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Life is not so beautiful >> Nick Nolte ignites Affliction by MATTHEW HAYS
This is no ordinary collision; Banks' novel, the profile of a damaged, violent man who is haunted by childhood memories of an abusive father, appeared to cry out for filmic adaptation by Schrader, the screenwriter behind the onscreen boors in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.) And Nolte rounds out this collision of talents. His creation is a certifiable emotional train wreck. Nolte broods his way through the film, as his professional and personal lives shatter. Here, the actor perfectly rounds out his conflicted persona (our knowledge of his offscreen battle with the bottle doesn't hurt either). In Affliction, he is stuck in a degrading job in the same small town where he grew up. Nolte tries desperately to connect with his daughter (Brigid Tierney), who now lives with his ex-wife (Mary Beth Hurt). Nolte's little good at parenthood, but he can't entirely be blamed in light of his own childhood horrors, glimpses of which Schrader artfully intersperses throughout Affliction. Nolte has inherited his father's violent ways, but unlike James Coburn's preeminently hatable patriarch, Nolte's character feels like a good man just waiting to get out of a bad life. As Nolte investigates what he thinks is a conspiratorial murder, things begin to unravel in the most unpleasant of ways: his daughter repeatedly rejects his attempts at affection; his visit to a lawyer to see about winning a custody battle with his ex-wife backfires (as with The Sweet Hereafter, Banks' depiction of lawyers is sickeningly astute); and he loses his job. Banks neatly ups the ante with a metaphor for Nolte as walking raw nerve: Nolte is suffering from a worsening sore tooth, something he "fixes" in the film in one of the most horrific bits of home dentistry ever witnessed. Banks' near-perfect story of a man who has failed at everything--job, family, relationship--allows Nolte to evoke the perfect balance of disdain and sympathy. Banks' plot is organic; that Nolte will eventually explode isn't really a question that hangs over the film. Rather, Affliction is a brutal study of how the terror of an abusive childhood manifests itself. Affliction opens Friday, February 12
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Talents collide in Affliction, the latest entry from director-screenwriter Paul Schrader. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Russell Banks and stars Nick Nolte as the emotionally bruised and tattered sheriff at the story's centre.