THE CAPTIVE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Creepy Egoyan Thriller exposes parental fears

The fetishization of our greatest fears

The Captive (2014)
Dir. Atom Egoyan
Script: David Fraser & Egoyan
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Rosario Dawson, Mireille Enos, Kevin Durand, Christine Horne, Alexia Fast, Peyton Kennedy, Bruce Greenwood, Aaron Poole, Jason Blicker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Spanning eight years in the life of Cassandra (Alexia Fast/Peyton Kennedy), a child kidnapped from her father Matthew's (Ryan Reynolds) car while he pops into a roadside bakery to bring home a treat, The Captive focuses upon both the Stockholm-Syndrome-like effects upon the girl and the devastation her disappearance wreaks upon the family and cops looking for some closure (positive or negative) to the mystery. It's subject matter that hits all the chords most of us want to eradicate from our world and as such, perfect material for the masterful Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan.

Egoyan's meticulously complex films have almost always been tinged with creepy thriller-like elements, darkly droll humour and deep humanity buried beneath layers of existential disconnect and deliberate puzzle-like manipulations of time and space. His superb 1999 adaptation of William Trevor's novel Felicia's Journey is still one of the best serial killer movies made in the last two decades. I'd even place it far above such fake "A"-picture studio exploitation items making thrills palatable to the mainstream like Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. Featuring Bob Hoskins' finest performance (ever) as Hilditch, the gastronomically-obsessed and even somewhat banal psychopath, Felicia's Journey struck me as being a kind of demented play on Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy as if that 70s classic had been pumped full of deliciously near-lethal doses of lovely lithium. It was sickeningly terrifying and oddly, deeply moving. I longed for Egoyan to make another thriller and even now wish he'd do nothing but thrillers or maybe even a flat-out horror.

The Captive is nothing if not downright shudder-inducing. Set against the overcast snow blanket of Southern Ontario's Niagara region, the film taps directly into every parent's greatest terror - the disappearance of a child without a single, solitary trace. It's a surefire starting point, but Egoyan and David Fraser's twisted, ominously fetishistic screenplay provides a solid framework for the film to go well beyond merely tapping into the fear everyone harbours. It's as much a genre picture of the highest order as it is a harrowing exploration of faith, family and the soul-sickening sense of hope that drives all those touched by the horrendous violence perpetrated against children.

The Captive's potential to anger audiences (especially, it seems, quite a few boneheaded, know-nothing film "critics") is not unlike that of Lars von Trier's AntiChrist (sans, of course, that film's genital mutilation). I feel strongly, though, that neither film seeks to intentionally raise ire, but rather, to dive into all sorts of places that most people simply don't want to go, places that are so necessary and vital to confront, grotesquely dark corners of existence to reflect upon and/or expose.

The Captive achieves this in two brilliant ways. First of all, Fraser and Egoyan set up a number of familiar narrative tropes of the thriller genre and give them a decidedly shaken, not stirred, quality. What's structurally mundane becomes extraordinarily abhorrent, creepily unnerving. Inherent in both the narrative and the aesthetic are the especially horrendous fetishistic qualities of perspective which place us as observers in the pain of the film's victims/subjects.

Visually and stylistically, Egoyan's rich compositions, supported by cinematographer Paul Sarossy's delicate shadings and painterly dappling of light capture the very essence of white-grey exteriors and the (mostly) clinical interiors. When the visual palette includes warmth, it comes in the unlikeliest of places like the psychopath's lair, the victim's prison, Nicole the cop's (Rosario Dawson) office and, of course, the roadside bakery which is where the horror really begins.

There's so much I admire about this movie. Ryan Reynolds continues to prove he's one of the great living actors and here he taps emotional depths he's yet to uncover - his despair is so palpable we can't help but walk in his shoes. Mychael Danna's score is a marvel - tapping both the moving power and jangling force of Bernard Herrmann. Witness the opening movements of the score - so lushly bucolic, but as the camera slowly reveals more and more snow and bush of the isolated setting, we hear ever-so slight tinges of unease. Then, of course, during moments of pulse-pounding suspense (two sequences during the film's climactic moments in particular had me rendering my fingertips to bloody, pulpy stubs), Danna slams us with everything he's got and then some.

