THE PLEDGE (2001)

 
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 7:57 am    Post subject: THE PLEDGE (2001) Reply with quote

I may not have followed all of the action in this movie and so I won’t have much to say about its plot. For one thing, at least once there is the use of a new (to me, anyway) convention in movies of more recent vintage–scenes that may or may not be real. I find this kind of trickery confusing and annoying.

The central character, Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson), a just-retired cop, enters a church where he suspects the pastor of being a child molester and murderer, and what happens just before the church door opens to reveal the pastor and the congregation isn’t clear. It’s probably meant to be a figment of Jerry’s imagination, since we’re being shown how he gradually becomes mentally unhinged in the course of the movie.

And I think I detect some attempts at “product placement” in the movie though no brand names are evident. People familiar with cars would probably know the brand of the SUV being driven with abandon over rugged terrain and crashing easily through barbed wire fences, for instance. (“Gotta have one of those cool cars!” will be the thought some moviegoers have.)

The scene didn’t have to be so long or so dramatic. But that is just my personal preference, maybe. I don’t enjoy high-speed vehicular traffic in general.

And chalk up another one for the cigarette industry here. Even in 2001 we see lots of people smoking. Of course people do smoke in real life, and this movie is clearly trying to show life as it really is or was in Nevada. But the naive spectator (a child or a teenager) is going to notice the graceful effect, the social advantages, of the way people smoke in a movie. This naive person will be apt to go home and practice some of the gestures, the various styles for inhaling and exhaling smoke, in front of a mirror in an attempt to develop a more stylish version of him/herself.

But this is by the way. Aside from these nitpickings, I found the movie to be excellent in many ways. Jerry Black’s initial reasoning that prompts him to try so hard to find the “real” killer of several young girls in the area is so persuasive that I found myself hoping he was right.

And this is where I may not have watched carefully enough. From the way the story plays out, it isn’t clear to me that he wasn’t right. He could have been, and yet he still comes unglued–which makes this a very somber story indeed.

If he was right, then clearly he doesn’t realize it–or it no longer matters to him, because he has lost all of the trust of people whose trust he valued.

The photography is stunning throughout, and the movie seems to have got the West right: a place where someone can be so eager to be shed of his gas station/store that he’ll sell it for a dollar to the first passerby, a place where people often lead sad and lonely lives against a backdrop of formidable mountains, and where religion can be so intense as to be terrifying and liable to attract flimflam artists and mentally warped enthusiasts.
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