Shadows on the Wall | Confession

Confession

dir Vaclav Marhoul
scr Ben Shapiro
prd Dallas Sonnier, Ben Shapiro, Travis Mills, Lillian Campbell, Amanda Presmyk
with Rob Lowe, James Franco, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Emile Hirsch, Nick Nolte, Richard Brake, Dean Norris, Brad Dourif, Colin Bates, Patrick Hilgart, Roman Mitichyan
release US 11.Nov.26
26/US 2h12

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Dark and gritty from the start, this indulgent prison drama at least captures the bleak atmosphere. And the actors skilfully play scenes with a mix of underlying emotions, despite Vaclav Marhoul's unsubtle direction and Ben Shapiro's wordy, blunt-force script. Much of this feels like a play featuring pointed discussions in a grubby room with stagey production design, makeup and costumes. Yes, the pushy approach is difficult to watch.

In 1938 Moscow, professor Alexei (Lowe) is arrested and sent to Lubyanka Prison, facing a grilling from his former student Vladimir (Franco). Alexei has no idea why he's here, as it seems to relate to pamphlet written by a priest (Dourif) he once knew. Then he's thrown into a cell alongside distinctly jaded inmates (Hirsch, Nolte and Brake). He's also visited by his estranged wife (Leigh) and rising-star apparatchik son (Smit-McPhee). Alexei finds his morals and beliefs continually challenged here, and he will need to make some difficult decisions to save himself and his family.

It's painfully clear that Alexei is on hard times, as we meet him in a drunken stupor, licking vodka off the floorboards. Vladimir plies him with alcohol during questioning, reminding Alexei that enemies of the state always protest their innocence. The script continually quotes the likes of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Pushkin, while conversations recount horrors meted out by Lenin and Stalin. There are also discussions of art, religion, truth and power, good and evil. But the long-winded dialog pronounces its points with relentless simplicity.

Performances are heightened, creating an almost fantastical tone, as the cast members archly tap into Russian culture. Playing against type, Lowe leans into Alexei's heroic scruffiness as an intellectual reduced to a lowly transport job. But he still has his principles! As his former star pupil, Franco sneers and swaggers malevolently, making promises and threats. The supporting actors are resolutely grim, and they're gifted enough to find some underlying emotion even as they deliver the most stiffly awkward lines.

The point here is that Vladimir wants a false confession to prove an official lie. But any real motivations and meanings are obscured by dialog that overstates everything to an almost absurd degree. Shapiro seemingly has no clue that Soviet authoritarianism actually undermined the core tenets of communism, so heaping so much praise on capitalism and Christianity actually trivialises them. Even a hint of nuance in this preachy, overlong film might have at least made it thought-provoking.

themes, language, violence 9.Nov.26

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