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Friday, January 14, 2005
'Woodsman' splits open the life of a child molester
The title of "The Woodsman," Nicole Kassell's defiant and unsettling drama of a child molester trying to re-establish his life after serving 12 years in prison, comes from a fairy tale.
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In "Little Red Riding Hood," the woodsman slices open the wolf's stomach and frees the girl, who emerges unharmed and alive. In the real world, Detective Lucas (Mos Def) reminds paroled sex offender William (Kevin Bacon), the victims of human predators don't survive their ordeals without scars, even when the woodsman arrives on the scene.
William doesn't see himself as the wolf. "It's not what you think," he insists, more to persuade himself than anyone else. "I never hurt them." But while he's no longer a hunter, he remains a predator, by instinct or by illness.
Bacon, gaunt and worn down, plays William with his face set hard and his head down, physically cutting himself off from practically all human contact at his lumber mill job. Kyra Sedgwick is not quite as convincing as a blue-collar co-worker who has been bumped around by life and finds something worth pursuing in William. He practically slaps her in the face with his confession, knowing the disgust that will follow and cutting the inevitable breakup short.
Movies humanize criminals, sympathize with assassins, humanize murderers and understand traitors, but don't extend that privilege to child molesters. "The Woodsman" wants to remind us that child molesters are not simply monsters, but deeply troubled human beings, which is an important observation but makes for a hard film to watch.
Kassell shows us William's torment without justification, sympathy or judgment, but those issues are never far away. Even William finds it abhorrent when he spots a potential predator chatting up little boys across the street from his apartment.
It's a tough movie with a fearless performance by Bacon (probably too uncompromising for an Oscar nomination) and brave filmgoers will be rewarded with a bracing experience. While Kassell keeps anything explicit offscreen, just watching William charm a young bird-watching girl in a red jacket, his own Little Red Riding Hood, is enough to make a viewer queasy. That his own self-disgust tears at him is fascinating, but doesn't stop our gut response or our judgment.
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