![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Nov. 14th, 2003 02:45 pmWoooo. I watched Willard again this morning, and now I have the "Ben" song stuck in my head.
God, you all must be sick of hearing about this by now. Actually, you're probably just skimming on past. That's fine. I'm getting a little overloaded myself. I'm not sure how much I'll have to say just because my head is swimming.
But I'll start by picking up where I left off. Willard = not what you'd expect. It's not a trashy horror movie with rats, nor is it a camp Army of Darkness-style spoof. So what is it?
Well, it's a story about a guy who lives with and cares for his sick mother, works for a man who despises him and takes vicious thuggish glee in humiliating him in front of his co-workers, and never learned how to connect with or relate to his fellow human beings. When he tries to humanely catch the rats in his basement, he takes pity on the first one he catches. He frees it and names it Socrates, and learns quickly that Socrates pulls some serious weight with the rest of the rats and, because he has befriended Socrates, now he does too. Except, that is, for Socrates's co-leader, an enormous rat whom Willard names Ben. Ben does not take kindly to the favouritism Willard shows Socrates. Oh, no. Not kindly at all.
Willard is a difficult character. He could easily have been unlikeable and abrasive, which would have absolutely destroyed the film. But in the able hands of Crispin Glover? No worries. Glover brings out Willard's sympathetic qualities, portraying him as a despairing maladjust simmering with suppressed rage rather than the one-dimensional psychopath another actor might have gone for. I'd only seen him in a couple of tiny bit parts before this (the Creepy Thin Man in the Charlie's Angels flicks, and some weirdo who shows up for the first three minutes or so of Dead Man) and was surprised and deeply impressed by his performance. I'm in danger of fawning obnoxiously here, so I'll cut myself short by saying that this movie rests entirely on its lead, and Glover is so up to the task you can't even see how hard he works to hold up its weight. Which is easily the dorkiest thing I've said this week.
Moving on, you also couldn't have the movie without the rats. This movie shows exactly how to bring out the personalities of animals without resorting to so gauche and clumsy a tactic as making them talk. Socrates and Ben are characters in their own right, not props, and this is brought out by both the way the rats have been trained, and the way Glover interacts with them. He takes them as seriously as he does his fellow human actors, which helps the audience to take them seriously.
As for human characters, there are three who play important parts in Willard's story. There's his mother, who gives us a glimpse of the kind of mother she is, and perhaps part of why Willard has such difficulty with other people, by declaring Willard "a horrible name," and telling him that his new name is Clark (you get the feeling that this isn't senility or illness talking, either). His boss, Frank Martin, who owns the company only after buying Willard's now-deceased father's share of it, and who deeply resents Willard's continued presence (part of the stipulation of his full ownership); he verbally abuses Willard every chance he gets, preferably in front of the other employees, maybe because he hopes he can drive Willard to quit, and maybe because it's just fun. And a new employee (who I think is a temp hired to pick up Willard's slack, but I'm not sure) who is shocked by Martin's treatment of Willard and the other employees' lack of reaction, and tries to befriend Willard. She's the most interesting (human) supporting character to me, first because she's played by Laura Elena Harring, whom you may remember from Mulholland Drive or possibly from Sunset Beach, and b) because her name is Cathryn. Seriously. Same spelling and everything. Do you have any idea how rare that is? The only less common variation is Katharine. I'm sure those of you out there with names like Carolyn or Paul or Angela don't quite get why I find this so unutterably cool, but those of you called things like Ealasaid and Ragna understand perfectly. =D *ahem* Anyway. Cathryn is not at all a love interest for Willard; in fact, I think she's introduced as a way of showing what Willard could be if he were able to pull himself together and join the human society; she's sort of his stronger, female counterpart. It's made very clear a couple of times that he does have a chance to do this, and Cathryn is the only one who has any patience for Willard and anything approaching an understanding of his disconnection.
I'd like to wind this up by saying that I found myself identifying rather strongly with Willard while watching this morning. I don't really want to get into why, but I suspect in this entry I may have projected my own feelings onto him once or twice. I hope not. And I hope that I'm more like Cathryn. Which is a really bizarre way to end a movie review, but what the hell.
The DVD, by the way, has some good extras that I haven't finished checking out yet. If you rent it, be sure to have a look at the music video of Glover's version of "Ben;" it was conceived and directed by Glover himself and kind of reminds me Mulholland Drive. I can't really explain why. Also, the TV Spots section includes the trailer that I listened to over and over (and over and over and over and over . . .) at work; it's the last one, called (of course) "Ben." Just in care you're curious about the trailer that made me try a movie I swore I'd never see.