Kevin Durand as the full-on sicko ringleader of an online community of pain-fetishists is slime-incarnate and there isn't a moment he's onscreen that we don't feel like vomiting. His performance is bravely in sharp contrast to Hoskins from Felicia's Journey where the late British bombast actually tapped into human aspects that allowed us to care for him. Durand does something even more difficult, he taps into humanity - and yes, it IS humanity - that we never hope to experience, but indeed exists. This is no Snidely Whiplash villain, but the kind of sick, venal, mind-numbingly banal and even pretentious evil that's finally more the reality of these sick freaks.

Though the film has its share of universal qualities, the manner with which Egoyan explores the dark-net subculture of predators is also rooted in truly indigenous qualities of Canadian culture. The country has long had a history of monsters infused with the vapid desires of such empty vessels as Bernardo-Homolka, Clifford Olson and, amongst many, many others, Dennis Melvin Howe. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, serial criminal psychopaths are not brilliant, they're petty, pretentious and boring.

This, for me, might be the scariest, most sickening element of The Captive. So much pain and wasted time in the lives decent people comes from the actions of a trite, haughty dullard. Thank Christ Egoyan shoves our faces in the faecal matter of this reality. Doing so manages to expose terrible truths and give us one hell of a thrilling ride.

The Captive is in theatrical release across the country via eOne.

Some Brief Thoughts On Atom Egoyan Upon Recent Reviews (especially Peter Bradshaw's in the Guardian) of His New Film THE CAPTIVE and an utterly moronic article in The Huffington Post that gave me the runs. Musings and Analysis on the Great Man Egoyan - By Greg Klymkiw, Esq.

The Many Faces of Atom Egoyan
& his Trademark Head-Tilt Poses
Including (at bottom) a rare Sans-a-Tilt

My Love Affair With Atom Egoyan

By Greg Klymkiw

A STUPID ARTICLE in the Huffington Post and some really cruddy reviews of The Captive by Peter Bradshaw and others of Petey-Boy's loathsome ilk were annoying enough to make me want to spew the following thoughts about Atom Egoyan.

With respect to the aforementioned Huff Post piece, some have suggested it's not worthy enough to dignify a response, but frankly, when a supposedly respectable journal chooses to print such nonsense, it seems ludicrous not to eject vomit upon it. We are, after all, and with thanks to The Huffington Post, treated to the anal drippings of yet another "film journalist" or, as he's described by the publication, a "Pop Culture Blogger".

He's ultimately full of shit and as he's chosen a public forum to dispose of his waste matter, this is surely an environmental concern as well as a cultural one.

The clown demonstrates, like so many of his ilk do, a lack of film history and appears to be infused with all the critical acumen of Ben Mulroney, a smarmy Canadian sycophant purporting to be a journalist specializing in entertainment. This is probably enough to dismiss the guy's loathsome jottings.

That said, though, I'm often the first to crap on Canadian Cinema. I do think many of the problems with our nation's film product, most notably in English Canada, are tied oh-so resolutely to the "powers that be" (including government financiers, distributors and the biggest exhibition chain in Canada) far more than the filmmakers who pinch their cinematic loaves into the bowl of rejection for nobody to see. One might argue against my point by asserting that taste, especially as it relates to opinion, is subjective. I can't necessarily disagree with this, but I prefer to follow the delectable credo of Science Fiction writer Harlan Ellison regarding opinion - that nobody is entitled to one, but those who register one that's informed, are most certainly allowed to do so.

From my informed perspective, then, I agree that Atom has ground out a few stinkers, but the man is prolific and all filmmakers are allowed to make crappy movies from time to time (John Ford, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock anyone?) - even if they receive public funds. Most often it's an artist's failures that contribute to their canon in mysterious ways - allowing them to do work that might fail, but eventually leads them to work that soars high indeed. Their failures also provide a body of work that will prove, over time, to be all the richer for critical study and analysis. (I have no use for the ephemeral properties ascribed to the worth of things - what counts is a work's universality: commercially, critically, academically.)

Whether his critics want to believe this or not, Atom has made any number of fine films that WILL live on once the mediocrity of so many others will be forgotten. Next of Kin is as sweet and engaging a feature debut as any of our best have generated. Family Viewing and Speaking Parts are delectably and perversely funny. Yes, what many don't recognize is Egoyan's perverse sense of humour - it's intentional and pervasive. Hmmmm, I like that "Pervasively Perverse" notion. Perhaps an essay along those lines is in order.

