The Living and the Dead

The Living and the Dead (2006)

This movie tells the story of the Brocklebank family. They live in an isolated family estate with the father Donald, his invalid wife Nancy, and their mentally disturbed son James. The family is in some sort of dire financial need, which requires Donald to go off and see some people. He calls his wife’s nurse to ask her to come and take care of Nancy, but when she arrives James won’t let her in. He wants to prove to them both that he can take care of her like a normal person. That same logic convinces him to stop taking his medication, which leads to hallucinations and all other sorts of issues. As James starts to lose touch with reality the story changes around him. His mother is suddenly healthy, well until he stabs her to death. Also I think that the timeline of the movie jumps around as well with a rather shabby Donald trying to escape from the nurses come to take him away. By the end the movie honestly had me totally confused.

This was a difficult movie for me to get through on several levels. First is that I really don’t like movies that play fast and loose with reality, which this movie starts to do about two thirds of the way thru. All of a sudden Nancy is healthy and trying to give her son his shots after she has already died on screen just really confused me. So he stabs and kills her because she is already dead, and then stabs his father. So was the first part of the movie, which I think was pretty good, all just a hallucination? If so why the big tease? This not only annoyed me, but really disappointed me as well. I say this because before this rather abrupt shift the movie is hands down the most disturbing and fascinating look at mental illness I’ve ever seen in a movie. The James character is brilliantly written and realistic to the point of being just a bit scary. The lines written for the character and how he reacts to the world around him spinning out of control just grabbed the audience. There is one scene with his mother soiling the bed and how he and she have to deal with it that made sick to my stomach. And that isn’t meant to say it was gross (it was) but the pain obvious from both of them was like a punch in the gut. As well as the character is written actor Leo Bill’s performance as James is every bit as good as any other I’ve seen in years.

If you can’t tell I really liked the first part of the movie, which made it all the more disappointing when the movie shifts gears and just tries to confuse the audience. Personally I think they really had something going for them and ruined it with an ending that I found completely unsatisfying.

Time to talk a bit about the technical bits and pieces. To being with the camera work in the Living and the Dead is nicely done. The shots were clearly carefully planed out and use the setting of the house to create some nifty visual tricks. There are many long shots of characters walking down a hall or up a set up stairs that follow them out of frame leaving us only to hear the echoing of their shoes on the floor. That and I love how the filmmakers used doorways and in one case a staircase to frame the characters in a shot. These sorts of visuals always get my attention. Now what I really didn’t like were some of the handheld stuff where they were chasing the characters thru the house. I also didn’t think much of the sped up sections of the movie that were trying to show us that James was hallucinating while off his medication. For me the actor was so good in the role they should have let him do it without the cheap visual tricks.

When reviewing a movie you have to review the whole thing and not just the parts that you liked. I think that I’ve made the point that for me the movie was really good to a point and then I didn’t’ like it much. So instead of getting a recommendation from me I’m going to have to say maybe a rental, but I can’t see buying it. If you are interested in checking this one out head to the Danger After Dark website at

http://www.tlareleasing.com/results/product_list.cfm?oid=1119&g=1263&from=1

for more information.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer