Keane (2004)
This is a one man show all the way, and young, slightly crazed father played by Damian Lewis gives it his intense best. Almost nothing happens for 100 minutes, nothing in the sense of plot development, so it really is up to Lewis to make his troubles come alive. His problem is that his daughter disappeared when he was with her in a bus station, and a year later he is still looking for her, trying to recreated the events that surrounded the mystery.
But what strikes the viewer is maybe impatience, not with the narrative, but with the presentation of it. The movie ends up being a recreation of the tortured mind, the angst, the regrets, of this young father. And so the movie recreates that anxiety in the viewer. It seems impressive on some detached level, but it doesn't quiet work. The shaky camera, the constant striving and looking, the endless lack of progress, makes for unpleasant viewing. That doesn't mean it isn't interesting, but it isn't enjoyable. Oddly enough, many movies about terrible things manage to rise above their terribleness and the movie becomes moving, or enlightening, or simply aesthetic. "Keane" doesn't try to do any of those things.
It would help if Lewis were able to create a more sympathetic type. You do want him to succeed, but you also don't want to really spend an hour and a half with him like this. When a second character, a young woman, arrives halfway through, it seems like a crack in the gloom, but then she doesn't become a major character. Her daughter, gradually, does, but only in a symbolic way--we never quite get to know or sympathize with the daughter directly.
This is all more analysis than criticism, really. But it's a heads up for people looking for a certain kind of emotional drama. A movie like "Julie" has a filmic richness that takes an even worse situation about a child and makes it gripping. "Keane" remains in the mind and emotional troubles of its main character, and in Lewis's hands that's not really enough.
This is a one man show all the way, and young, slightly crazed father played by Damian Lewis gives it his intense best. Almost nothing happens for 100 minutes, nothing in the sense of plot development, so it really is up to Lewis to make his troubles come alive. His problem is that his daughter disappeared when he was with her in a bus station, and a year later he is still looking for her, trying to recreated the events that surrounded the mystery.
But what strikes the viewer is maybe impatience, not with the narrative, but with the presentation of it. The movie ends up being a recreation of the tortured mind, the angst, the regrets, of this young father. And so the movie recreates that anxiety in the viewer. It seems impressive on some detached level, but it doesn't quiet work. The shaky camera, the constant striving and looking, the endless lack of progress, makes for unpleasant viewing. That doesn't mean it isn't interesting, but it isn't enjoyable. Oddly enough, many movies about terrible things manage to rise above their terribleness and the movie becomes moving, or enlightening, or simply aesthetic. "Keane" doesn't try to do any of those things.
It would help if Lewis were able to create a more sympathetic type. You do want him to succeed, but you also don't want to really spend an hour and a half with him like this. When a second character, a young woman, arrives halfway through, it seems like a crack in the gloom, but then she doesn't become a major character. Her daughter, gradually, does, but only in a symbolic way--we never quite get to know or sympathize with the daughter directly.
This is all more analysis than criticism, really. But it's a heads up for people looking for a certain kind of emotional drama. A movie like "Julie" has a filmic richness that takes an even worse situation about a child and makes it gripping. "Keane" remains in the mind and emotional troubles of its main character, and in Lewis's hands that's not really enough.