Red Road (2006)
Bill Long 4/22/07
Two Thumbs Up for this Haunting Movie
One of the good things about the town where I have lived since 1996 (Salem, OR) is that it decided last year to inaugurate a film festival. The "second-annual" Salem Film Festival concludes today. I only had time to take in one movie this year--Andrea Arnold's Red Road, a thought-provoking exploration of grief and the way that it twists the character and leads one through conflicting desires to strange but, ultimately, explicable forms of action. What makes this movie alluring, however, is not only the theme it explores but the way that crucial details are withheld from us until all becomes clear at the end of the film. We never feel, however, as if this withholding of information is either gratuitous or cruel; it simply heightens our interest in people whose lives never should have connected but who, for some inexplicable reason, seem to be intimately joined.
The Action
Though there is action in this film, it starts, paradoxically, with a woman who watches others act. Jackie (Kate Dickie), a 30-something woman, is employed as a surveillance film watcher in Glasgow Scotland. Cameras are set up all around that blue-collar city, and she watches the alternately grainy and clear shots in one of the seedier areas of town--Red Road. We don't know much about her, however, even as the film slowly unfolds. She seems not to have much of a "life." That there is "more" to her and to the movie is evident in the "contradiction" that is quickly apparent--she wears a wedding band, but she goes home to an empty house. And, to add to the contradiction; she seems to have regular sex sessions with one of her married colleagues. But in all of these activities she has a peculiar air of detachment, even distance.
This distance is shattered or, better said, disappears when she sees a character on one of the tapes that makes her start. At first she wants to report an event, where a man apparently is assaulting a woman in a secluded area near a housing project. But she refrains when she realizes that they are having consensual sex. While watching the sexual encounter with a little bit more than detached interest, she recognizes the man. When next we see her she is trying to track down the man. All we know is that he has a name (Clyde Henderson--played beautifully by Tony Curran), that he works as a locksmith and that he lives in a place which Jackie described to one of her colleagues as a place where "ex cons" tend to live. We have no idea, however, why she might be fascinated by Clyde.
We learn one other detail early in the movie which will have meaning as time goes on. Jackie receives a wedding invitation in the mail, an invitation she would like to ignore but feels she can't. At the wedding we learn two things: it is her sister-in-law who is being married (where is her husband, we think?), and Jackie has rather difficult/frosty relationships with Albert (an older man) and her sister-in-law. Even though she is invited by her aunt to dance, Jackie just can't seem to muster up the energy or interest to do so. An inexplicable cloud seems to shroud her, even as she forces a wan smile every once in a while.
Enter Clyde
Once she has identified Clyde Henderson, she begins to follow him, first on the surveillance tapes and then, in real life. She lets her personal 'stuff' get in the way of her professional activity, however, since she "missed" seeing some knife-wielding girls severely injure another young girl by stabbing her while Jackie is watching other tapes--of Clyde. Her search for Clyde leads her to his "flat," which is anything but flat, since he lives on the 24th floor of a bleak, graffiti-covered highrise. Jackie insinuates herself into the building by accompanying some partygoers who happen to be attending a party in Clyde's and roomate Stevie's apartment. During the course of the evening she "connects" with Clyde in a dance. Yet this is too much for her. She dashes out of the apartment and vomits in the elevator, a sure sign of the conflicts that are ripping her insides as she maintains a placid exterior.
Those conflicts continue as she becomes ever closer to Clyde. We learn that he has just recently been released from jail, that he is a sort of "love 'em and leave 'em"-type of guy, that he is having some kind of affair with a worker in a local cafe. Unbeknowst to him, Jackie plans to meet him at a bar (she sees him going into it in the tape), arming herself with a rock in her jacket before she makes his acquaintance again. What, we think, is she doing?
Conclusion
Well, it isn't my purpose to tell you everything that happens. But, to "fast forward" this a bit, she goes home with Clyde, has sex with him (in one of the most graphic sex scenes I have seen outside of an X-rated movie), and then "injures" herself, while spreading his semen all over her vaginal area. Then, it becomes clear what she is trying to do. She is trying to "catch" him in a crime, to send him back to prison. What is the original "crime" that sent him to prison? Well, you have probably guessed it by now, even though I won't tell you. The film does portray, however, the length to which people will go to connect with someone from their past. In the end, Jackie will simply want an explanation (and apology) from Clyde for something he has done. She wants to "humanize" him once and for all, even though we viewers might at first think she is going to become a "fatal attraction"-kind of woman.
Finally, in a note that seems a little too contrived, Jackie is able to express her grief at the haunting thing that Clyde has done to her "family," and the movie closes with a video of a man walking his dog. That man was the same man earlier in the movie who had an old, infirm dog. That he has a new one betokens the possibilties open to one who can work through their loss. Thus the film closes.
Arnold has told the story of grief well, and she maintains our interest through this almost two-hour film. We see that at the base of Jackie's seemingly irrational conduct is a very firmly-based and fixed rationale, and we thus recognize the duality of grief. On the surface it seems to drive us to inexplicable activities but, once you know a person's story, you can see how things "fit." We have all learned that anew in this past week in America, haven't we?
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