The Confirmation

Bob Nelson, 2016

IMDB

3/5

There are many angles in which the Father / Son movie dynamic can be approached in film. In real life it's a complicated relationship. Living up to the expectations of each other, letting each other down, reflections of oneself in your own offspring. Being hard on your self, being hard on your son. Martial troubles that trickle down to the rest of the family.

In The Confirmation, you step into the lives of Walt (Clive Owen) and Anthony (Jaeden Lieberher) long after any familial conflict. They are now in a state of reconstruction. Walt and ex Bonnie (Maria Bello) have been divorced for a while, long enough for her to remarry. This is presumably because of Walt's drinking, which reveals itself pretty early on in a conversation between the two when she pleads with him not to drink while taking Anthony for the weekend.

Walt is down on his luck. He's in that sort of purgatory state of existence where he can't seem to get out of his own way. Truck won't start, phones not ringing with construction work. Rent is late, no money to pay the rent. All he really has is this weekend with Anthony. Bad turns to worse when Walt discovers that his antique wooden toolbox has been stolen from the back of his truck while in a local tavern. The film soons morphs into a modern day take on The Bicycle Thief as Walt and Anthony spend most of their weekend together searching for clues. They are forced to approach the (what would be considered) more deplorable people in town that would do that kind of thing (steal toolboxes). Interestingly enough these people don't come off as criminals but more as characters. There is certainly an effort to humanize these types of people in this film. And there is a lot at stake for Walt. With an eviction notice on his apartment door, he desperately needs money right away and not taking the carpentry job on Monday is out of the question.

The Confirmation works largely because of great casting choices. Clive Owen's Walt character solicits sympathy, as the character really needs to. You want Walt to find his tools. You want the relationship between Walt and Anthony to flourish. Walt doesn't take on a victim mentality at all. Not only does he bear the weight of his own mistakes, he bears the weight of his generations mistakes one apologizing to Anthony for leaving his generation with a infrastructural mess to clean up. One should come to expect nothing but an impressive nuanced performance from Owen, who is quietly one of the best working actors in modern cinema. Bello succeeds in her Bonnie role, as she balances the perfect amount of firmness and fairness. Anthony's character works because of its authenticity. He so accurately nails that whole kid being happy with the nothing moments as long as you are with your father. Sitting in front of the TV watching boring black-and-white repeats is enough. Riding shotty in an old pick up truck is enough. The Confirmation is an endearing film that has some appreciation for film history but also has heart in it's own story.

Prisoners

Denis Villeneuve, 2013

Amazon Instant Video

4/5

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) and his wife Grace (Maria Bello) are spending some time with their neighbors Franklin (Terrance Howard) and Nancy Birch (Viola Davis). Their girls ask to go play at their house. They return home not long after only to find the two girls missing. With a suspicious RV in the neighborhood the police act quickly. Not feeling that the police investigated the initial suspect thoroughly, Keller loses faith in the police and decides to perform his own investigation for the girls independently, knowing that with each hour passing without their return the hope diminishes.

Prisoners is a tough film to get through. Not because its a poorly made film, it's quite the opposite. It's an exceptional film. It's just disturbing at the same time. A film that could have easily made this blog's Top 5 great films I don't want to see again. It's a difficult two hour ordeal involving child abduction, one of those horrific scenarios that everyone fears and doesn't want to think about. And it plays on that theme so well. At times it's likely to remind you of similarly themed kidnapping films Gone Baby Gone, Ransom, Taken or even Mystic River. But Prisoners stands out on it's own. Notes of desperation, suspicions of all of the shady characters embedded in the community (and there's no shortage of shady characters here), degradation of hope, loss of spirit. Even the small, rural town of Conyers Pennsylvania is bleak. It rains a lot, and when it's not raining or snowing the sun doesn't really resurface - it just sort of stays miserably overcast. This is no mistake by Villeneuve, who clearly wants the town of Conyers to have a more dreary air to it. The mechanics of such a film wouldn't work so well if the parents woke up to a sunny sky, almost hinting that things are going to get better. Instead, Keller and Grace don't really wake up because they hardly sleep. And when the daylight hits the windows, it's just another day that they spend every waking moment trying to find their daughter Anna. Next door there's no shortage of grief either as the well-off Birch family holds out. But the film has more of a focus on the Dover's. Their characters are more layered. Not financially stable. Their struggles feel identifiable, more realistic. Keller struggles to find carpentry work while also doomsday prepping in his well-organized basement. His son asks for some financial support in purchasing his first car and Keller almost immediately states that it's an impossibility. Clearly things can always get worse. And of course they do.

Jackman puts his Wolverine claws in the closet and delivers what's arguably the best performance of his character, full of nuance. A religious man, a recovering alcoholic who has already been to hell and back in the past. A man who likely at a certain limit only to have it pushed further. His morals become compromised, he makes drastic decisions, but you understand. He maintains conscience, at times even feeling desperate for a church confessional. Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as the twitchy Detective Loki is a bit restrained but his determined yet calculating demeanor is interesting. Keller unfortunately doesn't see how hard Loki is on himself. Character actor Paul Dano nails it as peculiar loner Alex Jones. Melissa Leo is the chameleon she always is. Maria Bello so perfectly demonstrates the complete collapse of one's character. The years that a trauma can put on someones mind and physical attributes, like that person you know in your town who lost a child years back that everyone feels so sorry for when they see her at the gas station while she hides her face. From beginning to end the cast performs like a gloomy symphony of melodrama. The final moments of the picture play on some of the notes of Silence of the Lambs, perhaps making more of an impact on you as you watch the the credits roll. Prisoners will without a doubt stick with you, for good or bad.