Edmond (Stuart Gordon, 2005)
Although the 1990s were unkind to horror maestro Stuart Gordon, this
decade has seen the director quietly return to form with a series of lean, mean,
finely crafted films that show the fierce sensibility behind the cult hit Re-Animator
still at work. Although Dagon,
2001’s H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, found Gordon well within his comfort zone,
it was undeniably the finest work from the director in over a decade. The grisly
neo-noir King of the Ants, which came
next, was even more unexpected. A revenge thriller that sidestepped the horror
genre, it focused on the descent of an ordinary working man into madness. Filled
with effectively brutal violence and a shockingly disturbing plot, it suggested
a side to Gordon that was rarely hinted at in his previous films. Thanks to the
groundwork laid by Ants, Gordon’s
choice to adapt David Mamet’s provocative one-act play Edmond
is not a shocking one, but its depiction of a bigoted businessman (William
H. Macy) run amok naturally extends the director’s oeuvre into exciting
territory.
Mamet’s screenplay, like all of his work, is heavily stylized, and
Gordon doesn’t shy away from it. He imbues the New York City streets where the
film is set with an otherworldliness that foretells the madness that overtakes
Edmond in the same way that Kubrick’s phony cityscape turned Eyes
Wide Shut into a tour of its protagonist’s psyche. The entire film is
dominated by a queasy tone that threatens to take each of Edmond’s
transactional dealings over the edge into violence. Gordon controls each scene
well enough, and Mamet veteran Macy’s inherent skittishness adds a lot to the
role, but although he seems perfectly cast, his performance is the film’s
greatest liability. Macy’s quite good here, but he’s not good enough. He
delivers the staccato dialogue without missing a beat, but somehow a firmer
picture of Edmond’s mental state never emerges from his performance. As a
result, Edmond ends up as an
effectively pitched shock piece that never manages to achieve any greater
resonance, despite the invocation of a half-dozen audience-alienating
psychological afflictions. Mamet goes for the jugular of the privileged white
male, but his attempts to make Edmond representative of a larger societal
malaise mostly fall flat because Edmond himself is so obviously a flimsy
screenwriter’s device. Nonetheless, Gordon insures that the film is full of
virtue. His insistent emphases on the script’s suspense elements push the
movie into an unpredictable danger zone, making it a consistently stimulating
viewing experience.
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Jeremy Heilman
8.15.2006
