Appropriate Adult

APPROPRIATE ADULT – made for TV         B+                  

Great Britain  (150 mi – 2 episodes)  2011  d:  Julian Jarrold

I miss feeling that I mattered. I miss feeling that I’m needed.           

—Janet Leach (Emily Watson)

Directed by Julian Jarrold, who also directed the first episode of the immensely entertaining RED RIDING Trilogy (2009), taking the reins for another 2-part British made-for TV drama about another real life serial killer, this one set in Gloucester in Southwest England, where for a two decade period from 1967 to 1987 Fred West (Dominic West) and his wife Rosemary (Monica Dolan) tortured, raped, and murdered at least ten young girls, including some of their own children, with the distinct possibility that there may be at least two dozen more that were never found.  However the story begins with but a single accusation, where police arrive at their home with a court order granting them permission to dig in the garden.  Simultaneously, Emily Watson as Janet Leach has just been certified to act as an “appropriate adult,” the role assigned by the British court to aid criminal suspects who may be mentally deficient, making sure they understand the nature of the charges, acting in strict confidence, assisting defense counsel when they can, mostly sitting in on police interviews and being with the accused during on-site inspections.  The police testimony freely offered by Fred West is nothing less than chilling as he describes the brutally heinous acts of murdering and then cutting up the body of his own daughter with the same matter-of-fact ease of someone describing the weather or what they had for breakfast, as it feels effortless without a hint of strain or regret.  Emily Watson is utterly brilliant in the role, surprised to receive a call so soon after completing her required courses, dignified and reserved on her first case, maintaining a very low profile throughout, always underplaying her role, never resorting to theatrical fireworks, allowing the police to establish a confessional tone, but feeling drained afterwards by the graphic physical detail of the description.

Janet is a harried mother leading a busy home life with an overconcerned teenage son and several young children at home whose father Mike (Anthony Flanagan) hasn’t gotten around to marrying her yet, as he seems to suffer from emotional difficulties of his own.  Thinking she’ll be gone for only a few hours, the investigation extends into days and then weeks, spending the better part of each day in police interviews where West initially confesses to a murder, and then another, identifies where the body is supposedly buried, but by the time they visit the site, he’s completely changed his story, seemingly enjoying all the attention people are paying him, in particular the appropriate adult, knowing she can’t share whatever he tells her.  Meanwhile TV reporters and neighbors are discussing the grisly details of the case which Emily can’t mention to anyone, many offering their views about the couple for cash payments.  While she’s immersed in the turmoil of the case, her homelife turns into a trainwreck, grown worse when Mike stops taking his medication, going on an over-stimulated spending spree, needing a lengthy hospitalization to stabilize his condition.  Fred, meanwhile, insists his wife is innocent, but the body count keeps rising, including a murder that occurred while Fred was serving time in prison, where the suspect points to Rosemary, a terrorizing and intimidating woman, a former street prostitute with a gutter mouth that threatens anyone who gets too close to her, simply a force to be reckoned with.  What’s unique about the film is the complete absence of splashy violence, no flashbacks depicting the crimes or a display of mutilated bodies, no crack police technology, where the story is advanced by the conflicting emotions generated from the constantly shifting narrative of the accused, playing this sly, psychological cat and mouse game, offering unique clues about more bodies to Janet, who is suddenly excused from the case by the police, as their initial investigation is over. 

Other than a commercial break, there is no credit sequence to suggest a break in Part One and Part Two, but new information draws Janet back into the case, where Fred and Rosemary are both incarcerated awaiting trial, but bodies remain missing, where the second part feels less confined to claustrophobic rooms and more outwardly open, as they search distant fields, much like Nuri Bilge Ceylon’s recent ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (2011), where each time Fred brings the police near, he believes the bodies are mysteriously speaking to him, suggesting they don’t wish to be disturbed.  However, it is clear, despite the absurdity of these near misses that Fred is confessing intimate details about the crimes to Janet, including his wife’s involvement, but every time he opens up, he also just as quickly shuts another door behind him, leaving Janet ever more weary and exasperated.  By the time they go to trial, Fred still refuses to implicate his wife, who may have actually taken the lead in most of the murders, as she had a savage hatred for young girls, punishing them for taking an interest in her husband.  Janet is spared from testifying, due to confidentiality, but all that changes with Fred’s apparent prison suicide.  The subsequent trial sequences charging Rosemary are among the most riveting trial testimony seen in recent memory, where Emily Watson brings the house down, again not with fireworks and flair, but with the utter poignancy and dignified quiet of her performance, where you can hear a pin drop throughout, making this intensely personal, but also emotionally devastating, as this entire ordeal has obviously taken its toll on her life, but the director pulls out all stops for what is a killer ending, simply a spectacular end to a thoroughly engaging, meticulously detailed story that is almost entirely described in witness testimony.  Part of what makes the film so moving is that it's such an unusual family drama, contrasting two families, one that is obliterated and one that remains intact.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA                     B-                   

