The War Zone

Rating:
Summary: Prepare to be deeply affected
Review: "The War Zone" is a brilliant and sordid character study of a dysfunctional family plagued by incest. This is Tim Roth's directorial debut and he clearly decided he was not going to play it safe. The film is a raw portrayal of the complex family dynamics that result from sex and sexual desire between family members.

With the help of cinematographer Seamus Mc Garvey, Roth takes an art house approach to story telling, with masterfully bleak cinematography and inspired use of the camera. Especially effective is his use of silence, increasing the discomforting tone of the entire film. His unabashed presentation of the stark depravity and the raw emotion wields the impact of a cold slap in the face, simultaneously stinging and holding our undivided attention.

The character study of Jessie (Lara Belmont) and Tom (Freddie Cunliffe) is excellent, but leaves one of the most important questions nebulous. Roth flirts with the siblings' incestuous desire for one another, but leaves it implied, which I thought was inconsistent with his otherwise forthright style of storytelling. Was Tom motivated by love for his sister or by jealousy of his father's sexual competition? Was he his sister's protector or his father's rival? Both elements seem to be there, but Roth doesn't clarify. Although I have not read Alexander Stuart's book (upon which the screenplay is based), I understand that Tom's sexual jealousy was an important part of the story, so I don't understand why Roth danced around it. The story also could have benefited by a closer look into Jessie's feelings about her father. Was it strictly revulsion for repeated violations, or was she a willing participant? Again, both seem to be present, but we never really know. Moreover, the final scene fails to bring closure to the film, a closure that the viewer desperately needs after being juiced in an emotional blender. Yet, even with these unresolved issues, this is exceptional work for a first time director (or any director for that matter).

The acting is phenomenal, especially when one considers that this is the film debut for both Belmont and Cunliffe. Lara Belmont presents a young woman being torn asunder by an emotional tornado, trying to appear as if nothing is amiss especially in front of her mother. Belmont's performance is provocative and gut wrenching. Freddie Cunliffe captures the desperation of Tom's dilemma with a sullen rage that emanates from his placid exterior. Given their ages and experience, both actors give unbelievably mature performances, again a tribute to Roth's directorial ability.

This dark and unsettling film is skillfully directed and compellingly acted. I rated it a 9/10. It requires a courageous and intelligent viewer with a thick skin. It is decidedly not for the viewer who is put off by frank depictions of sex and incest. For the rest, prepare to be deeply affected.

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking, tragic, and utterly convincing
Review: ....

In THE WAR ZONE, that feeling of guilt and shame isn't there...instead, it's a feeling of sorrow, of pity -- both for the poor young girl who submits to this act, and the boy who witnesses it from his hiding place. (A discussion of how "willing" she is to go along with this isn't appropriate, and I don't want to talk about that; it's more of a subject for the newsgroups for discussion of surviving child abuse.) This scene is filmed in such a way that, even though it is very explicit, it does not seem like cheap exploitation. Rather, it's showing us the act, in all of its ugly depravity, because the only way for us to understand the truth of what is happening in this unholy union is to see it with our own eyes.

The movie is one of those that dares to ask questions -- and not answer them. The subject matter is such that there are no easy answers, and to provide some sort of an "answer" would be a retreat from the harsh truths presented here. I think that's why, at the end of the film, we aren't even told if the young boy did indeed kill his father, or what happens next. This isn't a film that gives us glib, easy answers.... Rather, it makes us aware that this horror does indeed exist in our world -- indeed, in the very town we live in -- and that there are no simple answers. As poor Jessie says in the movie: "You just want everything to be sweet and nice, and it isn't."

Rating:
Summary: SQUIRMING ENCOURAGED
Review: Actor Tim Roth's directorial debut is simply stunning. He has tackled an ugly subject -- incest and child abuse -- and filmed it in such a beautiful way that the viewer is compelled to confront it. His early training as a painter is very apparent in his choice of camera angles, in the lingering views of the life of this wounded family in the bleak, rainy Devon countryside. The script, written by Alexander Stuart, has undergone several changes in the transition from his novel, in both character development and story line. Having read the novel after I saw the film, I can only speculate that Mr. Roth's vision had a lot to do with the alterations. In comparison to the novel, they make the story more palatable to the general audience, and, I think, more plausable in relation to the occurance of such events in our society. This is easily one of the most powerful films I have ever seen -- I literally squirmed in my seat when I saw it in the theatre, and the effect was no less when I viewed the video. The soundtrack music is very beautiful and effective as well -- it's a pity it's not available as an audio recording. With a debut such as this, Mr. Roth's future as a director will definitely be one to watch.

