I have to admit it, I kind of
liked Misery. A
colleague of mine categorized it as “efficient hooey” and my response was
“What’s so bad about that?”
There’s
a place in this world for efficient hooey.
You
all know the outline of the story (or should, where’s your pop culture cred?). Based
on Stephen King’s novel, set in the
early ‘80s, before cellphones-as-a-commonality and universal internet, it’s
about what happens after bestselling romantic-potboiler novelist Paul Sheldon (Bruce
Willis) wakes up—having been rescued
from a car accident in a remote, snowbound location—in a bed in the guest
room of the home of nurse Annie Wilkes (Laurie Metcalf), who has taken him in to convalesce. She has set
and splinted his two broken legs, put his broken arm in a cast. He’s grateful, she’s honored: she declares
herself his “Number One Fan.” But it doesn’t take much time for Annie to vbe
revealed as a dangerous psychotic, and for Paul to find himself a prisoner in
her home, writing for her pleasure…and for his life.
With
a script by William Goldman, who also
screenplay’d the hit film, and direction by Will Frears, Misery is like a slowly accelerating
fun house ride; in the best sense, a B-movie writ theatrical, with a turntable
set (that lets us track a character’s passage through the first floor of the
house) and actual, movie-type underscoring (Michael Friedman) to heighten suspense.
When
I saw Misery, close on its opening,
there was some talk and some reviews asserting that Bruce Willis was giving a
fairly wan performance as Paul; I didn’t really find that at all. I thought he
was okay, and connecting well enough to both role and audience; also, though,
that that he was a guy who’d been in front of the camera too long, had lost a
good deal of his stage mojo, and didn’t seem to have a director who could get him to tap renew a sense of
theatrical size without sacrificing subtlety. But that I thought, and still
think, made the real issue one of technique; his getting used to using his
muscles again (in fact, rather like the character). I wouldn’t be surprised if,
by now, he were a lot more vibrant.
Of
course, vibrancy has never been Laurie Metcalf’s problem. Her Annie is
terrifying and wonderful and sad and spectacularly singular, living up to the
script description that she “is like no one else on this or any planet.”
And
a nod for Leon Addison Brown as Buster,
the local sheriff, agreeably fulfilling the trope of the avuncular lawman who’s
smarter than he seems, showing up at inconvenient moments.
Efficient
hooey? So be it. I’m on board.
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