THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 1, 1995 TAG: 9502010037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
THREE PEOPLE gather in a small, secluded beach house during a single dark night.
Add to this a series of deceptively simple, yet puzzling questions and you have the setting for ``Death and the Maiden,'' a film that uses closed spaces as a perfect vehicle for tension.
Geraldo Escobar, an ambitious political climber (played by Stuart Wilson), has a flat tire on his way home. He is aided by Dr. Roberto Miranda, a seemingly kind benefactor (played by Ben Kingsley). As soon as Kingsley enters the house, Paulina Escobar, Geraldo's wife, listening from the next room, notices his voice. It is the voice of a fiend who, 15 years ago, tortured and raped her while Schubert's ``Death and the Maiden'' string quartet played in the background. She is sure he is the man who dehumanized and maimed her. But she was blindfolded during the tortures and never actually saw him. She recognizes him only by sound and smell.
When her husband leaves the room, she decides, with a ferocity that borders on obsession, to bind and gag Kingsley and set about taking her revenge. As the night wears on, she is determined to make him confess his evils. When her husband returns, he sides with the accused man and urges his wife to set him free.
Ultimately, the husband as well as the audience must judge.
Who is telling the truth? Is Dr. Miranda (Kingsley) guilty? Is the wife crazy? Is she so obsessed with revenge that she merely thinks this is the man who tortured her? Even if the man is guilty, is she justified in taking justice into her own hands? Most importantly, is healing possible?
As sparked by a stinging and aggressive performance from Sigourney Weaver, the film takes on universal qualities. In a movie market in which gore is so often used to suggest terror, here is a film in which the power of suggestion, and claustrophobia, serve better - reminding us that ordinary, everyday folk are perhaps capable of much more fiendish deeds than all the silly movie monsters usually trotted out.
Weaver turns in the best performance of her career as she sticks out her jaw, determined to make Kingsley pay. She is an imposing figure, tall and determined, and it is thoroughly believable that she would be capable of the physical threats she promises. Kingsley, on the other hand, has the awesome task of reacting and cringing. He is bound to a chair for most of the film. Only Wilson seems a bit weak, but that is the nature of his character - an ambivalent husband who may be the most guilty of all. For 15 years, he's never really discussed the terrors with his wife.
Roman Polanski is the ideal director for this material. With ``Rosemary's Baby,'' ``Repulsion'' and ``Knife in the Water,'' he proved his ability to stage dramas of menace and compression.
Based on a play by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman (now a professor at Duke University), the film still is stagestruck in its talkiness. Polanski has been wise, though, in not attempting to open it up to make it more a conventional movie. By bringing the camera in for in-your-face closeups, Polanski conveys to us the same trapped, confined space in which the three characters exist.
``Death and the Maiden'' is not really political, although it does deal with the effects of politics. Its setting is ``somewhere in Latin America'' but, notably, it was written in 1990 in the wake of Chile's return to democracy. The structure is perhaps overly simple in that it allows each of its three characters to take a turn at center screen but if there is a great deal of talk here, it is more literate and intelligent talk than in our other current talkathon movie, ``Before Sunrise.'' The philosophy argued here is worth the arguing.
This film is proof that tension can be a subtle thing. For Sigourney Weaver, it is a career-changing performance. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
FRANCOIS DUHAMEL
From left, Sigourney Weaver, Stuart Wilson and Ben Kingsley star in
``Death and the Maiden.
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Death and the Maiden''
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Stuart Wilson
Director: Roman Polanski
Screenplay: Rafael Yglesias and Ariel Dorfman, based on the play
by Dorfman
MPAA rating: R (violence, language)
Mal's rating: Three 1/2 stars
Locations: Circle 6 in Norfolk; Columbus and Lynnhaven Mall in
Virginia Beach
by CNB