God, you all must be sick of hearing about this by now. Actually, you're probably just skimming on past. That's fine. I'm getting a little overloaded myself. I'm not sure how much I'll have to say just because my head is swimming.
But I'll start by picking up where I left off. Willard = not what you'd expect. It's not a trashy horror movie with rats, nor is it a camp Army of Darkness-style spoof. So what is it?
Well, it's a story about a guy who lives with and cares for his sick mother, works for a man who despises him and takes vicious thuggish glee in humiliating him in front of his co-workers, and never learned how to connect with or relate to his fellow human beings. When he tries to humanely catch the rats in his basement, he takes pity on the first one he catches. He frees it and names it Socrates, and learns quickly that Socrates pulls some serious weight with the rest of the rats and, because he has befriended Socrates, now he does too. Except, that is, for Socrates's co-leader, an enormous rat whom Willard names Ben. Ben does not take kindly to the favouritism Willard shows Socrates. Oh, no. Not kindly at all.
Willard is a difficult character. He could easily have been unlikeable and abrasive, which would have absolutely destroyed the film. But in the able hands of Crispin Glover? No worries. Glover brings out Willard's sympathetic qualities, portraying him as a despairing maladjust simmering with suppressed rage rather than the one-dimensional psychopath another actor might have gone for. I'd only seen him in a couple of tiny bit parts before this (the Creepy Thin Man in the Charlie's Angels flicks, and some weirdo who shows up for the first three minutes or so of Dead Man) and was surprised and deeply impressed by his performance. I'm in danger of fawning obnoxiously here, so I'll cut myself short by saying that this movie rests entirely on its lead, and Glover is so up to the task you can't even see how hard he works to hold up its weight. Which is easily the dorkiest thing I've said this week.
Moving on, you also couldn't have the movie without the rats. This movie shows exactly how to bring out the personalities of animals without resorting to so gauche and clumsy a tactic as making them talk. Socrates and Ben are characters in their own right, not props, and this is brought out by both the way the rats have been trained, and the way Glover interacts with them. He takes them as seriously as he does his fellow human actors, which helps the audience to take them seriously.
As for human characters, there are three who play important parts in Willard's story. There's his mother, who gives us a glimpse of the kind of mother she is, and perhaps part of why Willard has such difficulty with other people, by declaring Willard "a horrible name," and telling him that his new name is Clark (you get the feeling that this isn't senility or illness talking, either). His boss, Frank Martin, who owns the company only after buying Willard's now-deceased father's share of it, and who deeply resents Willard's continued presence (part of the stipulation of his full ownership); he verbally abuses Willard every chance he gets, preferably in front of the other employees, maybe because he hopes he can drive Willard to quit, and maybe because it's just fun. And a new employee (who I think is a temp hired to pick up Willard's slack, but I'm not sure) who is shocked by Martin's treatment of Willard and the other employees' lack of reaction, and tries to befriend Willard. She's the most interesting (human) supporting character to me, first because she's played by Laura Elena Harring, whom you may remember from Mulholland Drive or possibly from Sunset Beach, and b) because her name is Cathryn. Seriously. Same spelling and everything. Do you have any idea how rare that is? The only less common variation is Katharine. I'm sure those of you out there with names like Carolyn or Paul or Angela don't quite get why I find this so unutterably cool, but those of you called things like Ealasaid and Ragna understand perfectly. =D *ahem* Anyway. Cathryn is not at all a love interest for Willard; in fact, I think she's introduced as a way of showing what Willard could be if he were able to pull himself together and join the human society; she's sort of his stronger, female counterpart. It's made very clear a couple of times that he does have a chance to do this, and Cathryn is the only one who has any patience for Willard and anything approaching an understanding of his disconnection.
I'd like to wind this up by saying that I found myself identifying rather strongly with Willard while watching this morning. I don't really want to get into why, but I suspect in this entry I may have projected my own feelings onto him once or twice. I hope not. And I hope that I'm more like Cathryn. Which is a really bizarre way to end a movie review, but what the hell.
The DVD, by the way, has some good extras that I haven't finished checking out yet. If you rent it, be sure to have a look at the music video of Glover's version of "Ben;" it was conceived and directed by Glover himself and kind of reminds me Mulholland Drive. I can't really explain why. Also, the TV Spots section includes the trailer that I listened to over and over (and over and over and over and over . . .) at work; it's the last one, called (of course) "Ben." Just in care you're curious about the trailer that made me try a movie I swore I'd never see.
