mruzick3
10-31-2003, 12:18 AM
Have you ever heard about a movie that you just had to see and for some reason or another you just forgot to see it? Anyone…anyone? Oh yeah, I forgot which website I’m writing on. Well, I am just that kind of movie fan. I am willing to admit that I have not seen a lot of movies that I have wanted to see…or even should have seen. I get busy, the movie is so obscure that it comes and goes in a fortnight, a big green monster came in the night and ate my essay…oh shit, wrong rolodex of excuses, sorry. Whatever the reason, life just gets in the way of sitting and escaping to a little piece of fiction. As I get older and start to catch up with my movie-shoulda-coulda-wouldas, I’m finding that seeing a film you meant to see years earlier is like recapturing a moment in time. In a revival house the moment is perfectly recaptured. At this time, I have to settle for a darkened living room with a widescreen DVD version.
‘Suture’ fascinated me back in the early nineties when I started to gorge myself on independent film. I spent my hard-earned-retail-sweat every weekend watching great, and not-so-great, films at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, the Lido, the Nuart, and such. Every so often a movie poster promoting ‘Suture’ captivated me. Never saw an ad for it. The credits displayed Soderburgh’s financial stamp of approval as executive producer and I thought it might be worth checking out. More than that was the imagery on the poster and later print ads---a black man dressed in white crouched in a gleaming white shower with a white man dressed in black on the outside, both of them pointing a gun at each other. The black & white image stayed in the back of my mind as the movie came and went to minimal fanfare and even less distribution. An like that, I forgot…
Recovering a forgotten movie appointment is like calling the best friend you haven’t spoken to for years. Getting ready to see the film, now on DVD, I felt reacquainted and awkward. Will the movie be good? Did I just imagine the imagery vaguely brushing my overloaded memory? To my surprise, ‘Suture’ began on the very image in the poster and like that, the story concluded to begin. Vincent and Clay are brothers who favor each other remarkably. This fact is emphasized three to four times in the beginning. Vincent is inherently rich, calculatingly cold to others, and wanted for his father’s murder. Clay is humbly poor, content with his stature in life, and wants for nothing. Oh yeah, Vincent is white and Clay is black. Remember they do favor each other remarkably so. This device used in the beginning, along with the choice of black & white film, sets the viewer up for something out of the ordinary way of looking at things and people. By taking identity and skewing the superficiality of it—how a person looks—makes for an interesting premise in a neo-noir film. The movie is as much a journey into an evolving identity than it is a murder mystery.
Clay’s recovery from an explosion at the hands of his fleeing brother changes everything. His face is reconstructed from old photos of Vincent. His memory is lost to amnesia. His true identity is vanished with the clothes Vincent insisted he change out of when they reunited. He is Vincent. And Vincent should have died. ‘Suture’ conjures A LOT of symbolic imagery. There’s a close up of a Rorschach inkblot used as a backdrop for the psychologist’s office. There are the many dream sequences in which Clay as Vincent is trying to regain is memory while walking in someone else’s loafers. There’s even a sequence where the only witness to the father’s murder explains to an investigating officer that one of her twin lovebirds killed the other. Maybe this is heavy handed directing by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who also penned the script, but I liked it. This kind of overwrought symbolism is acceptable given the film’s premise and subjects. Hell, even the names are symbolic; Clay is molding an identity for himself while Vincent has distinguished one that is quietly harsh.
All roads lead to the beginning and the end. The concluding sequence just has to be seen. The direction is perfect and really emphasizes the belief that everything in a shot is there for a reason. The acting by Dennis Haysbert as Clay is really astonishing. The struggle to remember and form a person at the same time is a character exercise that I haven’t heard of yet. The movie was an inviting flashback to a forgotten matinee.
*look out for more flicks that Mike forgot…
_______________________________
Mike Ruzicka
‘Suture’ fascinated me back in the early nineties when I started to gorge myself on independent film. I spent my hard-earned-retail-sweat every weekend watching great, and not-so-great, films at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, the Lido, the Nuart, and such. Every so often a movie poster promoting ‘Suture’ captivated me. Never saw an ad for it. The credits displayed Soderburgh’s financial stamp of approval as executive producer and I thought it might be worth checking out. More than that was the imagery on the poster and later print ads---a black man dressed in white crouched in a gleaming white shower with a white man dressed in black on the outside, both of them pointing a gun at each other. The black & white image stayed in the back of my mind as the movie came and went to minimal fanfare and even less distribution. An like that, I forgot…
Recovering a forgotten movie appointment is like calling the best friend you haven’t spoken to for years. Getting ready to see the film, now on DVD, I felt reacquainted and awkward. Will the movie be good? Did I just imagine the imagery vaguely brushing my overloaded memory? To my surprise, ‘Suture’ began on the very image in the poster and like that, the story concluded to begin. Vincent and Clay are brothers who favor each other remarkably. This fact is emphasized three to four times in the beginning. Vincent is inherently rich, calculatingly cold to others, and wanted for his father’s murder. Clay is humbly poor, content with his stature in life, and wants for nothing. Oh yeah, Vincent is white and Clay is black. Remember they do favor each other remarkably so. This device used in the beginning, along with the choice of black & white film, sets the viewer up for something out of the ordinary way of looking at things and people. By taking identity and skewing the superficiality of it—how a person looks—makes for an interesting premise in a neo-noir film. The movie is as much a journey into an evolving identity than it is a murder mystery.
Clay’s recovery from an explosion at the hands of his fleeing brother changes everything. His face is reconstructed from old photos of Vincent. His memory is lost to amnesia. His true identity is vanished with the clothes Vincent insisted he change out of when they reunited. He is Vincent. And Vincent should have died. ‘Suture’ conjures A LOT of symbolic imagery. There’s a close up of a Rorschach inkblot used as a backdrop for the psychologist’s office. There are the many dream sequences in which Clay as Vincent is trying to regain is memory while walking in someone else’s loafers. There’s even a sequence where the only witness to the father’s murder explains to an investigating officer that one of her twin lovebirds killed the other. Maybe this is heavy handed directing by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who also penned the script, but I liked it. This kind of overwrought symbolism is acceptable given the film’s premise and subjects. Hell, even the names are symbolic; Clay is molding an identity for himself while Vincent has distinguished one that is quietly harsh.
All roads lead to the beginning and the end. The concluding sequence just has to be seen. The direction is perfect and really emphasizes the belief that everything in a shot is there for a reason. The acting by Dennis Haysbert as Clay is really astonishing. The struggle to remember and form a person at the same time is a character exercise that I haven’t heard of yet. The movie was an inviting flashback to a forgotten matinee.
*look out for more flicks that Mike forgot…
_______________________________
Mike Ruzicka