This is by any measure a superior movie, yet it's hard to form any global judgment on it because there are several ways of looking at it.
The story involves a small-town New England police official, Nick Nolte, who is plagued by personal problems. He's about to engage in a custody battle with the wife who has left him. He's trying as delicately as possible to handle his new romance with Sissy Spacek. His estranged daughter doesn't really like him much. He doesn't get along with his boss, not only the head of law enforcement but a Selectman (whatever that is) who is buying up local real estate in anticipation of building a world-class ski resort. Nolte's younger sibling (Willem Dafoe) is a professor in Boston and has little contact with him. His mother dies. His father, James Coburn, is a wretched and abusive alcoholic, the kind of guy who once had an awkward moment just to see what it felt like. And on top of that, a Boston power broker is killed during a deer hunt, the killing is classified as an accident, only Nolte believes he has reasons to put quotation marks around the word accident. Worse than anything else perhaps is the toothache that fills his day with pain. (I think it's a symbol.) He winds up yanking the offensive bicuspid with a pair of pliers.
All of this tsuris drives Nolte up the wall and he begins to act half crazed -- thumping his little girl away when she knocks him down, destroying half his boss's office before being fired, boozing it up, driving Spacek away, ranting on about how he's going to crack the murder mystery that has been simmering in the background, yanking open kitchen drawers aimlessly then slamming them shut. When his drunken dad hits him over the head with a bottle, he retaliates by whacking the old man across the head with the butt of a rifle, as a consequence of which the old fellow dies on the spot. It seems (it's not really clear) that he shoots and kills the suspect and then takes off for parts unknown. The end.
The acting is close to being splendid. Nolte has never been better and Coburn deserved all the praise he garnered for his performance. Sissy Spacek's role is relatively small and not nearly as flashy as the others' but I think she turns in the best job. Example. In the drab farm house kitchen, Nolte is shouting and slamming things around while Spacek sits at the table. The standard reaction shot would be: Spacek staring in horror at the pyroclastic Nolte, shrinking away from his wrath, her fists curled against her cheeks, protesting, perhaps screaming. But no. She doesn't even look at him. Her chin in cupped in her hand and her big blue eyes stare thoughtfully into empty space. You can practically hear the wheels clicking.
It's the story of a fundamentally decent and entirely ordinary man who is undone by childhood demons, a tragedy of almost Shakespearean dimensions.
That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that it is a simple fairy tale about child and spousal abuse by redneck men, and that abused children grow into abusive adults. We are periodically pointed towards this heuristic by the super-literary and overly sanctimonious narration by Nolte's distant and unhelpful brother, the big professor at Boston University. The murder conspiracy, the narration tells us, was all a delusion. The professor ought to know because he's the one who reinforced Nolte's conviction that the conspiracy was real.
And -- if one were to stand back and objectively look at the way Nolte is treated in his social world -- really, some of his anger would be perfectly understandable. Spacek leaves him not because he has abused her in any way but because she seems tired of living with his drunken, lecherous old man, and because she has second sight and anticipates what Nolte is liable to become. Like the absent brother, she doesn't really offer much in the way of understanding or help, though of course she's only human. Nolte's boss comes across as generous but unpleasant, a mean and vengeful anti-smoker. And Nolte's little girl, the one he wants custody of? What an intolerant little snot! He takes her for a drive and offers to buy her a hamburger. She reproaches him for the offer. Fast food is no good for you. Mommy says so. She wants to go home. The benumbed Nolte offers another suggestion: "How about the Pizza House?" Abusive fathers are one thing, but who put all that power in the hands of a ten-year-old kid? Does anyone want to live in a world in which little kids set the rules? Or overprotective mothers or people offended by a whiff of smoke and use it as a justification for demeaning others and demonstrating their own moral purity? Where does all that leave Nolte? It also seems unfair to the child, to burden her with that much responsibility.
If one can get past the cumulative stupidity of that oppressive morality, it's a well-executed picture. I've seen it twice and enjoyed it, but I have to shut down half my left hemisphere to do it.
