Review: Stoker (2013)
Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode
Director: Park Chan-Wook
Country: USA | UK
Genre: Drama | Mystery | Thriller
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Note: For an alternate take on Stoker, see Mel’s review
Stoker is a shiny, sparkling gem of cross-cultural kink-horror, made in America and starring big-named English-speaking actors, but blessed with the unmistakable brazen oddity of modern Korean master Park Chan-Wook. Park makes his English-language debut with this film, which is at once an acute, tender character study and the most twisted family drama to grace screens in years. You will never see the concept of “family ties” represented in quite the same way that Park presents it here, which is probably a good thing in the long run. But for the 99 minutes that Stoker flickers on the screen, it’s a sour dose of family anti-values that goes down positively sweet.
Most interesting about Stoker is how Park is only willing to acclimate to American studio filmmaking to the point of his choosing. Spoken language is not the chief stumbling block when foreign filmmakers merge their auteurist tendencies with American norms; rather, style and tone are the elements that can get lost in translation. Park, who gave us brooding, wistful vengeance in Oldboy, strains of familial desperation in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and visceral immersion into the supernatural in Thirst, wraps all his cinematic obsessions into a giddy synthesis in Stoker, trusting that the audience will go along for the rough ride. It’s an act of cinematic defiance that underscores just how to translate foreign style to domestic expectations: barely change a thing, and let intelligent audiences bask in the experience.
You will never see the concept of “family ties” represented in quite the same way that Park presents it here, which is probably a good thing in the long run. But for the 99 minutes that Stoker flickers on the screen, it’s a sour dose of family anti-values that goes down positively sweet.
We enter the story at a dreary funeral. Evelyn Stoker (Nicole Kidman) masks the tears streaming down her face with the black veil descending from the rim of her hat. She is mourning the loss of her husband Richard (Dermot Mulroney), who died under mysterious circumstances and is suspected of suicide. Next to Evelyn sits her daughter India (Mia Wasikowska), brooding, despondent. Out of the corner of her eye India spots a man in the distance, standing behind a tree. Sporting a crisp suit and icy cool sunglasses, the man appears to be focusing not on the funeral, but on India. They stare into one another’s eyes, sharing some sort of psychic link.
Soon after, we learn that the man is Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), Richard’s brother. India never knew he existed, yet here he is in the wake of her father’s death, intending to stay with India and Evelyn for indeterminate length to… “help out”, or essentially to fill his brother’s shoes. Charlie is so cool it’s creepy, and he doesn’t even try to tone it down. He’s smooth, well dressed, and charming, though he has no problem extending his charming glare to the point where it’s supremely uncomfortable. For India, a downcast teen who is bullied at high school and ignored at home, this guy is a conflicting presence. While her mother practically swoons in Charlie’s presence, India sees right through him; he’s clearly hiding something, maybe something dangerous. And yet something draws her to him, an indefinable force that draws them together. Sure, they are family, but it’s something deeper…
Such a willfully deviant mess of themes and emotions could only be herded by a filmmaker as daring as Park, who is at his best when he takes characters most would consider aberrant and turns them into dark angels of justice.
This binding force becomes the spice of Stoker’s bountiful subtextual feast. In a skewed psychosexual dance, India and Charlie circle one another. Their bond is so brashly suggestive that one may be tempted to assume it’s incestuous, though it actually never goes there. The meat of the feast is India herself, quiet, contemplative, entirely misunderstood, but not even close to a wallflower. She burns with suppressed rage and veiled desire. She can hear things others cannot… she can feel things that others gloss over. This sixth sense… this super sense… turns India into some sort of twisted superhero, driven by familial vengeance as most superheroes are, although she is also curious, compelled by danger, and willing to walk the fine line between heroism and villainy. It’s Wasikowska’s most layered and complex performance to date, as she seamlessly blends the frustrations of lost youth with the pain of a fatherless daughter and the surging hormones of sexualization.
Such a willfully deviant mess of themes and emotions could only be herded by a filmmaker as daring as Park, who is at his best when he takes characters most would consider aberrant and turns them into dark angels of justice. In Stoker, he fuses a subversive sound design with poetic imagery in positively Malickian ways, although Park alternates his energy from thematic pondering to blunt-force gothic archness with surprising dexterity. It is as nimble a directorial achievement as we’ve seen from Park, who revels in the richness of the story’s psychosis and deepens its themes with the depth of his shots and the tilt of his frames. Stoker is just like its maker: an artful wink, deep but playful, seeking to morph conventional themes to fit its own twisted desires.
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