Affliction
Studio: Shout! Factory
April 16, 2024
Web Exclusive
Photo by Shout! Factory
by Paul Schrader Affliction is a disturbing, nuanced look at how childhood trauma manifests and re-emerges throughout one's adulthood, dangerously affecting the way one interacts with oneself and those around one.
Affliction cleverly and deceptively begins as a different film. The main plot of the film follows Wade (Nick Nolte), a lowly cop in a small New Hampshire town where it snows early, hard and constantly. In a place where everyone knows each other, Wade's police work is relatively straightforward and non-confrontational. He directs traffic outside the town school, plows roads around the town, and maintains strong relationships with the town's citizens. The simplicity of Wade's everyday life—or the illusion of simplicity—It only becomes more abrupt when a hunting accident occurs deep in the woods, resulting in the suspicious death of an out-of-towner.
As Wade begins to investigate the cause of the shooting, he quickly begins to suspect that all is not as it seems, given the victim's financial fortune and connections to some of the city's darkest figures. Delving deeper into the case, Wade's mental health quickly deteriorates as he balances his work with his personal life—including his impending divorce, custody difficulties with his child, and constant memories of the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father.
Affliction it is a narrative feature and a character study, with the two approaches working in an inverse relationship. While the film steadily builds its intrigue throughout, as more of Wade's personal life and childhood is explored on screen, the hunting accident begins to shift in significance instead because of what it represents and stirs in the soul Wade's.
Schrader accomplishes this feat by taking the necessary time to introduce the audience to Wade's complex character, problems, and insecurities—long before the accident happened. The first 15 minutes of the film chronicle Wade's relationship with his daughter during their time together on Halloween night, using corny dialogue and forced actions to emphasize their complete estrangement from each other. Small gestures, like Wade trying to explain why he was late picking up his daughter (making him lose his trick) or getting her to talk to her old classmates at her previous school's Halloween party, are difficult and awkward to watch them. . Even after this series ended, Schrader continues to explore various aspects of Wade's private life using flashbacks that show he was abused as a child, constantly reinforcing how the character is a mix of unresolved traumas waiting to explode. When Wade begins to break down, particularly in the latter half of the film, Affliction it becomes incredibly difficult to watch as the character makes risky decisions that, despite their horrific nature, make sense given the way he has limited himself.
To capture and visually depict Wade's complex psyche, Schrader relies on a variety of stylistic techniques, most notably black-and-white and 16mm film. Wade's fantasy of the crime scene, where he depicts the hunting accident as murder, is always shot in black and white, whose monochromatic hues communicate and contrast the general uncertainty of the event with Wade's certainty that the accident could not have unfolded other way than the way he believes. The flashbacks of Wade being abused by his father are shot on 16mm, providing a notable distinction from the rest of the film and adding to the horror of the situation and character, acting almost as “found footage” rather than essential elements of the film's story. . The film's oscillation between these styles helps shape Wade's portrait, constantly showing the past haunting his character and how his unresolved memories directly support his actions.
Affliction boasts many incredible performances. Nolte shines as Wade, perfectly capturing the complexity of the character in a way that feels justified for the story and its separate components. The film also has an incredible supporting cast, including Sissy Spacek, William Dafoe, and James Coburn, who—despite their reduced screen time—equal and complement Nolte's intensity, solidifying the film's themes in a chillingly evocative way. thought.
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