Sam Raimi isn’t identified for his subtlety. The Evil Dead sequence, Drag Me to Hell, and even his entries into the Spider-Man universe are fast-paced movies that lean into melodrama. However he has a slow-burn whodunit steeped in ambiance in The Gift. Co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, The Present tells the story of a small city homicide deep in Georgia. Annie (Cate Blanchett), newly widowed and struggling to make ends meet, makes use of her psychic talents to learn Tarot playing cards for the ladies on the town. When faculty principal Wayne’s (Greg Kinnear) younger fiancée, Jessica (Katie Holmes), turns up useless, she’s pulled into the thriller in equal elements by her visions and being the unofficial, default therapist to many of the impoverished neighborhood.
Sam Raimi’s Visible Language Units a Good Scene for Southern Tragedy in ‘The Present’
Whereas the reality slowly unfolds, wind, water, and Spanish moss decide up the drama, alongside with Blanchett’s visions. Raimi’s signature aptitude presents Annie’s visions as one thing eerily mundane – seeing puddles and bloated, pale ft on an in any other case regular and alive Jessica early within the movie, or horrifying, prophetic, and inescapable – dreams of the swamp presenting her with individuals she’s failed, sharp strings, and whispers of varied males threatening her. The pond the place Jessica’s physique is discovered fills these extra imaginative moments, and the placement feels mystical and cursed in turns within the waking world. These punctuate the sleepy, humid Georgia city that continues to be picturesque regardless of the struggles its individuals face.
The ambiance is an ideal chessboard for archetypal gamers, together with Annie herself. The city’s quaint, rural living makes neighbors extra enmeshed with one another, for starters. With few sources, battered wives, child abuse survivors, and extra are actually asking for Annie’s divination as a result of therapeutic isn’t an choice for them. However Annie doesn’t sit above all of it. Struggling to boost three youngsters on a Social Safety verify after the lack of her husband, she depends on the ideas and favors her neighbors supply in alternate for readings. Within the movie’s first scene, it’s established that she isn’t stingy about her present. “Have you ever been sick?” she asks earlier than somebody agrees to a studying. If she senses one thing in somebody specifically, she tells them freed from cost.
The place too many southern-fried thrillers begin at an offensive 11, Raimi establishes the mundane lives of the characters, how the city shapes them, and permits the actors to fill them with reality earlier than the supernatural plot takes off.
A Stellar Solid Makes Archetypes Compelling in ‘The Present’
Raimi shows an intrinsic understanding of the archetypes that fill out the southern drama. With one other filmmaker, these representations: the battered spouse, the folksy widower, the violent, Christian grunt, and the promiscuous ladies on the heart of all of it, would really feel like a joke. But, the place characters are virtually allegorical in The Present feels extra like a Brechtian tackle Tennessee Williams than a dig on the rural south. Giovanni Ribisi is Buddy, a shy mechanic who struggles with social abilities with anybody however Annie. He’s as tortured as he’s endearing. His violence echoes the violence of the boys more proficient at shows of masculinity round him, but it surely’s heartbreaking to see him attempt to wield it for good. Hilary Swank captures a worn-in meekness that’s immediately recognizable as a coping mechanism, not inherent weak point, as Valerie. Keanu Reeves’ flip as her abusive husband, Donnie, oozes with insecurity and insincerity, as he quotes the Bible between threatening ladies and youngsters, and circles a self-awareness about all of it. It’s arguably a career-best efficiency from Holmes, who captures the reckless unhappiness of younger maturity, in a city the place your magnificence and household appear to have pre-determined you for a historically good marriage and never a lot else. Kinnear balances the facade of upstanding citizen and city educator with a form of wistful dissatisfaction that’s onerous to pin down till the story requires a extra trustworthy response within the wake of Jessica’s dying.
All through the movie, women and men are paired collectively to display the variations of their socialization. Themes of faith complicate this. Donnie solely brings up faith as a weapon, first to name Annie a witch who’s main his spouse astray, regardless of his battery and adultery towards Valerie. He mentions it later, for example of soul-searching regret when Jessica’s homicide lastly calls his violent historical past with ladies into query. Smaller roles fill out the tapestry of a male-dominated, however female-run tradition another way. J. K. Simmons is verbally abusive to Annie as Sheriff Johnson, and Gary Cole provides to his lengthy listing of southern authenticity as Legal professional David Duncan, revealed to even be sleeping with Jessica throughout her pre-marriage disaster.
The Present positions the justice system itself as fallibly masculine with these roles. The place the eventual trial for Jessica’s homicide is performative, Annie’s divination is all the time introduced as real. Moms and wives – and would-be moms and wives like Jessica – are powerless towards the systemic realities of movie, however are additionally essential to everybody else surviving it. Simply because the investigation and trial could be misplaced with out Annie’s visions, vulnerability, and earnest need to assist, the whole neighborhood would equally be misplaced if these ladies discovered a manner out.
‘The Present’ Explores How Ladies Are Essential to the Very Communities That Hurt Them
Launched the identical weekend as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Present is an under-seen and underrated efficiency from Blanchett. As the only supernaturally gifted determine, she satirically grounds the movie in actuality. The place different tales are so usually tempted so as to add a supernatural clarification for violence towards ladies, and the methods poverty impacts ladies to a extra harmful diploma, Raimi retains it true to life. The best risk to ladies who stray from expectations, or just to ladies who think about a life for themselves that others don’t approve of, isn’t a sinister, otherworldly curse or creature — it’s males.
