Affliction by Paul Schrader is nothing short of a roller coaster of events. This is a movie that only Schrader could pull off because of its strange story-line, crazy acting, and in my opinion crazy ending. It all starts off with a police officer of a small town named Wade and his daughter driving to a Halloween party at the local school. Wades daughter is visiting him as he is divorced and she lives with her mother. We quickly find out that she is not very fond of her father and wants to go home. So, while inside she calls her mother to come pick her up from the party. When Wade finds out he becomes angry and you start to question if Wade is right in the head because he starts acting like a child in a way. In his anger he goes outside and hops in a car with a few acquaintances, they smoke a little weed and start talking about a man from the city. The man wants to shoot a buck and has hired a local hunter names jack to show him the ways. This seems like an irrelevant detail but it lays the track for the rest of the movie. After he gets back to the school where his daughter is waiting for her mother, he creates a scene in front of all the parents and kids. After this he decides that he wants to gain custody of his daughter and swears to himself he is going to get a lawyer. His girlfriend Margie seems to think this is a bad idea because his daughter is happy living with her mother. Which the viewer can clearly tell she is not very fond of her father. But Wade quickly gets side tracked by a situation that has just happened. Jack and the man from the city went hunting in the woods and only one of them made it back alive. Jack claimed that he was about to shoot a buck when he heard the man fall and the gun went off. Everyone besides Wade believes this story, he thinks there is more to this story. But in the mean time he takes his girlfriend to go visit his parents, who are very old at this point in Wades life. Throughout the film we see flashbacks of Wades abusive father and its clear to see that he hasn't changed his ways at all. But when they go upstairs to see his mother they discover that she died. After that Wades brothers and sister come to the wake and mourn in the death of their mother. But Wade and his brother have a conversation about what they think happened with Jack and the man who shot himself. Both seem to think there is reason to believe that Jack shot the man. So Wade tries to connect the dots but just ends up with a gun pointed to him and at the other end of the gun is Jack. He soon begins to act more violently and is not the same Jack at the beginning of the movie. Even Margie has had enough of him and decides to leave him and take his daughter who is visiting again back to her mothers house. The film ends with him unintentionally killing his father and Wade watching the barn that he set on fire with his fathers body in it. Schrader uses the technique of frame within frames throughout the film in many places. Using this technique allows the shot to have more depth and context. By holding one frame and having the objects move within it, it adds more focus to the object or person. This was used within the final scene of the movie where Wade gets into a argument with his father and unintentionally kills him and lights the barn on fire. He watches the burning barn from the kitchen table looking through a window while drinking just like his father would have done. This shot in my opinion was one of the best in the film because it incorporated the depth of the barn, and seriousness of the situation, and the fact that Wade seemed to not care anymore.
Wade starts to experience pain from a tooth about halfway though the movie. I think that this is linked his actions but as I was watching it I never noticed. Wades action throughout the film were always rash and quickly made, he never thought about anything, he just did it. A perfect example is when he pulled out his tooth, he didnt think about what could happen he just did it. The more I think about it the more I realize how much Wade angers me. He thinks and acts like a child, he never thinks about the consequences. Wade almost seemed like he had a mental disorder with how he acted. At the beginning of the movie when he was angry with his daughter for call her mom, he seemed to change emotion really fast. This kind of led me to think that there was something wrong with him. I think that this movie was interesting but nothing more than that. The storyline really had no point because in the end Wade never finds out if he was right or wrong. His daughter does not like him and his girlfriend leaves him, so what was the overall point of the movie. In my opinion this movie was more of a visually and appealing movie to watch rather than watching for the story. I would probably not watch this movie again, but I can completely understand why someone would watch it.
1 Comment
Adam Zaporowski
4/3/2017 04:40:12 pm
I agree with your opinion on the best shot of the film. If roles were switched where Glen was the one drinking and Wade was the dead man, the two alcoholics would share similar actions in how each would drink and not care about the fire outside.
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AuthorI normally only watch comedies and action movies so this should be an interesting change. Archives
May 2017
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