Review of Anamorph (2007) by Per H — 19 Mar 2012

There is just a fine line between murder and art. And this fine line seems to vanish in "Anamorph". Beautiful, carefully arranged still lifes appear allover New York. They are just not to be seen in galleries. They are crime scenes, where the murderer composed his art from corpses.

Detective Stan Aubray (Willem Dafoe) works for the New York police. He lets his intuition lead him, so you can say he is more a profiler, than a plain detective. He is obsessed with cleanness and order, he likes to drink, and he flees from the ghosts of the past. And those ghosts become very present again, when he starts to investigate the murders. He failed to solve a very similar crime-series five years ago, and he never got over that. Now, he smells the chance to wash his name white again and most important of all, he smells the chance to calm his own conscience.

The movie is very dark and the colors and music are gloomy. The "art-objects" are cruel, but also very tempting. And they are much more than the work of a psychopath. They are jigsaws. Beautiful jigsaws.

Soon Aubray feels that he is somehow part of the enactment of the killer. The killer wants him to be on the right track and he makes sure that Aubray gets enough clues to follow him on his bloody way.

As much as I liked the movie and as much as it drew me under it's spell, just as much I was disappointed by the ending when I finished watching. I love movies where I have no idea where they will lead to. And "Anamorph" is one of those movies. I just lay back and let the flow carry me thorugh the movie. But the ending was a little too simple for me. A little too flat. I hoped for something bigger. Maybe something more shocking....but after a while, I understood why the ending is good the way it is. The murders are pompous, cruel and beautiful. The work of Aubray is fascinating, captivating and disturbing. This movie is not about the end. It is about the process of getting to the end. It is about sneaking into a sick mind. And I like that very much!