The most impressive, and most disturbing, thing about The Woodsman is how, well, normal it is. Like Vera Drake, this movie is less about the controversial issue involved (there, abortion; here, pedophilia) and more about the universal process of rehabilitation (in Vera Drake’s case, about the way secrets can nearly destroy a family). There are scenes that really deal straight-up, with first-person POV camera angles, with life through the eyes of a pedophile, and it’s pretty chilling. But for the most part, it’s about a guy who did something really bad, and the question of whether such a guy can ever truly move on and get some kind of a life back.

Kevin Bacon is as good as the other reviews have said. He says more in silence than the lines he has to speak, surely the real sign of a great actor. Kyra Sedgwick is great too, as the one woman who, after a period of stunned reflection, gives Bacon’s character a chance. Also very impressive is Mos Def as Sgt. Lucas, who perhaps has the most powerful character arc of the whole movie. He bursts in on Bacon’s new residence early on the movie, practically ready to throw him out of the window; he’s dealt with these “pieces of sh*t” before and is in no way prepared to believe “they” can reform. In his last scene, he leaves the same apartment, almost stunned by how much the man he’s come to know defied expectation.

There are a few clunky elements: the very location of Bacon’s new apartment, directly opposite a grade school, leading to a whole hokey subplot about another, “worse” pedophile he is watching. You kind of expect these things to happen to Humbert Humbert, but they kind of stand out in this mostly realistic story. But while these things are a little hard to believe, it’s hard to imagine what could have been in their place; for they do serve a purpose in the story. We never find out exactly what Bacon did in the past – he uses uncharacteristic, almost tabloid language when he confesses to Sedgwick, “I molested little girls,” like he’s trying to put it in the worst way possible so he doesn’t have to clarify anything; then he quickly tries to clarify that he never hurt them, and it’s easy to believe him. It doesn’t make his crime any less awful, but when contrasted with the guy across the street getting away with possibly worse, possibly violent, abductions and rapes, it sends an important message.

All in all, a very haunting, disturbing, highly memorable 90 minutes.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 7th, 2005 at 6:53 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.