THE WEIGHT OF WATER

By: Abbie Bernstein
Review Date: Friday, November 01, 2002

THE WEIGHT OF WATER, like many of director Kathryn Bigelow's films, juxtaposes powerful, shocking violence with emotions that are so delicate and complicated that they almost defy definition by the characters who experience them.

WEIGHT takes place in two separate eras. In the present, photojournalist Jean (Catherine McCormack) and her famous (but currently blocked) writer husband Thomas (Sean Penn) join Thomas's brother Rich (Josh Lucas) and Rich's girlfriend Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley) for a weekend on Rich's sailboat off the coast of New Hampshire. Jean is intrigued by a local incident that occurred in 1873, when two immigrant women were murdered with an axe on one of the small islands. A third woman, Maren (Sarah Polley), sister of one victim and sister-in-law of the other, survived to testify against a fellow immigrant (Ciaran Hinds), who was subsequently hanged for the crime. Although their situations superficially could hardly be more different, Jean feels a kinship with the long-dead Maren both women are trapped in situations that leave them yearning and desperate.

The film trusts the audience to follow the connections Jean is making between her own straits and that of the subject of her quest. Other movies would be more obvious, but the screenplay by Alice Arlen and Christopher Kyle, based on Anita Shreve's novel, is subtle and elliptical. The analogies are there for those who have an affinity for them, but whether they seem fascinating, tenuous or altogether absent depends on how thoroughly the individual viewer is willing to get into Jean's quiet distress. Bigelow's tone is contemplative and investigative, but she ably sets an atmosphere of tension there's always a sense that something is happening, bringing events ever closer to explosion. The violence, when it erupts, is more heartbreaking than we might anticipate.

The flashbacks

to 1873 are punchier than the modern sequences, as the stakes are a whole lot clearer and we know from the outset that events are building toward a terrible tragedy. Polley invites complete sympathy as Maren, whose full predicament is unveiled a bit at a time (although it's not impossible to guess most of it fairly early on). The production design by Karl Juliusson and the cinematography by Adrian Biddle create an environment so convincing that we feel the chill settle over our skins as we watch the characters struggle in the harsh, wet landscape. Howard Smith's editing deftly moves us back and forth through the centuries with clever, seamless transitions.

McCormack conveys a great deal of turmoil with few words as Jean and Penn ably puts across the irony, intelligence and bedrock self-loathing of her slowly disintegrating spouse. Lucas exudes friendliness with a subtext of alarm and Hurley excels at depicting a woman who knows just how far she can push social conventions in pursuit of her own needs. The late Katrin Cartlidge is by turns amusing, infuriating and pitiable as Maren's disapproving sister.

THE WEIGHT OF WATER is neither conventional thriller nor character study. It succeeds in both genres for those who like a helping of ambiguity and metaphor along with more solid plot details.

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