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IRON-HEARTED Kathy Bates, in what has to be the least friendly American woman character in movies in recent years, takes Dolores Claiborne beyond the realm of modern frump as horror show and into queasy territory leaving many viewers uncomfortable. Dolores is potential lost, dreams denied or never dreamt, love and affection withheld, an acceptor of status quo which blinds to the realities circulating around her, having missed signals of trouble. When forced—even encouraged—to remedy a bad situation, she not only lives with the secret of her husband’s “accident” while having to suffer the town’s openly vented suspicions she murdered him, she also has to endure the pain of sacrificing her daughter Jennifer Lason Leigh’s love because she knows the daughter’s repressing the incestuous relationship she was pressured into having with daddy. The toll of this multiple emotional jeopardy is confirmed on Dolores’s salt-of-the-earth face, the reason, she jokes, preventing her from entering any beauty pageants. It takes a while before we sense the danger Dolores is in, how it is she could consider granting her employer’s begging last request—for Dolores, with a rolling pin in hands, finishing off Old Money Bags after she botched her own suicide. This scene, truncated, starts the movie, and it’s like crazy Joan Crawford camp—so wacky we’re tempted to laugh, “Oh, wonderful! Bates on the loose again!” But this isn’t a borrowing from the rampaging psycho out of Misery. Bates’s Dolores is an indomitable bitch as defense against the whammies set upon her. The power of Bates is in the stoicism, in conjuring up supposed indifference, in denying self-pleasure, all as means of survival. (You could also call it penance.) Structurally, Dolores Claiborne is dependent on flashbacks—I counted 14—and director Taylor Hackford does precision work in seaming them together. The recollections are packed with surprises—especially Judy Parfitt as OMB, once more a dead ringer for Bea Lillie, and David Strathairn as Dolores’s lean mean machine of a husband. (His fate is enhanced by eerily right FX skies.) Crusty as Dolores’s nemesis, Christopher Plummer doesn’t mind at all trying to steal the picture. Is J.J. Leigh one of those kinds of personalities you either instantly love or hate? Drenched in black 50s beatnik, she’s once again looking undernourished and intensely concentrative on singularity. Dolores Claiborne may disappoint King fans who, not having read the story, might be under the impression they’re going to get a bloodthirst fix. For those who prefer bloodless revenge fantasies, there’s going to be a letdown because the cathartic-like messes aren’t tidied up; there’s no audience “Cheer!” factor here, as in The Shawshank Redemption. But if you’re one of many who love Kathy Bates because she’s an actress unafraid of the repellent, of homeliness, of the iron-hearted, then you’ll cheer her daring achievement in the best American movie of its year.
Text COPYRIGHT © 2002 RALPH BENNER All Rights Reserved. |
