Review of Affliction (2012) by Anthony S — 15 Mar 2005

[color=white]Critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times declares on the cover of the [i]Affliction [/i]DVD that the film is "volcanic". I think that no other word could describe Paul Schrader's intense film better. Nick Nolte gives another amazing performance in a film that pulls you in and just doesn't let go as it takes you on a tension filled journey through one man's descent into the madness that he couldn't stop from becoming him. [/color].

[color=white]The film is based on a novel written by Russell Banks, and it definitely unfolds like a book. Nolte is Wade Whitehouse, a small town police officer who is virtually on no one's good side except for his long time companion, Margie (played by Sissy Spacek). In the beginning of the film we see Wade rumbling through the town doing rebellious and often cruel things to himself and the people around him. He breaks the law constantly, and he [i]is [/i]the law. He is a very scary and unpredictable character, but until later on we treat him as the film's evil one. Later we meet Glen Whithehouse, Wade's father played by James Coburn in his Oscar winning performance. The first time we see him is in an unsettling flashback memory Wade is having. It's a very powerful way to be introduced to one of the most intense presences in recent movie history. We begin to understand and even sympathize with Wade after learning of the life he grew up with and even still continues to live. Willem Dafoe plays Rolfe, the film's narrator and Wade's brother who was a smart one and moved away from it all, but he makes a return for their mother's funeral. [/color].

Schrader has written many films for Martin Scorsese, including [i]Taxi Driver[/i], [i]Raging Bull[/i], [i]The Last Temptation of [/i]Christ[i],[/i]and [i]Bringing Out the Dead[/i]. He has directed great films such as [i]American Gigolo, Light Sleeper[/i], and [i]Auto Focus[/i]. These and even more previous projects he has worked on show how much experience he has on the mental downward spiral of lead characters. This film is so good that it's dangerously close to being one of the 10 best films of the 90's, and I cannot believe that I just saw it for the first time yesterday. It's Schrader's best film as a director and features Nolte's career best performance, not to mention one of the most powerful I've ever seen. The film received fairly decent critical acclaim and 2 Oscar nominations, Nolte and Coburn...but I still feel the need to make this a part of the ongoing underrated series. It should have been nominated in all the major categories and praised ten times more than it did, for it's a better film than just a great film with some of the most haunting sequences I've seen in a long time. [i]Afflcition [/i]is a movie I won't soon forget, not even an inch of it.