Staying out of an actor’s way is a considerable directorial
skill, and one that Oren Moverman exhibits with assurance throughout The Messenger, the tale of a decorated
Iraqi war hero named Will (Ben Foster) who, upon returning to the States, is
assigned to spend his last three months of active duty alongside old pro Tony
(Woody Harrelson) notifying families of their enlisted relatives’ deaths. Aside
from his use of heavy metal to further suggest Will’s roiling inner state,
Moverman uses an impressive amount of restraint in dramatizing his scenario,
which finds Will and Tony slowly forming a bond – and, in the process, finding
a means of expressing their twisted feelings of guilt, shame, grief and longing
– while carrying out their arduous task. That Will eventually falls for, and
tentatively attempts to woo, a single mother named Olivia (Samantha Morton)
who’s notified by the duo of her husband’s death does, initially, reek of
screenwriting contrivance. Yet Moverman’s scripting is subdued and emotionally
authentic, and Foster and Morton – especially in a kitchen-set conversation,
shot in one unbroken take, that finds both performers nimbly modulating, and
vacillating between, conflicting emotions – prove more than capable of keeping
the narrative strand honest. Harrelson too takes what originally seems a
caricatured role (hardass warhorse breaking in the new guy) and makes him
believably multifaceted, a man whose professional regret, personal demons, and
miserable military responsibility (enduring the tears and blows of grieving
parents and wives) have conspired to leave him a cracked, if not wholly broken,
man. The Messenger conveys the
lingering damage wrought by conflict but, more than that, a universal need for
stability and comfort, and if its ending carries with it a whiff of Hollywood
hopefulness, it’s a mood that, following on the heels of its humanist portrait
of suffering and surviving, nonetheless seems well-earned.
Comments