The story involves a small-town New England police official, Nick Nolte, who is plagued by personal problems. He's about to engage in a custody battle with the wife who has left him. He's trying as delicately as possible to handle his new romance with Sissy Spacek. His estranged daughter doesn't really like him much. He doesn't get along with his boss, not only the head of law enforcement but a Selectman (whatever that is) who is buying up local real estate in anticipation of building a world-class ski resort. Nolte's younger sibling (Willem Dafoe) is a professor in Boston and has little contact with him. His mother dies. His father, James Coburn, is a wretched and abusive alcoholic, the kind of guy who once had an awkward moment just to see what it felt like. And on top of that, a Boston power broker is killed during a deer hunt, the killing is classified as an accident, only Nolte believes he has reasons to put quotation marks around the word accident. Worse than anything else perhaps is the toothache that fills his day with pain. (I think it's a symbol.) He winds up yanking the offensive bicuspid with a pair of pliers.
All of this tsuris drives Nolte up the wall and he begins to act half crazed -- thumping his little girl away when she knocks him down, destroying half his boss's office before being fired, boozing it up, driving Spacek away, ranting on about how he's going to crack the murder mystery that has been simmering in the background, yanking open kitchen drawers aimlessly then slamming them shut. When his drunken dad hits him over the head with a bottle, he retaliates by whacking the old man across the head with the butt of a rifle, as a consequence of which the old fellow dies on the spot. It seems (it's not really clear) that he shoots and kills the suspect and then takes off for parts unknown. The end.
The acting is close to being splendid. Nolte has never been better and Coburn deserved all the praise he garnered for his performance. Sissy Spacek's role is relatively small and not nearly as flashy as the others' but I think she turns in the best job. Example. In the drab farm house kitchen, Nolte is shouting and slamming things around while Spacek sits at the table. The standard reaction shot would be: Spacek staring in horror at the pyroclastic Nolte, shrinking away from his wrath, her fists curled against her cheeks, protesting, perhaps screaming. But no. She doesn't even look at him. Her chin in cupped in her hand and her big blue eyes stare thoughtfully into empty space. You can practically hear the wheels clicking.
It's the story of a fundamentally decent and entirely ordinary man who is undone by childhood demons, a tragedy of almost Shakespearean dimensions.
That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that it is a simple fairy tale about child and spousal abuse by redneck men, and that abused children grow into abusive adults. We are periodically pointed towards this heuristic by the super-literary and overly sanctimonious narration by Nolte's distant and unhelpful brother, the big professor at Boston University. The murder conspiracy, the narration tells us, was all a delusion. The professor ought to know because he's the one who reinforced Nolte's conviction that the conspiracy was real.
And -- if one were to stand back and objectively look at the way Nolte is treated in his social world -- really, some of his anger would be perfectly understandable. Spacek leaves him not because he has abused her in any way but because she seems tired of living with his drunken, lecherous old man, and because she has second sight and anticipates what Nolte is liable to become. Like the absent brother, she doesn't really offer much in the way of understanding or help, though of course she's only human. Nolte's boss comes across as generous but unpleasant, a mean and vengeful anti-smoker. And Nolte's little girl, the one he wants custody of? What an intolerant little snot! He takes her for a drive and offers to buy her a hamburger. She reproaches him for the offer. Fast food is no good for you. Mommy says so. She wants to go home. The benumbed Nolte offers another suggestion: "How about the Pizza House?" Abusive fathers are one thing, but who put all that power in the hands of a ten-year-old kid? Does anyone want to live in a world in which little kids set the rules? Or overprotective mothers or people offended by a whiff of smoke and use it as a justification for demeaning others and demonstrating their own moral purity? Where does all that leave Nolte? It also seems unfair to the child, to burden her with that much responsibility.
If one can get past the cumulative stupidity of that oppressive morality, it's a well-executed picture. I've seen it twice and enjoyed it, but I have to shut down half my left hemisphere to do it.