Limbo

LIMBO            A                                

USA  Germany  (127 mi)  1999  d:  John Sayles

A film that defies expectations, that spends most of its time exploring what might be an interesting relationship between a couple of drifters in a small fishing village in Alaska, that fills us with throwaway characters who are trying to make a profitable business out of living in Alaska, but also includes graphic images of workers in a fishing hatchery that shuts down, leaving many without work.  In this speculative market, we discover two world weary characters who have had their share of bad luck, who are instantly drawn to one another, but who are wary of troubled relationships, wonderfully expressed by their first date where he takes her to a salmon dying ground just exploding with fish who are flopping around in huge numbers until they die right there on the spot, an odd reflection of their own inner wounds.  It’s a peculiar moment, as neither is quite sure what to make of the other, but it’s clear both want something to develop. 

Oak Park native Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, from de Palma’s SCARFACE (1983) fifteen years earlier or Scorsese’s THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986), is once again glowing in her role as a lounge singer who finds moments that she calls a “state of grace” onstage every night, as she finds meaning in the words of the songs that she gorgeously sings herself, effortlessly revealing her emotional vulnerability in every scene, while David Strathairn is the quiet, moody, more introspective man who carries his life’s troubles in his self-reflections, still haunted by a boating accident on his boat twenty years ago where two friends died.  It’s interesting how much is revealed from both characters that comes from other sources in an Altmanesque layering of overheard conversations as well as the lounge musical performances, especially Mastrantonio’s cover of Richard Thompson’s "Dimming of the Day," which is nothing short of pitch perfect.  Thompson can be seen here on YouTube:  Richard Thompson - Dimming Of The Day - California 2005 - YouTube (3:38). But while the camera is following this couple, there are brief vignettes of Mastrantonio’s teenage daughter, Vanessa Martinez, that are gently interspersed without comment or backdrop, but they also clearly indicate her state of dejection, exasperated by constantly moving from place to place and from the aftereffects of having to deal with her mother’s failed relationships.

Then suddenly the film veers off in another direction, leaving civilization and all its troubles behind as the three of them venture into unexplored territory, beautifully expressed by the Alaskan wilderness that initially feels liberating and filled with a wonderful sense of expectation.  But just as suddenly, unforseen circumstances occur and what was perceived as hopeful becomes overwhelmingly dangerous and forbidding, as they are trapped in a remote inlet by killers that we never see, but they are the only ones who know where the three of them are.  The cinematography of Haskell Wexler finds the gloom in the air, the cover of mist and fog in the dense green forest where they take cover and must attempt to survive.  Miraculously, a film that spends its whole time hovering around the budding relationship of two adults suddenly shifts to the poetic state of grace of the daughter, who reads passages every night from a diary left behind ages ago in a makeshift, broken-down hut from a family of fox hunters, where the hunter daughter was amazingly insightful in her intimate description of her parent’s deteriorating relationship, which matches this impending doom of the new inhabitants.  The tenderness in these readings is intoxicating and takes us into clearly unchartered territory, becoming one of the best and most poetic expressions of adolescence, eliciting a harrowing mood of sensitivity and sorrow as the world closes in around her.  Vanessa Martinez subtly steals the film right out from under the superbly crafted performances of the adults.  It’s a beautiful piece of storytelling that cleverly changes the focus of the film.  Even the quiet, eerily understated cries of Bruce Springsteen in the song “Lift Me Up,” heard in a live version here:  Bruce Springsteen - Lift Me Up Debut - 07/31/05‏ - YouTube (3:12), leaves the viewer in something of a hypnotic trance over the end credits from which there is no easy escape.