Damage (1993)

The fascination of watching Damage is similar to the fascination of watching a car crash in progress--you know something unpleasant is going to happen, but your attention is riveted to the scene of destruction. In the case of this acclaimed drama, adapted by playwright David Hare from the novel by Josephine Hart, the destruction results from a collision of sexual attraction between a British governmental official (Jeremy Irons) and his son's fiancée (Juliette Binoche). Blind to the damage they'll cause to others and themselves, they begin an obsessive affair based purely on impulsive attraction and the hidden emotions that feed into their immediate physical desires. As you could expect, this leads to emotional fallout for everyone concerned, lending multiple interpretations to the film's title and allowing Miranda Richardson (as Irons's wife) to give a brilliant performance drawn from raw anger and betrayal. Under the direction of Louis Malle, this forceful drama never resorts to sordid detail or gratuitous titillation. Rather, Malle and his esteemed cast have explored the ways in which the power of sexuality supercedes the rationality of logic, when mutual attraction is stronger than one's ability to resist temptation. Damage makes it clear that such an indulgence will always come at considerable cost. The DVD of this fine film includes a behind-the-scenes featurette and the original theatrical trailer. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

Emotionally captivating with brilliant performances by Irons, Binoche and Richardson

[BEWARE SPOILERS]

I don't know whether I've ever watched a film in which I identified more with all the characters than I did in this emotionally wrenching masterwork from the late, great Louis Malle. It is part of the genius of Malle to, like Shakespeare, make every character real and to see and present the depth of even those slightly off stage.

I could begin with the youngest, the daughter Sally (Gemma Clarke) who says little and is always at a slight distance, her serious face in the backseat of the car seemingly thinking dark thoughts, her face down the hallway at night, seemingly knowing that her father has committed adultery with her brother's fiancée--yet not knowing. Louis Malle wanted a certain expression on her face; he wanted the primeval depth of her character as a being that knows more than it knows to be etched upon the screen. And this is because what she knows and doesn't know is what we all know and don't tell ourselves, namely that there is a part of our nature that is not under our control, a part of our nature that can cause not just damage, but disaster. And we are helpless to even see it coming let alone stop it.

In the wife, played with precision and finesse by Miranda Richardson, we see a complex and open person who expresses herself with subtle incisiveness in little gestures and poignant pauses, but then when it all comes crashing down, she speaks with the power of cold steel cutting into flesh.

Juliette Binoche's enigmatic Anna pulled me in the way she easily vacuumed in Jeremy Irons' high toned minister, Stephen Fleming. She was a low pressure area of enormous force that sucked Stephen to her like some bit of fluff and made him demand incredulously "Who are you?" while realizing that until now he never knew himself and what he could feel. For those who are more familiar with the Juliette Binoche of, say, The English Patient (1996) or Cache (2005), the pure sexual power that she can radiate on the screen may surprise you. Here her power is in what seems like pure surrender. But it is Stephen Fleming who is surrendering.

Anna's mother, played with a nuanced directness by Leslie Caron, is one of those women who say whatever is on her mind regardless of the circumstances, often to the great embarrassment of everyone present. Yet at the end we see in her an instinctive wisdom that in retrospect makes it right that she should speak so candidly and without guile. If only Stephen had listened to her! If only he had understood that what she said was to be taken literally and as a grave warning. Of course in such matters, warnings are of no avail.

Louis Malle remarked in the interview that is on the DVD that Jeremy Irons felt that his character had to be played in some sense "as himself." He would be not only naked to the audience in a physical sense (he was; beware prudes) but also as an emotional human being. He needed to project the fall from all that is proper and circumspect to become someone who would grovel before a passion he did not know existed within himself. He had to go from high dignity to abject humility. Anna was the siren's call and he her chosen sailor. He could not resist even though his passion for her would destroy everything he had, his career, his wife and family, his reputation, his personal homeostasis. He would think that, yes, I must leave my wife and go with Anna, and she would have to tell him that you can't do that, your son would hate you.

And then there is Anna's passion, not just in the physical, but in the deeply emotion sense of the irrational when she says "Do you think I would consent to marry Martyn if I could not have you?" As we see it is only the wife who knows and expresses, after it is all over, the obvious truth: "Did you think you could go on like this every day into the future?"

