is played by John Turturro. It plays as a unique look at grief; everyone copes with loss differently, and Harry makes it his duty to track down the murderer. The police want to find the shooter too, but they seem to have some hidden political agenda (this subplot is never fully explored, but, considering this is Harry's story, I prefer it being left ambiguous).
He works at the shopping centre where his wife was killed. There, his co-workers give him a lot of sympathetic looks, but never really go out of their way to make him feel better. One of his co-workers gives him videos of security footage, which he watches at home, recording faces and snippets of information about any possible suspects; faces that appear over and over, people acting suspiciously, or anyone that, in his mind, may have killed his wife. It could be any one of these people.
There is a house across the road from Harry that grabs his attention. In the film's opening sequence, we see his wife wander in. Did that really happen? Was it some vague memory? A vision, or a figment of Harry's imagination? He breaks in, and finds some leads that take him to Montana, where he attempts to find a girl whom he thinks knows what is going on.
There he checks into a hotel, with a goofy desk clerk and eerie, red, red walls. In a bizarre scene, he is visited by a girl whom we presume is a prostitute, and whom Harry resists. Her dress is also very red; it's as if she has emerged from the very walls of the hotel. It is at this point that I realised that this was not a film to take at face value.
The film is intriguing from its very opening. I don't think it is merely being purposefully enigmatic; there is something going on under the surface here. The leads from one situation to another that Harry follows sometimes seem too unlikely to fully accept, yet Harry seems determined. At the end of the film, we are left with an important passage of time unexplained. What happened while the story left the audience for that time? Does Harry know? We are given some sort of explanation by the local police that can be looked at in at least three ways, that I can think of.
The work of Hubert Selby Jr. usually sets its characters on kamikaze courses with no other choice but to self-destruct. Here the outlook is a little more optimistic. By the end we do feel like Harry's mission is over, and he can put a lot of it behind him. Refn is a Danish director who has only directed two other films, neither of which I have seen. He knows how to grab our attention, even if the film unfolds slowly (a fast pace would be all wrong for this material), and shows us some excellent visuals; the reds of the hotel, Harry's dream sequences, the way the camera cuts from a dark scene to a bright, outdoor scene, accentuated by the startlingly white snow in Montana.
John Turturro, a gifted actor, has given many good performances before (watch `Thirteen Conversations About One Thing' for proof), and this is among his best. He never really lets any big gestures or emotion out (except in that astonishing scene where he finds or thinks he finds his wife's murderer), but look at the subtle touches he brings to the role. Watch, for instance, the scene where the girl in the red dress enters Harry's hotel room, and we can see him almost almost give in to the temptation, then he comes to his senses, and pulls away ever so slightly, then almost gives in again, but knows that it would be wrong.
I think the point of the film is that Harry is messed up, and he thinks he is on a mission to discover why his wife was randomly killed. The film works best on the level of a brilliant psychological thriller; I feel that a lot of this film happens in Harry's troubled mind; that he suspects things that are presented as fact, to put us in Harry's position. I left the cinema thinking that I was sure about some things, then I realised that the film is told from Harry's point of view, and maybe even the scenes without him were only to confuse us more, maybe they are further complications within the delusions of Harry. Can we be positive that all of the scenes in the film actually happen to Harry physically, or is he just finding a way to cope with the issues and troubles that inevitably follow loss, especially if it seems unfair? Sometimes the camera seems to dive right into Harry's mind, and we are shown physical interpretations of the images and dreams that plague him. Can we be sure that it is only these sequences that are in Harry's mind?
****1/2 (out of 5)
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