Death and the Maiden (1994)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

best movie i've ever seen.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A woman seeks revenge from a man she recognizes as a government official who tortured and raped her years ago for her political views. Based on a play, the setting could have been post-WWII Germany with a Jewish woman going against her Nazi persecutor. However, it is set in an unnamed South American country. There are only three characters and most of the action takes place on a single set, but Polanski manages to sustain the tension throughout. Weaver is convincing as the vengeful woman. Wilson and Kingsley are fine as her husband and the man she accuses of war crimes, respectively. The title comes from Schubert's 14th string quartet, which was played every time Weaver was raped.

This is one of the cinematic homes for this filmmaker. He swims comfortably in these waters. Polanski requires very little elements to induce great tension in any film. That's why he has looked for scripts like this, often in his career.This is a great thing, the ability to take very few scenery elements, in this case a single very small house, and the surrounding landscape, and build the narrative over that. Because that's what we have. The story is simple enough to produce no distractions, and the landscape is wide and desert enough to do the same. What we have is a whole set up that surrounds an idea of uncertain truth, provisional reality (to our eyes). That's why we never stop wondering whether Weaver is right or wrong, whether Kingsley is a rapist or a victim. So does Stuart Wilson, who goes through the same range of doubt as we, spectators, go, and that makes him our surrogate in the film. We are judges to our own sentence. All the cruelty of an invented regime of a supposed south American country is the mere formalization of the credibility of the world. It is not about denouncing crimes nor about discussing politics, as it has been said. Also, much has been said about how much the final monologue reveals the truth, i say it keeps all the possibilities opened, though it suggests sincerity.As an idea, this is as simple as it gets, and as every simple idea, it's so hard to achieve, keeping it simple. That's where things get interesting, when you check the cinematic devices that surround and collaborate with the simplicity of a simple doubt that this theatrical script suggests.First we have the core of the story framed, at beginning and end, by the core music, a quartet which names the film, and gives consistency to the drama of Sigourney's character.We have the handling of the wide open landscape, with its lighthouse. The sense of green isolation, the poetics of the location, which growths on us, as it is given in small bits, until becoming the final stage to the real drama.The house. This part matters, as this a film by a director who really knows how to handle space and include it in the drama. This is worth for a hotel room, a boat, or a small house. This is what he has been making throughout his life, in "knife in the water", his apartment trilogy, bitter moon and this one. It is something i admire, the ability to include the space that surrounds the characters into their dramas and discussions. That's one way, one of deepest ways to include (architectural) space in the fields of cinema. Orson Welles, Hitchcock (sometimes), Polanski... they all trust on their own camera.We have the acting at the center of the success of this film. Everyone of the 3 actors involved play at their top here, each one knows where he stands, and interprets perfectly what is required of him to make things flow. Ambiguity, to Ben Kinsgley, Messed up mind to Sigourney Weaver, Reactiveness and indecision to Stuart Wilson.This is less achieved than other efforts, but Roman never ceases to deliver his special gaze, and that's always worth seeing.My opinion: 4/5http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

**SPOILERS** Mind bending political as well as psychological thriller involving a former woman freedom fighter Paulina Lorca, Sigourney Weaver,who was brutally tortured and raped by her secret police captors. This all happened back in the spring of 1977 in the secret police trying to get Paulina to reveal the whereabouts and identity of her lover and later husband Gereldo Escobar, Stuart Wilson, who was one of the top leaders of the freedom fighting movement in the country.It's now 17 years later-1994-and with a new democratically elected government in charge Geraldo has been picked by the country's new president to head the newly formed "Commission". "The Commission" has the power in both arresting and prosecuting those who were responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of citizens, like Paulina, whom the previous Fascist Dictatorship felt was a threat to it!As things turn out Gerlado's car gets stuck in the mud on his way home, after being but in charge of "The Commission", where he's then helped by good Samaritan neighbor the kindly Dr. Roberto Miranda, Ben Kingsley, by giving him a ride to his sea-front house. It's when Pauline, who's hiding in the bedroom, who for some reason thinks she's still on the lamb, from the former governments secret police, hears Roberto talk she flips out feeling that he's the person who brutally tortured and raped her some 17 years ago!It's then the the movie, like Paulina, starts to zig-zag merrily along in a number of really off-the-wall sequences. Roberto soon becomes a captive who, like what Paulina accused him of doing to her, ends up being tortured and humiliated by Pauline in order to get a confession out of him! The forced confession, with Paulina holding a gun to his head, has to do in Roberto's involvement with the previous Fascist Government in his supervising the torture of dozens of political prisoners. The government put Paulin's husband Geraldo in charge, by being the head of "The Commission", to see to it that those involve in the torture and murder of thousands of "enemes of the state" are brought before the bar of justice and made to pay for their crimes against the people!Paulina is sure that Roberto is the man who brutally abused her back in 1977 and tries to get him to confess, on video tape, his crimes. Even though when she was supposedly tortured and raped by him Paulina never once saw Roberto's face but only heard his voice and smelled his very bad, due to his heavy consumption of garlic, breath that was far worse then any of the torture he inflicted on her. Gerlado, in him being a lawyer, feels that the evidence Paulina has on Roberto isn't enough for an indictment much less a conviction!The films goes on and on with the poor Roberto being beaten and humiliated by Paulina with her passive husband Geraldo, when he later becomes convinced that Roberto is in fact the "Man", later joining in on the torture sessions. It's when Roberto breaks free and tries to make a run for it that, what seems like, the truth finally comes out! That's only after Roberto is again captured by Paulina & Geraldo and finally, without that much persuasion by the two, seems to come clean with his past!***SPOILER ALERT***The movie ends like it began with Paulina and Geraldo at the theater attending a performance of Schubert's " Death of a Maiden". What we didn't see at first we see later on, when the movie is almost over, in that not only Pauline and Geraldo are in the audience but Roberto, who was supposed to have killed himself by jumping off a cliff, was there as well!

Hovering between giving this 9 or 10 out of ten, I quickly decided on the latter. If it's a perfect film, then a perfect score is surely appropriate. Three things have kept me from viewing this in the past, despite a great regard for the director's work going back forty years. One was the subject matter and the prospect of watching or listen tell of harrowing torture scenes. But the other two are the two leads. For some reason I have never taken to the work of Sigourney Weaver, I think maybe she appeared over rated for her role in Alien and never quite settled into much else. Ben Kingsley, I have felt also had a slightly over inflated view of himself and always had some problem with accents. Anyway, putty my pettiness behind me I watched a nail biting, thoroughly engrossing and exciting and thoughtful film. Beautifully paced and wonderfully performed by all concerned (except maybe for Kingsley's accent!) this is a must see piece of cinema. Not a wasted frame and just the right mix of action and dialogue allows the latter to shine as it deserves.