There are times when movies serve us
well by providing us with answers, but it is invariably true that they serve us
even better when they provide us with questions. This past summer, I was excited when
advertising for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus
(2012) suggested that the film would answer the questions posed by the Alien series. Upon seeing the film I was resolute in my
contention that it not only failed to answer the aforementioned questions, but
even went so far as to pose new queries.
Then, after several weeks, it occurred to me that Scott had done
something marvelous with the franchise he kicked off in 1979; giving it new
life after more than a decade of spin-offs, crossovers, and retreads. By posing more questions – this time getting
at even deeper elements of human nature – he enlivened that which, like his
creatures, only seemed to be defeated.
It took his unique touch, that mix of thought and action that he does so
well, to truly revive, and perhaps cap the franchise.
Fans of Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping (1987) may be wondering by
now what a 2012 big budget Sci-fi thriller has do with this relatively quiet
and quirky dramedy from the Scottish director (his first North American
film). Nothing really, except that both of
these films were helmed by directors that understood the power of questions to
draw in an audience. Scott’s film
involves the origin of the human species, while Forsyth’s concerns the mysterious
behavior of one of its members. In a
way, it too is an origin myth.
A narrator tells us the story of her
youth, recounting the strange events that brought both her and her sister to be
with their eccentric aunt, Sylvie (Christine Lahti). At a young age they drove with their mother
from Seattle to visit their grandmother.
Shortly after arriving at the geographically isolated town of
Fingerbone, their mother took her own life.
When their grandmother passed away ten years later, two aged great aunts
came to live with them in the house built by their grandfather. He lost his life, we are told, years before
in a train accident just outside of town that killed hundreds when the
locomotive slipped off icy rails on a bridge, and then plunged to the depths of
the frozen lake. Like a congenial ghost,
that bridge haunts the town, and the film.
When
Sylvie arrives in Fingerbone, after years of transient existence, the girls,
Ruth (Sara Walker) and Lucille (Andrea Burchill), are eager to learn more from
her about the mother they barely knew.
Fingerbone has a way of making the world outside seem like an awfully
exciting place, and Sylvie seems to have lived everywhere, at least for a
time. At first she seems drawn to the
train station, eager to again take to the rails, but her affections for Ruth and
Lucille convince her to remain as their caretaker. Her quirks, a habit of collecting newspapers
and tin cans, seem minimal at first, especially in the midst of the film’s most
memorable sequence.
Days
after the geriatric aunts leave the girls in Sylvie’s care, the town floods. The house, we’re told, is usually safe from
the annual accumulation, but a late thaw leaves no option for runoff and for a
time both aunt and nieces are forced to subsist in shin-deep water, donning
their goulashes for each trip downstairs to the kitchen. Initially, Sylvie’s nonchalant acceptance of
these circumstances seems to be for the girls benefit, but as the water
subsides it becomes clear that the state of the house is far from her
mind. The newspapers and tin cans begin
to accumulate, and people in Fingerbone begin to talk. Are these girls living in a healthy
environment? Ruth, who seems to care
little for the world around her, doesn’t think anything is amiss, but as
Lucille grows more concerned with her teenage social life, she begins to resent
both her aunt and her sister. Once, the
two girls shared adventures together.
Now, Ruth prefers Sylvie as a traveling companion. The two go on walks by the bridge and through
the woods, crossing over mountain springs, and though they talk as they go,
Sylvie remains mostly a mystery.
Where
all has she really been? What caused her
to leave? Why did she stay away so
long? Was there a rift that tore the
family apart after the train accident? The answers to these questions are hinted at
more than discussed, and Lahti has a way of making Sylvie’s reaction to
questions about the past seem detached and defusing all at once. The inquiries seem to bounce off of her and
fade into the folds of the film, like the locomotive into the lake, sinking
ever deeper with each subsequent attachment that glides off the rails.
Most people see a film that poses larger
questions – something like Spike Lee’s Do
the Right Thing (1989) – and initially recoil. It requires more than two free hours to view
and to process such a movie, and frankly we are losing our attention span as a
culture. It takes the ability to create
and to reflect on critical and nuanced thoughts in order to digest such
pictures. We’ve bought into the idea
that has been sold to us by Hollywood that movies exist solely for our
enjoyment, and can be forgotten in the interim between the moment when we leave
the theatre and the real moneymaker, the DVD release. Housekeeping
is a film of small questions rather than big, sweeping ones, but in the
time I spent with it, and for some time thereafter, they were questions that
mattered. Not a masterpiece, but a
wonderful look at a life different than my own, and yet similar in so many
ways.
Language:
English
Runtime:
117 Minutes
Available
for streaming @amazon.com
Grade:
3 Hats Off
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