Al's Omniflick: Innocence

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Innocence

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Hilary Brougher/Starring: Sophie Curtis, Kelly Reilly, Graham Phillips and Linus Roache

Innocence is the greatest contribution to cinema in the last 75 years...

No, I'm kidding. If it were only that.

What it really is is a ridiculous time-waster made more so by a knee-slapper of a plot and a comatose performance by Sophie Curtis that wouldn't register as a blip on the most sensitive electrocardiograph. I thought she might be auditioning for a role as a doorframe but that requires acting skills beyond Curtis' range. I wish I could call what she appeared to be doing onscreen bad acting but it's something more akin to an episode of narcolepsy, though instead of falling asleep in the middle of sentences, she snoozes at the beginning and end of them too. Her character stays conscious long enough to attract a boy in school, but what he finds appealing about her mystifies me, for she radiates less heat than that of the refrigerator compartment that holds butter.

Curtis plays Beckett Warner, a teenage girl who loses her mother in a surfing accident during her family's beach holiday. Though an aneurysm is mentioned later as the cause, one could just as easily believe the mother willfully entered a shark's gullet to escape her hopelessly vacuous daughter.

Her grieving father, Miles (Linus Roache) moves the family to New York City, where he enrolls Beckett at Hamilton Prep, which seems very ordinary save for the all-female staff. The women, all sexy and youthful, gather regularly for a book group though they don't invite Beckett's father, who is a writer of some renown though it's never clear what it is he actually writes. The fact that he is a writer seems strange, given his terrible skills at Scrabble later in the film. Maybe we're meant to believe he writes pop-up books.

While Beckett contends with the loss of her mother, a fellow student commits suicide by leaping to her death from the school roof. Her body nearly crushes Beckett's as it smashes on the pavement. Concerned for her mental health, Beckett is taken into the care of the school nurse, Pamela Hamilton (Kelly Reilly, in a silly role); who also happens to be a descendant of the school's founder. Beckett also attends therapy sessions with the school shrink, Dr. Vera Kent (Sarita Choudhury). Pamela takes a special shine to Beckett and eventually becomes her father's lover.

Beckett befriends a classmate Jen Dunham (Sarah Sutherland), whose mother is a raging alcoholic and also a member of the book group. Beckett also strikes up a romance with one of the Hamilton boys, Tobey Crawford (Graham Phillips) whose mother is--you guessed it--a member of the mysterious book klatch.

Before long, Beckett discovers the book group is actually a witch's coven; one intent on sacrificing virgins like Beckett and her friend Jen for reasons I assume deal with prolonging their lives and preserving their beauty. I only hope they offered the girls free tuition; school costs are a killer these days.

Director Hilary Brougher fails to establish or generate a moment of fear or suspense. It doesn't help that her leading lady lacks the skill to emote convincingly during the few scenes she is actually required to do so. Kelly Reilly, who redeemed herself in the recently-released Calvary after an embarrassing turn in this year's Heaven is For Real (see my posting for that film in the April archive), is cursed again with a risible character. Doesn't it strike anyone as peculiar that a scion of the school's founder is relegated to the role of a nurse?

I should have brought a flashlight to the film because so many interior scenes--even in daylight--are shot in a dark, bluish-gray that don't establish a mood of mystery so much as stimulate speculation as to why the school hasn't paid its electric bill. As perplexing are the repeated shots of the night sky with full moons. A little Astronomy 101 might have educated the filmmakers about the unlikeliness, if not the improbability, of the appearance of so many full moons. I might have not noticed such niggling details if I had been absorbed in the story.

I really didn't care about Beckett or the ludicrous coven. Everything about the movie loudly proclaimed its own boneheadedness. Instead of sacrificing virgins, the coven might have been better off using their witchy magic to treat Beckett's Severe Personality Deficiency...or Sophie Curtis' underwhelming acting.

Where are you when we need you, Samantha Stephens?

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.