Chris Knipp
12-21-2006, 08:14 PM
Isabel Coixet: The Secret Life of Words (2005)
Much sensitivity, but too much talk
Review by Chris Knipp
In this offbeat, slow-to-unfold picture (the first hour is hard to get through by any standard), Hanna, a war-traumatized Bosnian nurse (Sarah Polley) connects with Josef, a burn victim (Tim Robbins) whom she cares for on an oil-rig. We know from frame one that Hanna, who has an unidentifiable foreign accent, is a shut-down personality—her emptiness is presented with a Beckettian rigor. She's a workaholic her coworkers can't stand because she won't relate to them. She's never taken a vacation or a day of sick leave and the manager of the English factory where she bags rolls of plastic (Reg Wilson) implores her to take a long vacation.
Unwilling to go anywhere nice, she winds up at a damp seaside town in the wintertime where an overheard conversation leads her to return briefly to her nursing vocation caring for the temporarily blinded and immobile Josef. (Why he's kept on the oil-rig and not immediately evacuated to a hospital--other than its usefulness to the plot development--is hard to fathom, to coin a phrase.) As Hanna, Polley has a great understated role, assuming you buy her somewhat simplistically conveyed accent. The key scenes are those between Hanna and Josef in the cabin where he's being cared for: it's here exclusively that the bond is forged.
The filmmakers may have sought to avoid having the drama seem too claustrophobic and limited by moving outside the sickroom to explore the now under-populated oil-rig, which has been shut down since the accident. Minor characters on the rig are well developed—but this somewhat backfires, since their variety only underscores how blank Josef and Hanna are to each other and to us for a lot of their screen time, just as the charm of some crew members highlights how painfully awkward and at times rather generic efforts at sincerity and reserve are in many of the the Robbins-Polley sequences. Fact is that Polley's character is a blank through most of the picture and then is defined only through her wartime trauma; and despite seemingly being more forthcoming, Robbins' doesn't ever develop a backstory—except for a family trauma of his own and a secret behind the accident. Who he is otherwise we never learn: developing him might have been a better way to spend our time than conversations with the cheerful but bored chef, the idealistic but neurotic oceanographer, the stoical captain, the gay couple, etc.
Hanna loosens up with Josef a little too suddenly, for all the slow buildup. It would be nice if the screenplay had made her shift more gradually. As the patient, Robbins hams it up a bit, but what else can he do? His job is to appear to be loosening her up. In the movie, an inability to enjoy life is signified by a lack of interest in food, and Simon (Javier Cámara), a Spanish cook on board whose inventiveness annoys the English crew members, helps Hanna revive her palate. Feeling at home in the isolated setting of the oil-rig that Hanna learns suits the others too, she starts to relax and even smile at Josef's lame or rude jokes, and the pair achieve a wary intimacy that leads to revelations and emotional bonding. But she is quick to pull back, arranging for Josef to be transferred to a hospital.
Once Josef's on the mainland, Hanna splits, closes up again, and returns to her factory job, but in a hasty coda, after Josef recovers, he goes looking for her with romance in mind. On Robbins' search Julie Christie turns up, looking great as usual, in a too-chilly performance as a Danish counselor who helped Polley debrief after her trauma. At this point the movie, which is co-dedicated to the IRCT (The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims--Christie is meant to represent its founder) really starts haranguing us about war traumas, and given that the screenplay is all talk and no action to begin with, her baldfaced lecture is even harder to swallow. Good performances don't entirely save this humorless feel-bad feel-good tale that tells more than it shows. If you make it through the interminable first 90 minutes and don't mind humorless lectures on war and ecology, there's a happy ending—sort of—but most audiences will find there's too much to be endured and too little to be enjoyed in this painfully well-meaning, sensitive picture. The Secret Life of Words—yes, we get plenty of that in this talky, over-explanatory piece; but maybe not enough of the Open Life of Deeds.
Much sensitivity, but too much talk
Review by Chris Knipp
In this offbeat, slow-to-unfold picture (the first hour is hard to get through by any standard), Hanna, a war-traumatized Bosnian nurse (Sarah Polley) connects with Josef, a burn victim (Tim Robbins) whom she cares for on an oil-rig. We know from frame one that Hanna, who has an unidentifiable foreign accent, is a shut-down personality—her emptiness is presented with a Beckettian rigor. She's a workaholic her coworkers can't stand because she won't relate to them. She's never taken a vacation or a day of sick leave and the manager of the English factory where she bags rolls of plastic (Reg Wilson) implores her to take a long vacation.
Unwilling to go anywhere nice, she winds up at a damp seaside town in the wintertime where an overheard conversation leads her to return briefly to her nursing vocation caring for the temporarily blinded and immobile Josef. (Why he's kept on the oil-rig and not immediately evacuated to a hospital--other than its usefulness to the plot development--is hard to fathom, to coin a phrase.) As Hanna, Polley has a great understated role, assuming you buy her somewhat simplistically conveyed accent. The key scenes are those between Hanna and Josef in the cabin where he's being cared for: it's here exclusively that the bond is forged.
The filmmakers may have sought to avoid having the drama seem too claustrophobic and limited by moving outside the sickroom to explore the now under-populated oil-rig, which has been shut down since the accident. Minor characters on the rig are well developed—but this somewhat backfires, since their variety only underscores how blank Josef and Hanna are to each other and to us for a lot of their screen time, just as the charm of some crew members highlights how painfully awkward and at times rather generic efforts at sincerity and reserve are in many of the the Robbins-Polley sequences. Fact is that Polley's character is a blank through most of the picture and then is defined only through her wartime trauma; and despite seemingly being more forthcoming, Robbins' doesn't ever develop a backstory—except for a family trauma of his own and a secret behind the accident. Who he is otherwise we never learn: developing him might have been a better way to spend our time than conversations with the cheerful but bored chef, the idealistic but neurotic oceanographer, the stoical captain, the gay couple, etc.
Hanna loosens up with Josef a little too suddenly, for all the slow buildup. It would be nice if the screenplay had made her shift more gradually. As the patient, Robbins hams it up a bit, but what else can he do? His job is to appear to be loosening her up. In the movie, an inability to enjoy life is signified by a lack of interest in food, and Simon (Javier Cámara), a Spanish cook on board whose inventiveness annoys the English crew members, helps Hanna revive her palate. Feeling at home in the isolated setting of the oil-rig that Hanna learns suits the others too, she starts to relax and even smile at Josef's lame or rude jokes, and the pair achieve a wary intimacy that leads to revelations and emotional bonding. But she is quick to pull back, arranging for Josef to be transferred to a hospital.
Once Josef's on the mainland, Hanna splits, closes up again, and returns to her factory job, but in a hasty coda, after Josef recovers, he goes looking for her with romance in mind. On Robbins' search Julie Christie turns up, looking great as usual, in a too-chilly performance as a Danish counselor who helped Polley debrief after her trauma. At this point the movie, which is co-dedicated to the IRCT (The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims--Christie is meant to represent its founder) really starts haranguing us about war traumas, and given that the screenplay is all talk and no action to begin with, her baldfaced lecture is even harder to swallow. Good performances don't entirely save this humorless feel-bad feel-good tale that tells more than it shows. If you make it through the interminable first 90 minutes and don't mind humorless lectures on war and ecology, there's a happy ending—sort of—but most audiences will find there's too much to be endured and too little to be enjoyed in this painfully well-meaning, sensitive picture. The Secret Life of Words—yes, we get plenty of that in this talky, over-explanatory piece; but maybe not enough of the Open Life of Deeds.