Asylum dvd movie.|
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Asylum description Asylum stars Natasha Richardson in an unsettling psychological thriller about the repressed, 1950s wife of a psychiatrist (Hugh Bonneville) and her affair with a convicted killer (Marton Csokas). Stella (Richardson), Max (Bonneville), and their son Charlie (Gus Lewis, who played the young Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond) move to a high-security psychiatric hospital, where the priggish Max joins the staff and hopes to ascend, in time, to the top spot, replacing the soon-to-retire hospital director (Joss Ackland). Standing in Max's way is another doctor, Cleave (Ian McKellen), who takes a quiet yet somehow sinister interest in unhappy Stella's apparent attraction to Edgar (Csokas), a connection that will lead to more than one sorrowful end. Based on a novel by Patrick McGrath (who adapted his own Spider into the screenplay for David Cronenberg's 2002 film), Asylum is directed by David Mackenzie (Young Adam) with a subtle but growing apprehension of manipulated destiny in Cleave's hands. (It's hard not to think of Cleave as a villainous puppetmaster in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse universe.) There are times when one might be tempted to dismiss Asylum as too opaque in its explanation for why Stella does the often wretched things she does. But patience is well rewarded: It takes full running time of the movie for the story's complete design to become clear. --Tom Keogh |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | MUCH ADO ABOUT....well, what exactly? |
| A thriller that offers obvious leads to obvious ends with occasional punches direcltly to a woman's face.
The themes of the film (passion, obsession, jealousy, insanity vs sanity) would have been much better served if at least SOME of the situations or characters in this film were a BIT more sympathetic. (WARNING - there are spoilers ahead!) Csokas' character Cleave is so one dimensional, so uninteresting, and so wooden you wonder what richarson's Stella ever sees in him. OK - there is an underlying Russell Crowe/Brendon Frazier primal urgency that may have interested her at first. But the man is a bore. Worse, he's an obvious true lunatic who is said to have murdered his wife, decapitated her, scalped her, then hacked at her face like the clay he feebly molds as a failed artist. Even if Stella had volcanic orgasms with this guy, wouldn't she have been a bit more apprehensive about continuing, and renewing, this relationship over and over and over again? Ian McKellen remains a joy to watch. His well contained performance is all in his eyes. A performance that begs us to question the line between neurosis and true insanity. Ultimately the film is unsatisfying. Stella is so wretched - ultimately spacing out while watching her son drown leading to his death - viewers can only feel relief when she falls to her ultimate Hitchcockian vertiginous doom. Even here, we're reminded of what the master director knew; there is more to fear in what is unseen, rather than what is actually seen. Though we get to watch Edgar pummel her, at least we're spared the indignity of watching him hack her to pieces. Worth the 3.50 it's selling for on Amazon. But not with the added costs of shipping. |
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