Affliction

I have seen this movie in bits and pieces, because it was difficult for me to watch it all the way through and digest it all at one time.

Paul Schrader's movies can have a dark, unsettling edge to them, and this movie is no exception.

Maybe because I brought personal baggage to the table while watching this, is why this movie gripped me so much. I have alcoholic relatives in my immediate and extended family, and I have seen what their anger and destructive behavior hath wrought.

Nick Nolte and James Coburn's characters made me squirm. Coburn received a best supporting Oscar for his role, and it is well-deserved. His character is a mean, vengeful, hateful alcoholic who inflicts his pain on others and afflicts one of his sons, Wade, played by Nick Nolte.

Very gripping and intense family drama.

Paul Schrader's adaptation of Russell Banks's "Affliction" has got to be one of the bleakest movies that I've ever seen. Most of the characters are people whom you can respect, but James Coburn's character makes you feel like your stomach just turned to water.

Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is a cop in a small New England town investigating a hunting accident which he believes is a murder. He hopes that it might make him the town hero, but several conditions work against everyone. First and foremost is Wade's alcoholic, abusive father (Coburn). Pretty much anytime that we see his father, the man is still drinking and being as nasty as possible to everyone around him. Wade's brother (Willem Dafoe) is too afraid to speak his mind. Wade's hubby (Sissy Spacek) is simply getting nervous about everything around her. And the ending isn't what you might guess.

The winter setting is just the opposite of how movies usually employ snow. Far from any winter wonderland, the setting backs up Wade's depressed mindset affected by his upbringing. Everything in this movie has the purpose of making you feel like there's a lead weight on every square centimeter of your body, and they succeed. I do think that it's a good movie, but just be forewarned of what kind of movie this is. Even if you sympathize with the characters, you feel like there's a knife in your lungs.

Worth seeing.

"Affliction" doesn't have an immediate plot. It's mostly a delve into a man's (Nick Nolte) psyche, a divorced alcoholic man who was abused as a child by his drunken father (James Coburn). He tries to cope, he tries to make something of himself by attempting to solve a hunting accident which he thinks is really a murder. He claims that after this, everyone will remember him as a hero.

Luckily the audience isn't made to believe Nolte's cause, to us he looks just as mad as he does to the characters around them. This is well done, because it could've been presented as some big twist at the end.

Anyway, the "mystery" element to the film isn't that important. It's mostly about how hard - and almost impossible - it is to prevent an emotionally abused man to make the same mistakes his father made. This idea is presented well, but by the end it just feels so thick and depressing that it's hard to take anything from the film, because you don't want to remember it.

Acting-wise the movie is quite good. Nolte delivers what I think is his best performance here, with a quiet desperation wonderfully put out by his eyes, voice, face, and so on. James Coburn does his usual well, but I have to question just why he won an Oscar for this. Don't get me wrong, he was a terrific actor and his performance in this is great, but he's not in many scenes, and the scenes he is in are mostly just a variation of the same thing: Coburn drunkenly and violently mumbles at his sons and eventually starts to yell and thrash. This is all well and good, but his scenes never go beyond that, except for (maybe) at the end when he spews his own sort of twisted philosophy to Nolte.

Other great performances come from Sissy Spacek as Nolte's increasingly uneasy girlfriend. Also Willem Dafoe as Nolte's brother who is so concerned with being quiet and not problematic that he cant prevent the build-up of violence and abuse in his family. I'd say that this performance is more Oscar worthy than Coburn's.

This is a good movie with a great message, but it doesn't put enough on the table, 7/10.

With Paul Schrader coming back and making well-made movies with First Reformed and Card Counter. I think looking back on it, Affliction is forgotten way too much when we talk about Paul Schrader.

Nick Nolte is absolutely out of this world in this movie. And it reminds me that Nick Nolte is also forgotten way too much when we talk about "great actors". He came back with "Warrior", we talked about him again, then we forgot about him again. But in this film he portrays this character like no one else would or can, slightly out of it, he accurately portrays this character who slowly loses his mind right in front of us. And he wasn't exactly all there, to begin with.

And can we talk about how the setting for this film being so perfect? A great filmmaker is not only one of course someone who can make a great film but realizes that making a great film is all in the details, even the ones that are overlooked like locations. Locations can impact the mood and atmosphere of a film, and sometimes even can become a character in the movie. And Paul Schrader recognizes that which is why he perfectly placed Affliction, First Reformed, and Card Counter in the exact locations they should be in.

This film is a near-masterpiece but I rarely see it even mentioned among the greats from the '90s. There are films out there that can be referred to as "Lost to Time". And this is definitely one of them.

This is a movie which rewards at many levels. Its characters are fleshed out human beings capable of good and evil and in the grips of intense suffering, not the formulaic cardboard creations which populate so many recent Hollywood productions. The movie's atmosphere and mood are thick and the bleakness of the New Hampshire winter comes alongside its beauty and majesty. Paul Schrader achieves here what has eluded the Coen brothers in Fargo. The photography of Paul Sarossy is of a rare beauty and his compositions are breathtaking. Think of the scene of the two brothers in the barn lit by light sneaking in through the slits in the wood exterior, the beauty of the snow covered New Hampshire chalets, the camera receding from the barn fire until we get to watch it through a slightly off-center picture-window from the main house, and finally think of the snow in its serenity, its menace, its domination. The two stories are so naturally intertwined that one can spend most of the time convinced one is watching a thriller, until in the end this thriller dissolves into the main story which explores the violent undercurrents of human love and bonding. This whole is as thick and rich as cream.

I am in awe of Nick Nolte's spectacular performance. It is honest, complex and totally convincing. Nolte is ably supported by James Coburn and others. This is moviemaking at its best.