Rating:
Summary: The novel of The War Zone is available from Amazon.co.uk
Review: Alexander Stuart's novel of The War Zone - including a diary of the making of the film - is available for purchase from Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/055299846X/o/qid=969992007/sr=2-1/026-0480055-1272431

Rating:
Summary: Wars fought at home are the bloodiest
Review: Facing the ocean on a bleak, rocky beach in Devon sits a forgotten WWII gunnery bunker. Complete with narrow, slotted "eyes," the squat concrete bunker was intended as a base from which the English defended their homeland from invaders.
But in this excellent, disturbing movie, the fortress takes on another, symbolic meaning. Instead of a fortress, it has become a chamber of horrors, a place of unspeakable betrayal. For it is here that a seemingly-loving husband and father meets his teenaged daughter, fondling her and - ignoring her pleas - sodomizes her without remorse.

Seldom have we seen a more authoritative, believable depiction of both family relationships and how they unravel.

We are spared nothing. We see the daughter's pain and her weakness and ambiguity. We see both her father's monstrosity and his capacity for love and tenderness.
We see the anguish of a son... whose family loyalty has thrown him into turmoil.
Suddenly, he must decide how to marshal his personal resources to resolve his knowledge of lies, secrets and perversion.

The War Zone is a masterwork by its author, Alexander Stuart, who adopted his novel flawlessly for the screen. It also represents the brilliant directorial debut of acclaimed actor Tim Roth, who assembled a spot-on-perfect cast that achieved a realism and impact that is rare and breathtaking.

Don't expect to be amused. Do expect to be transfixed for the entire length of The War Zone.

Rating:
Summary: Movies on Incest and Drugs
Review: For starters, I think an incest taboo is a good thing. No doubt, thousands of years ago, there were tribes and clans that did not have the incest taboo. We never heard of them because they were all replaced by more vigorous, intelligent, disease resistant tribes that had an incest taboo. The big advantage of breeding outside your immediate blood line is hybrid vigor, which also includes more smarts if the species is human. There are indefeasible advantages to not having sex too close to home, for society as a whole; hence, the universal taboo on incest.

That said, one of the aftershocks of the sexual revolution is that we probably have more incest among folks ...than we would care to admit. It is this latent unease in the back of our middle class moral concsciousness that makes a film like The War Zone something that respectable folks are willing to see. And to Tim Roth's credit, as director of his first film, he plays that dark, unarticulated bourgeoise curiosity to the hilt. The result is p.c. soft-porn for the New York Review of Books crowd, the kind of college educated, consciouness raised viewers who would rather lose their Starbucks priviledges than be caught viewing something like Taboo II. If you can stand a certain amount of pretentiousness (as in, putting on airs of redeeming social value) without noticing how cleverly you are being manipulated while watching The War Zone, then maybe you also won't notice what a boringly predictable, rancidly feminist little morality play for the 21st century this movie really is.

On the plus side, this film is well directed and the acting is good. The cinematography is effective and contributes to the bleak tone of the film. However, if you are looking for a thoughtful, incisive vetting of incest as a post sexual revolution social phenomenon, The War Zone is a bust. It is titillating, wonderfully textured, and entertaining in its own perverse terms, but it is lacking in intellectual depth, insight, or moral weight. It is basically a made-for-television movie done with British panache, so that the cliches are handled more interestingly and adroitly, to a degree that we sometimes fail to notice how cliched they are.

In the end, the moral of the film is simply this: If you have a dysfunctional family, it is not a good idea to indulge in incest. That's it, the sum total of the deep moral message of the very slickly done art house film. There is no examination, in any depth, of the motives or the family dynamics that make this particular example of father-daughter incest likely. The characters, despite some interesting touches, are basically reaffirmations of the conventional wisdom about incest as a destructive exploitation of the young, invariably female victim by the sexually predatory, loutish, male patriarch, with the mother as silent, unaware partner. No suprises here. The only variation from this hackneyed p.c. theme is the role of the Son, who acts as some kind of weird avenger to his sister's "explotation", but who is way too flawed a character to carry any moral burden that this film might want to lay on the audience. Fortunately, there is not that much moral baggage to carry with The War Zone and the Son remains memorable instead as one of the most repellent, socially inept, portraits of stunted male adolescent development in recent film history. If there is a more loathsome portrayal of the "hero" in any cinematic study of the human sexual condition, I have not seen it.

The almost inevitable (for an American audience) denuement, makes no sense at all except as the kind of reaffirmation of the moral status quo that required the Bad Girl in 1950's drive in explotation movies to always come to a bad end. Ditto for incest fathers today. Other than that, the "resolution" of the tension between Son and Father is so hard to believe, it would be laughable if it did not reinforce the dreary moralistic tone of the whole film. Much more interesting is the last scene of the movie, which hints at the ignoble motives for the Son's resentment of Dad's incestous affair with Sis, by reaffirming an earlier scene where sis challenges bro about his own anger toward her.

