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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"The Deep End" joins my exalted list of one of the very few top movies of the year. The only reason that I did
not give this movie four stars is that there is a single scene of explicit homosexuality along with considerable violence
that may be disturbing to some people. Furthermore, the subject matter involving slime balls who prey on members of the gay
community for purposes of blackmail is a sordid subject to be addressed on any level.
That point being made, this movie is exquisitely well-done and if there is any justice in this world, Tilda Swinton will
be at the top of the list when Oscar nominations are announced next February. She is a Scottish actress who has appeared in
only a few small movies like "Orlando".
This story is adapted from a novel written in 1947 by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and turned into a movie two years later
starring Joan Bennett. Scott McGehee and David Siegel have updated this story to modern times and have wisely moved the story's
locale to Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
What this movie is really about, however, is the lengths that a loving mother will go to to protect her beloved son. Like
a mother Grizzly Bear, Margaret Hall (Tilda Swinton) will, it seems, go to any lengths to protect her "cub" of a
son, Beau Hall (Jonathan Tucker).
While this movie is about a mother's love for her son, but it is really about Margaret Hall as she is in virtually every
scene. In a situation like this, where family life as well as her own life goes from the mundane to the bizarre, Tilda Swinton
captures the essence of every emotion, every nuance of acting ability to convey exactly the right note to make each scene
picture-perfect. Just like Franka Potente in the earlier much-admired "The Princess and the Warrior," Tilda Swinton
is not a particularly attractive woman and certainly not a woman of glamorous movie star looks. She actually looks rather
ordinary but her acting is divine, and that makes her very, very special in this role where every emotional base is touched
and covered beautifully.
I cannot close this review without mentioning the extraordinarily beautiful scenery in this movie, which takes place in
and around Lake Tahoe with a short side visit to Reno. The movie opens with a dreamily beautiful shot of this gorgeous locale
early in the morning and the lake truly affects the heart and soul of this movie as it is in most of the shots.
The juxtaposition of murder and blackmail with scenic beauty such as this is most effective and most enjoyable as this
adds another level of appreciation to this very fine film.
This is an outstanding movie! Don't miss it!
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
Beau is a talented musician in his senior year at high school and has applied to a number of colleges for a scholarship.
His favorite is Wesleyan College, which presumably is much more liberal than the Naval Academy in Annapolis from which both
his father and his grandfather, Jack Hall (Peter Donat. Any relation to Robert Donat of "The 39 Steps"? I wonder...),
have graduated.
Beau is shown nervously playing his trumpet for a cd recording for the school's musical scholarship grant. He is a gentle
son often passing through surly and withdrawn mood swings around the house from the pressure of his college applications and
his possible rejection, not to mention the additional pressure of how and when he will be coming out of the closet for his
straight-laced family.
His grandfather is a retired naval officer who lives at home with them and certainly wouldn't understand. In addition,
his father is currently a naval officer on active duty serving on an aircraft carrier somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean
and has been away from home for several years. Beau's sexual orientation, obviously, is the major reason for his not applying
to the Naval Academy as they had before him.
The movie opens with Margaret knocking plaintively but persistently on the door of an unmarked warehouse in Tahoe City.
She continues knocking for some time before the door opens and a suspicious occupant answers. She asks for the manager and
gives her name as the mother of Beau Hall. Carefully escorted past a bright neon-blue lit bar with obvious homosexual overtones
and customers, she finally meets the owner, a brusque and risqué individual named Darby Reese (Josh Lucas).
Darby is very dismissive with her and she returns to her home on Lake Tahoe without being assured that she has reached
her objective of persuading this much older Darby to leave her 17 year old son alone.
It seems that Beau and Darby had been involved in a drunken car accident the weekend before and Margaret has suddenly
been forced to confront not only her son's sexual orientation but also his reckless and dangerous relationship with a man
15 or 20 years his senior. Hoping for the best but fearing the worst, she comes home to tend to the needs of Beau's younger
sister and brother.