I don't especially like The Adjuster, but find there is much to admire in it, especially Elias Koteas's performance and the notion of ascribing monetary value to that which is beyond mere shekels. Exotica feels like a major misfire and a lost opportunity for Egoyan to plunge himself and us into some dangerous territory, but he gets points for even flirting with "danger". Mostly, I have my North End Winnipeg Ukrainian Boy prejudice against films about lap dancers that don't have enough nudity in them.

Calendar, as even the loathsome Huffington Post writer acknowledges, is a wonderful film. I'd go so far as to suggest it might be Egoyan's masterpiece - so wryly humorous and deeply moving, it is layered with complexity beneath its seemingly simple structure. Ararat, is an odd patchwork quilt, but I was ultimately spewing tears on several occasions in his evocation of the Armenian Holocaust.

Felicia's Journey also falls into the potential masterpiece category for me - a daring attempt at finding humanity in a monster, infused with plenty of chillingly creepy moments, an astounding Bob Hoskins performance and overall, being imbued with such skill, craft and directorial aplomb that I will maintain and defend to the teeth my assessment that the film is Hitchcock's Frenzy on lithium. Now THAT is perverse.

The last clutch of films (Where The Truth Lies, Adoration, Chloe and Devil's Knot) have been, for me, out and out failures, but they do have the distinction of remaining true to Egoyan's "voice" and I also suspect they represent an important transition for him as an artist. Thanks to my colleague Alan Bacchus, however, I am now excited to dive into Where The Truth Lies again as I might well be wrong about that one. (As well, I have seen all four of the films I just dismissed at least twice each and will, no doubt revisit them all again. God knows, I recently had a fresh helping of Frank Capra's most reviled film Pocketful of Miracles and maintain it's not awful at all and has much in it to admire.)

You'll note I've thus far ignored talking about his Oscar-nominated The Sweet Hereafter. Strictly from a taste standpoint, I most certainly do not like the film - the whole Pied Piper thing is clever, but it's self-consciously clever in a way that detracts from the impact the material could have had. However, I cannot deny that it's a pretty damn great film. Does that sound dichotomous? Goddamn rights it is! That is also the hallmark of a genuine artist - to make work that some might not like, but that also bears the indelible trademarks of artistry that guarantee its importance and that its detractors cannot ignore - so much so that it has drawn me back to it on subsequent occasions to reassess and appreciate it.

As for Egoyan's new film, The Captive (produced by Jennifer Weiss, Simone Urdl, Stephen Traynor and co-written by David Fraser), I've yet to see it (no Cannes for this fella) and I'm not sure when I shall see it since the head (or in this case, decidedly wrong-headed head) of E-One's publicity unit has seen fit to ban me from their screenings for some mysterious reasons she'll not adequately reveal.

I suspect the banning has more to do with my crapping on a few of their releases (which, now that I garner a worldwide readership over half a million, might be egregious enough, though I've raved far more frequently about their more worthwhile films than the risible ones). I consider their banning a badge of honour no matter how much an inconvenience it is and maybe I'll need to catch up with The Captive at the Toronto International Film Festival (if it plays there) or wait until it opens theatrically (whereupon I can buy a ticket to a different movie and waltz into the Egoyan to avoid donating any dinero to E-One).

I do, however, look forward to seeing it.

You see, as my readers and those who know me are well aware of, I normally refuse to read reviews before seeing movies I have not seen and written about, but with The Captive, my eyeballs were drawn to a tweet about a pan from Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian. Bradshaw is, to my mind, one of the worst film critics in the world and I was chomping at the bit to see what inanities he might have spluttered about Egoyan's new film.

It was a fine review.

Every fucking crap he took on the film was a reason to suggest I'd love the film. I then did the unthinkable (for me) and read another review. It was from Jonathan Romney, a film critic who is one of the best in the world (I can count those on the fingers of one and one-half hands). Everything he admired about The Captive suggested that Egoyan's new film is something I'm going to love. I was also taken with one more review. Written by Robbie Collin of The Telegraph, the third paragraph was such excellent film writing, I decided to stop reading, bookmark it and take a full gander once I've seen The Captive and have had a chance to write about it. Of course, the reason I hate reading reviews in advance are the expectations they set up and that most critics fulfil little more than the needs of studio flacks, revealing far too much of the content of the films to appease their brain-bereft editors, publishers and readers.

So I HOPE I love it.

My fingers are crossed.