Well, when you think about it, of course not. Yet neither Anna nor Stephen, both blinded by the wild passion they felt for each other, knew the terrible state of danger they were creating. Anna's sin is that of arrogance to think she could satisfy both the father and the son and could manipulate them like toys on a string and nobody would be the wiser. And Stephen's failing is really that of a child-like surrender to this flood of emotion and passion that Anna evoked in him. He, even more than she, is irrational and blind.

Did she love him? Did he love her? And what is love? it might be asked. Long ago I once said to a young woman, "I love you," and she said what Anna says to Stephen, "I know." Such an answer should be an eye opener, but neither I nor Stephen noticed at the time.

Seldom have I felt so much emotion while watching a film. I have seen most of Malle's work, and he is always personal and deeply involved with his characters; but I think here he has created, if not a masterpiece, at least a most compelling story of what it is to be human and to fall from grace. I think it is only right that it took a combination of human error (the key left in the lock by Stephen) and the callous hand of fate that sends Martyn over the railing to bring about his modern tragedy. And, as in all great works of tragic art, the seeds of destruction are there in the psyches of the characters like the heel of Achilles.

Here's a quote from Anna that foreshadows the ending: "Damaged people are dangerous because they know they can survive."
June 17, 2008

SOMETHING IS MISSING

In the beginning the sons girl friend of a short time just happens to go meet the sons father on her own, then stares at him in a intense way, very deranged scene, where is the plot???. I gave this movie
3 stars because the actors were so good. June 2, 2008

deep, shocking.....

Every time I watch a movie that is based on a book, I can't help but thinking that it just can't be fair to the book itself. There will always be a way or another to minimize either the story or the characters. Based on the book by Josephine Hart, this movie is actually enhancing the book in so many ways.
I saw the movie 14 years ago, when it was heavily criticized for the sexual scenes, the nudity, and the lack of dialogue. I loved it then and I come to love it even more now.

In the book, the focus was on the emotional struggle that the main male character (Stephen Fleming) was going through. He lived all of his life being the good family man, good provider, simply playing it safe by the rules, until he meets Anna, the mysterious girl friend of his son. That's when he looses control over and gets torn apart between his strong desire to have that woman and his sincere love to his kids.
Anna would strike you as the cold, mysterious, kind of evil person who might have some emotional side to her, but it's focused on her selfishness and total consumption into her own emotional damage.

Now, when Jeremy Irons is playing Stephen, and Juliette Binoche is playing Anna, the story was taken to a different level, where dialogue is not needed much to show the development of the characters.
Binoche with the short hair cut, innocent yet very pretty face, and piercing looks is definitely making Anna the irresistible, mysterious, semi evil woman.
Irons simply can show with his eyes the entire struggle and pain that Stephen is going through; I don't think any other actor could've played that role.

The sexual scenes were way deeper than mere sexual attraction. I don't understand why they were criticized that much over the years, while the porn industry was blooming. The love scenes mostly focused on the two actors' faces and didn't show much skin as critics would say. The love making didn't focus on sex as much as on the desire of that man to bosses that woman in every way, and on the total physical submission she gave him, while at the same time she didn't give him her whole self.

I don't want to ruin the plot for any body who's interested in watching the movie, but try to focus on Irons' facial expressions, on the scene after the public love making in France where he goes back to his room and lays crying on the bed, on the scene when he's naked holding his son, and on the final scene and its details("...she was no different than any body else").

With two great actors like Irons and Binoche, you might be distracted from the other great actors like Martin (the son), Ingrid (the wife). Great movie, great music, great director BUT if you are a righteous person you might not like it; if you are a religious righteous person you will hate it (it might put you in confrontation with some puzzles about life and human limitations, that I highly doubt righteous people will understand).




May 28, 2008

Better in a theater, but a good film

T. Rafferty's bitchy New Yorker review reminds me why I hate New York pretentiousness amongst critics who watch and grieve from their self-appointed piss-elegant armchairs, and why Amazon would give him the space to relieve himself here is beyond me.

DAMAGE is a slow film, and, indeed, the cold sterility of its upper class characters plays better in a big theater than on DVD. It remains engaging due to the solid performances, and the troubling theme of 'special love' being quite so dangerous as to seduce even restrained humans into doing the most reprehensible and irresponsible things to each other.

Pray you don't meet your Anna. I did, and I escaped with only hurting myself. May 17, 2008

Sickness + Sickness + Sickness +.......

The English.....What can you expect from them??......Sickness.....i think incest is in their blood.....They are shameless November 24, 2007

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