ihavebeenfloated

Watching a movie about someone with a serious condition, or a mental illness, has the potential to be just as disturbing as actually knowing someone with that condition, but the film has to have a certain something. Most notably, it needs an actor who can convince you that they are this person with the condition or disorder. Like any movie, you need an actor who can convincingly portray whatever they are supposed to be, but when you up the ante with something like pedophilia, you need something special.

The Woodsman, thankfully, has this in Kevin Bacon. I couldn’t even imagine where Bacon started at to prepare for this role, but his performance as Walter, a convicted child molester getting out of prison after twelve years, is almost beautiful in how painful, and creepy, it is. That character summary is pretty much all the introduction you need to the film.

It is one of those sleepy films, that leisurely walks its way through a powerful segment of someones life. It’s very similar in tone to The Minus Man (starring Owen Wilson). It is, at times, beautiful, and downright terrifying at others. Watching Walter test himself (or is he testing himself?) of his desires is the most unnerving thing ever, because we have so much vested in the character. We, naturally, don’t want him to revert to the ways that landed him in jail. Walter doesn’t want it either, but both he, and the audience, can sense that there exists in a pull in his brain that he might not be able to resist.

This is a really powerful effect that should not be understated in any way. Somehow the film managed to make me feel everything the character felt, with the notable exception of actually being attracted to little girls. You feel disgusted by him, and he feels the same way too. You feel scared that he’ll recommit his sins, and he’s scared too. You feel frightened by the woman who almost forcefully enters his life, because you worry about how she’ll react when she finds out about his past… and he’s frightened, too. It’s really amazing, to me, because I’ve never felt such a close, intense, emotional connection to a character in a film.

Every single thought he thinks, you can read it. I could attribute this all to the wonderful performance by Bacon, but it’s not only that. There is something in the score, and in the cinematography, that all add to his performance. All these things come together in this one film to really send the character of Walter into reality. And that’s really all this movie is, it’s Walter. There is no secondary story, there aren’t any major development arcs. There is only Walter, and the demons that exist inside his head.

The Woodsman is all about finding out whether or not Walter can overcome those demons, and that is enough story in itself to make it all worth watching.