The War Zone is a very frustrating film. Most self-proclaimed film buffs and critics will and have been easily convinced by the film. That's not to say that if you like this film you're dumb. You just missed the flaws. Anyone who wanders upon it unawares is likely to be repelled, needless to say. I, who have been wanting to see it since Jamie Berardinelli spewed about it as being one of the best films of the 1990s, that bone head, I myself found it contrived and very annoying, containing some bits of worth in individual scenes. To me, it seemed that Tim Roth, as well as the screenwriter (who also wrote the novel on which it's based), had calculated every iota of this film from the dialogue to the shot composition. Their goal was emotional manipulation, but the camera records the film's falseness clearly.
This film is an attempt to produce a realistic situation. In the cinema, realism is achieved by a naturalness in the actors and writing, as well as the actual filming. In a good 90% of the scenes, dialogue was obviously scripted with nothing improvised. I would bet that the minutest detail of tone of voice was written into the script. You can tell this because the rhythm of the dialogue is so precise, it leaves no room for invention. It might seem natural to the untrained ear, but it is phony naturalism. In the remaining 10%, I think it is possible that there was some improvisation, especially in the scene where the father denies everything and attacks his son for suggesting such awful things. I would bet my life that Tim Roth began his career on the stage. He's a mediocre but entertaining actor, speaking his lines, even those in the basest slang, as in Pulp Fiction, with the most eloquent and practiced diction. As a director, this is how his actors turn out, too. It should not be this way. The acting is measured to an unnecessary degree. All of the performances, except for a few individual scenes, seem forced. I can just see Roth directing these actors from behind the ever-present camera.
Also, the impeccably composed photography is totally out of place in The War Zone. This should have been done with hand held cameras, maybe even on video. It should have seemed sloppy. Instead, we get one of the most beautifully shot films of the past few years, which tells me that Roth was so confident that his subject matter was important, the only thing he was worrying about was the cinematography. Movies about sexual abuse should not be beautiful in any way. The photography definitely undermines the weight of the subject.
Even if the film had not seemed so phony to me, I still would have had problems with it. The film sickened me, not because its subject matter was sickening, but because it is treated in an exploitative way. My guess is that more people would get off on it than would get anything from it. Nudity is rampant, which is called for, I suppose, but Roth couldn't have found a more sexually compelling actress to get buck-naked. I guess if the film had worked, I would have felt guiltier about finding that actress so attractive. But she seems like she's playing naughty through the whole film. Sadists will love the scene where she burns her nipple, not to mention the very graphic depiction of daddy-daughter anal sex. Speaking of which, the version I saw was rated R. I swear it was rated NC-17 in the theaters, so I assume that there was some editing done to reduce it to R for HBO. But what the hell could have been removed? I'm certainly no prude, but, if any film has ever earned an NC-17, whether or not I saw an edited version, it is The War Zone. It's the truth that the evil MPAA castrates a ton of indie films with that rating when they don't at all deserve them, handing awful Hollywood products R's, but this is not a case of that sort of discrimination, for sure!
This is most definitely a failure, an enormous one. 4/10.
This film is an attempt to produce a realistic situation. In the cinema, realism is achieved by a naturalness in the actors and writing, as well as the actual filming. In a good 90% of the scenes, dialogue was obviously scripted with nothing improvised. I would bet that the minutest detail of tone of voice was written into the script. You can tell this because the rhythm of the dialogue is so precise, it leaves no room for invention. It might seem natural to the untrained ear, but it is phony naturalism. In the remaining 10%, I think it is possible that there was some improvisation, especially in the scene where the father denies everything and attacks his son for suggesting such awful things. I would bet my life that Tim Roth began his career on the stage. He's a mediocre but entertaining actor, speaking his lines, even those in the basest slang, as in Pulp Fiction, with the most eloquent and practiced diction. As a director, this is how his actors turn out, too. It should not be this way. The acting is measured to an unnecessary degree. All of the performances, except for a few individual scenes, seem forced. I can just see Roth directing these actors from behind the ever-present camera.
Also, the impeccably composed photography is totally out of place in The War Zone. This should have been done with hand held cameras, maybe even on video. It should have seemed sloppy. Instead, we get one of the most beautifully shot films of the past few years, which tells me that Roth was so confident that his subject matter was important, the only thing he was worrying about was the cinematography. Movies about sexual abuse should not be beautiful in any way. The photography definitely undermines the weight of the subject.
Even if the film had not seemed so phony to me, I still would have had problems with it. The film sickened me, not because its subject matter was sickening, but because it is treated in an exploitative way. My guess is that more people would get off on it than would get anything from it. Nudity is rampant, which is called for, I suppose, but Roth couldn't have found a more sexually compelling actress to get buck-naked. I guess if the film had worked, I would have felt guiltier about finding that actress so attractive. But she seems like she's playing naughty through the whole film. Sadists will love the scene where she burns her nipple, not to mention the very graphic depiction of daddy-daughter anal sex. Speaking of which, the version I saw was rated R. I swear it was rated NC-17 in the theaters, so I assume that there was some editing done to reduce it to R for HBO. But what the hell could have been removed? I'm certainly no prude, but, if any film has ever earned an NC-17, whether or not I saw an edited version, it is The War Zone. It's the truth that the evil MPAA castrates a ton of indie films with that rating when they don't at all deserve them, handing awful Hollywood products R's, but this is not a case of that sort of discrimination, for sure!
This is most definitely a failure, an enormous one. 4/10.