Review of Affliction (1996) by Christopher P — 05 Jul 2008

It's a decent film for the most part, but I don't really like the way Nick Nolte's character is condemned throughout as an abusive asshole. He doesn't do anything abusive to his daughter at any point during the film, nor is there any real allusion to him having done something abusive in the past. Yet at the end of the film, when his daughter attacks him, jumping all over him and slapping him repeatedly, the man is intended to be condemned in the viewer's eyes for doing what he must do in such a situation; that is, repelling her with one reluctant, harmless slap. I mean, how else was he going to get the little rugrat off him? It's not like he hauled back and broke her jaw. Yet the whole story seems to have been building up to this act of "violence" as a showcase of Nolte's inevitable embrace of an abusive persona inherited from his own father.

There's already enough films out there that malign the modern American father figure with far worse depictions. This chronicle of Nolte's character straining to be a good father, then ultimately failing due to his daughter's prejudice against him, wasn't necessary.