Well-Acted Stone a Question of Faith
Parole officer Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro) is only a few weeks away from retirement. He’s turned over the majority of his caseload to his replacement, but those already moving their way through the system he’d like to see until the end. Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Edward Norton) is the very last man on that list, his case the final one he will ever have to handle.
Robert De Niro and Edward Norton in Stone © Overture Films
Descriptions don’t get any easier than the one for Stone, director John Curran’s follow up to The Painted Veil (which also starred Norton) and We Don’t Live Here Anymore. The man is fond of dramas that sound simple on paper, but as they evolve slowly reveal themselves to be anything but. This isn’t just a straight-ahead character study of two disparate men; it is instead a treatise on faith looking at those who have it, those who don’t, those who hunger for it, those who find it and those who internally crumble at the idea that a higher power doesn’t even exist.
There are a lot of layers here. Jack has a dysfunctional marriage to the devout Madylyn (Frances Conroy) that has hung by a thread for decades thanks to an act threatened violence that has irreparably wounded the both of them. Stone, meanwhile, has a schoolteacher wife named Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) who will do just about anything to see her husband free as well as erase the crippling loneliness she’s suffered through during the eight years of his incarceration. As for the inmate himself, he’s still wrestling with what he’s done, the violence he’s seen and whether or not he’ll pay a price for it in the hereafter. All of them have issues, all are looking for answers while none know for certain whether the ones they’re looking to for guidance do in fact have their best interests at heart.
Needless to say Angus MacLachlan’s (Junebug) is big on talk and not nearly as high on subtlety. People tend to spell out what they’re feeling in loud outbursts, and while some take longer than others to bubble to the surface all will have their moment of vitriol where they get to spell out what’s troubling them. But there is also a lot of shorthand to these characters as well, and while their inner monologues usually come out like word vomit the quiet movements of their actions speak at greater volumes about who they are and what they believe than their words ever could.
The acting is impeccable. De Niro follows up his rebound performance in Everybody’s Fine with an even more layered and nuanced one here. Jack is crippled, but he doesn’t really ever realize just how much until it’s far too late. But while his emotional state wavers his resolve remains constant, and even where it comes to Lucetta he makes the worst lapse in judgment possible he still refuses to bend and take stock of what it he’s done and what the choices made in his life have cost him.
Norton is also excellent, and while the script often times shorts him and reduces him to spouting platitudes there is still something about his spiritual journey that resonates. His is the reactor in this drama even though he’s the one who instigates most of the turmoil assaulting Jack and Lucetta, the one who must respond to the outside stimuli affecting his potential parole, Norton engaging in a wondrous balancing act I was completely captivated by.
Both Jovovich and especially Conroy have less to work with yet both still manage to do exemplary work. These ladies aren’t throwaways and they’re not also-rans, each having important parts to play as this religious parable of self destruction and rebirth plays itself out all the way out to its inevitably bleak conclusion.
Does it all work? No, not entirely. Some plot points are hammered home with a didactic pomposity that’s overbearing, while others are so impossibly vague they might as well be invisible. But something about MacLachlan’s story stuck with me long after I’d left the theatre, and ever since I’ve seen it I’ve been ruminating on its various nuances with far more relish than normal. There is plenty of literate, highly adult food for thought here, and while not all of it is as edible as I’d like it to be the stuff that is borders on magnificent.
At the very least, Curran remains a director that knows how to craft distinctive milieus that feel honest and true. From Maryse Alberti’s (The Wrestler) lushly sparse cinematography to the remarkable use of Midwestern Christian talk radio the world the filmmaker creates is 100-percent immersive, and from every speck of dirt to every shaft of grain there is a you-are-there quality to the picture impossible to dismiss.
Stone isn’t for everyone. It’s completely dialogue driven and revolves around a set of characters difficult to like, while the answers to the questions everyone in it are searching for aren’t necessarily of the kind audiences embrace with ease. On top of that, its mystifying final scene is one that ends up chalking up even more questions, sending viewers out scratching their heads trying to figure out exactly what MacLachlan and Curran were aiming for.
But the more I think on it the more I realize Stone is haunting me. I like what it has to say and I love the fact it let me come up with all the final answers for myself. The film trusts me to be able to think for myself, to be able to make up my own mind as to whether or not any of these people are deserving of forgiveness and/or redemption. In the end, this isn’t a story so much about characters looking to the heavens as it is an examination of who we ourselves are as individuals, and while some won’t like what they find that’s still a mirror most of us could use looking into.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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