Turkey  Bosnia  Herzegovina  (150 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Nuri Bilge Ceylon

Anatolia is the rest of Turkey other than Istanbul, so this is basically a police procedural taking place in the backwoods rural regions of Turkey, reminiscent of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) or Bong Joon-ho’s MEMORIES OF A MURDER (2003), where the local cops and their country bumpkin methods are at odds with the latest scientific police procedures, as represented by a doctor from the city, who digs a little deeper in determining the causes of death.  The result is a cultural clash, often comical, but once again an examination of a male dominated society which has a notoriously low regard for women.  Shot in ‘Scope and on HD film, it opens with what is immediately recognizable as a Kiarostami shot, a long static take of a distant horizon of rolling hills in the dark, where after awhile car headlights can be seen from 3 cars moving in the camera’s direction, a police team eventually stopping nearby where two alleged killers are attempting to locate where they buried the body, where many of the distinguishing landmarks of the hilly region are similar.  Much of this feels like a wild goose chase, made even more difficult by a search in the dead of night, led by an outraged Police Chief Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) dragging the handcuffed lead suspect Kenan (Firsat Tanis), with Prosecutor Nusret (Taner Birsel) and Doctor Cemal (Muhammet Uzuner) tagging along as part of the team, all awkwardly bumping into one another throughout the night, where slowly the audience develops a feel for the characters.  Most of the time the group just stands around smoking or chatting in small groups as the perpetrators are led through various locations, trying to ascertain clues that are more recognizable, trying to pinpoint an exact spot, as the suspects are vague in their recollections, which makes one wonder why they assembled such a large team when they didn’t even know where they were going.  The endless search builds to a slow monotony, broken only by moments of absurd humor.  

There is a running dialogue between the Prosecutor and the Doctor, a battle of modernist moral wills that plays out like existentialist banter, as each approaches their work quite differently, though both believe they utilize rational methods.  Being from the region, the Prosecutor seems more willing to accept without question many of the local habits and customs, where his understanding of the lay of the land helps him identify motives for criminal acts, as he believes he understands how people react when things go wrong, believing he is an excellent student of human behavior.  The Doctor on the other hand discounts much of the local lore while balancing the personal side of a physician’s treatment of a patient with the professional side of determining the forensics evidence in criminal cases, believing science explains itself rather than simply accepting the word of alleged criminals.  This gets into a Dostoevskian Crime and Punishment exposé where the Prosecutor sees no reason to doubt the word, once motive has been established, and finds the Doctor extremely cynical not to accept what amounts to rational explanations for human behavior.  All of this sounds like back and forth theoretical legalese, and to a large degree it is, not particularly involving with any of the characters, where instead the information revealed is used to update and advance the state of the case, where some of the particulars have an eerily incestuous feel to them, where family spats have spilled over into generational blood feuds, where few in the region are educated enough to change the continuing cycles of violence that are inflicted on each other. 

The most interesting aspect is the entire group takes shelter in a local village due to a coming storm, where the local mayor greets them and has his family serve food, where he updates everyone on the latest developments within his own family, proud of his two sons and their budding professional careers, also a daughter who has married into a good family, calling his remaining daughter still living at home an “afterthought.”  When she serves the tea, however, in the middle of a power outage, her angelic face is illuminated by candlelight, where each man is taken aback by her breathtaking beauty, including the suspects, where it seems such a waste for someone that beautiful to end up in such a distant, God forsaken place, where there is little hope her life will ever amount to anything.  But these thoughts and ruminations reflect the continuing frustrations this group faces throughout the night.  By daylight, however, they discover the body and the particulars of the crime are revealed.  Much of the local flavor is lost in the professional vernacular of documenting the case, a slow and meticulous process that is mostly read out loud which simply elongates the film well beyond the director’s ability to sustain the audience’s interest.  There are ambiguous tidbits added to the case, throwing doubt into whether or not they’ve actually captured the real murderer, or whether any of this will have any impact in the lives of the local citizens whose hopes disappear at such an early age.