That night Darby drives out to Beau's house for another attempt at seduction in the boat house just off shore from the
main house. His abrasive manner and desire for rough sex scares the gentle Beau and a short scuffle ensues with Beau fleeing
the boat house and Darby in hot pursuit. Beau escapes and ends up going up to the house and to bed assuming that Darby had
given up and had left the area.
Unbeknownst to him, however, Darby drunkenly leans on the dock railing which gives way and he falls down to the shore,
accidentally impaling himself on a boat anchor that just happens to be lying there.
The next day Margaret starts out with her normal morning jogging routine and comes across the impaled body of Darby Reese
on the shore of their property right next to their dock with that broken railing. She instantly leaps to the false conclusion
that her son is responsible, even if accidentally, for the death of this slug. She begins to fear the worst and imagines police
investigations, coroner's inquests, and finally a trial disrupting all their lives and totally destroying Beau's chances to
get into the college of his choice.
At this point the movie veers into a plot line similar to 1999's "A Simple Plan" where good people make one
initial bad decision and circumstances then force them to make many more equally bad decisions in a desperate ploy to extricate
themselves from an increasingly desperate situation that appears to be without a possible solution. We are all familiar with
this situation which is similar to the apocryphal nursery tale "Bre'r Rabbit and the Tar Baby."
Margaret makes the immediate decision to row the body, anchor attached, out to another part of Lake Tahoe to be dumped
overboard. This would normally be a reasonable solution were it not for the incredible clarity of the lake's water which render
the body visible from even a considerable depth.
This decision is also immediately made more complicated by the fact that, when arriving back home, she realizes that Darby's
car is still parked behind their house and that the car keys must have been thrown overboard along with his body. Back she
goes to the scene of his disposal to dive into the water's frigid depths in a frantic attempt to obtain these keys. She is
ultimately successful and quickly thereafter drives his blue Corvette to a public lot downtown.
Finally able to settle back and relax even though the body is quickly discovered and a police investigation ensues, Margaret
feels confident that there is nothing that can link her son to Darby's demise. While nervously wound tight like a clock spring,
she goes about her normal daily routine of shuttling her children to school and after-school baseball practice and ballet
dancing classes as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
And nothing is out of the ordinary until a tall dark-haired stranger shows up at the Hall house on some pretext or other.
Of course no one knows who he is and they all assume him to be a friend of their dad. Margaret is the last to meet this Alek
Spera (E.R.'s Goran Visnjic) and is horrified to learn that he is in possession of the deceased Darby's appointment book detailing
his plans to visit Beau on the night of his "murder."
And then there is that videotape displaying in graphic detail a "rendezvous" between Darby and her son. Alek
assures her, of course, that he will go away and this videotape can be hers for a mere $50,000, which turns out to be $25,000
for him and a second $25,000 for his partner, Carlie Nagel (Raymond J. Barry).
One might assume with property values on Lake Tahoe being what they are that raising this money would not be difficult
for Margaret. Unfortunately, all of her property is held in joint tenancy with her husband who cannot be reached in the required
48 hours. Precious hours are wasted as Margaret searches for one asset after another in order to raise instant cash.
A ludicrous, but darkly humorous, moment occurs when she asks her father-in-law for money and he, thinking that she only
needs walking around cash, empties out his wallet and gives her all of its contents, a mere $80.
Alek's visits become increasingly more regular in his attempt to please his partner Carlie and also to keep this thuggish
partner away from Margaret, whom he has come to admire as she desperately struggles to maintain a semblance of normalcy as
her world quickly begins to shatter.
Another nail in the coffin of her frantic new life is the growing suspicion of Beau that his mother is having an affair
with this extraordinarily handsome man who claims to be a stateside friend of their dad's.
So the poor mother who is risking everything to protect the son that she loves from harm is herself slowly beginning to
be judged as being guilty of marital infidelity by that son who does not realize that this man is not there for romance but
rather is capable of turning his own life upside down and also ruining their family through his demands for that increasingly
unlikely-to-be-obtained $50,000.
How this is all resolved is absolutely fascinating.
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