While it is intellectual and moral failure, I must again reiterate the film is very well done, as a kind of high-brow-slumming entertainment. In this regard, this most enjoyable thing about the film is Lara Belmont, the Daughter, a rare young actress who is more beautiful with her clothes off than on. Roth shows us progressively more of her natural charms as the flim progresses, culminating in a nude sex scene which has been cut from the video tape version that is rented at Block Buster. This is indeed droll, putting out a vid about incest on the rental shelf, but then deleting the powerful scene at the end that confirms the Son's worst suspicions about his family. Gotta hand it to those corporate types who run our video store rental chains; they do not miss a trick. But then again, it is a perfect metaphor for the moral contradictions of the film itself; willing to go a bit farther than before, but not willing to really stick its neck out and risk offending enough viewers to lose money at the box office or rental counter.

In a way, the failure of The War Zone is the same as the failure of the equally lauded Traffic, the "breakthrough" film about our drug problem. Both films pull their punches by not showing us anything that really challenges our assumptions about the ethical implications of either incest or drugs. Both flims do a terrific job of manipulating the viewers emotional reactions while doing absolutely nothing to challenge the audience's thinking about the topic at hand. With Traffic, there was not a single scene that showed us a character that was able to, for example, use marijuana as an occaisional recreational drug in a responsible manner that did not destroy the user as a human being or bring down the wrath of God or government on those around him/her. It is still outside the boundries of cinematic conventional wisdom that there might be such a thing as unproblematic drug use, under any circumstances. Similarly, The War Zone utterly fails to skirt with the possibility that some people have had incestuous relationships that have not destroyed them, ruined their closest relationships, or been anything other than a temporary sexual interlude in an otherwise normal life. To really explore the moral dimensions of incest would require a triptych format of a film, like Pulp Fiction, that compares three different instances of contemporary incest with three different implications for those involved and for the society they live in. This viewer would like to see a film that raises some thoughtful questions about the ethical status of incest in a post-Pill society where sexual permissiveness has become the norm. But The War Zone won't even hint at such issues, aiming instead at a much more comfortable reaffirmation of the viewer's conventional wisdom, with a dollop of dour, anti-male sermonizing. In short, the really interesting film on this taboo topic has yet to be made.

This movie is only worth one star, but skillful directing and good actors raise it to a level of three stars, at best. For those who came away disatisfied with The War Zone, may I recommend a much better study of the dilemma of father-daughter incest, The Heart of the Stag, 1983, directed by Michael Firth and starring Mary Regan, Bruno Lawrence, and Terence Cooper. It's now hard to find, but is a much more intelligent, honest, and moving treatment of the impact of incest on an Australian family. That one is a film, not a feminist morality play for the kind of audience that assumes "gun control" is a good idea.

Rating:
Summary: Both Horrible and Beautiful
Review: Horrible subject matter set against a beautiful score and setting. I cannot recommend this movie because most people would be put off by the explicit scene and the turmoil it throws the family into. Only the strongest of viewers who can watch Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, or who have been victims or abusers should watch it.

Rating:
Summary: Stop delaying this DVD
Review: I am waiting day and night for this upcoming DVD. Why it is delayed everytime? I never saw this film. WHY? Instead I watched "American Pie" and "American Psycho" trying to eat the american hypocrisy but with no luck. Yes, it's true -this film would not probably be an blockbuster, but so what? Is it offensive? No, it isn't. "CALIGULA" on DVD - that's offensive.

Rating:
Summary: Used Copies May Have 5 Minutes Cut
Review: I bought a used copy of this movie, which when I saw it on television was unedited and brilliant. I loved this movie so much I jumped online to find a copy of it for myself. I bought a used copy which arrived shrinkwrapped and was a Blockbuster previously viewed tape. Granted, the scene cut from the tape version I received was the most disturbing bit but the fact that it was cut from the VHS version was a surprise. I'm wondering if this is the case with any VHS version you would buy. If you've seen this in theaters or on cable and you buy this on tape, you may end up with some footage missing. I'm disappointed that there are two versions out there and I wished now I had know this before I had bought this. Other than that, the movie is fabulous.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, Devastating, Painful
Review: I don't have anything new or profound to say about The War Zone, but I'd still like to add my voice to those who are praising this blunt, beautiful, and uncompromising debut from Tim Roth.

Everything about it is almost perfect, from its cold cinematography to the two best supporting performances of last year, from Belmont and Cunliffe.

Warning, though. Some scenes from the film can be almost unbearable to watch. I usually don't disturb easily, but the reality of the situations onscreen truly affected me.