DVD REVIEW: The Killer Inside Me (2010)

HELL RIDE

It's hard to find a justification for rabid misogyny and graphic objectification of women, even in the cause of telling a good story. Notwithstanding his artistic genius (never in question for even a moment), one has always wondered why Hitchcock humiliated and/or murdered beautiful blondes in film after film -- beyond the possibility of the filmmaker being intimidated by them -- whatever his rational justification may have been. Perhaps it was retribution of sorts, for their sinful divinity, their unattainability. Lars Von Trier does the same, with even greater viciousness. He batters women in his cinema into submission and makes them grovel at the feet of male characters with shocking consistency. His last, Antichrist, featured a close-up shot of female genital mutilation, and assorted other horrific sequences depicting sexual violence. 

Now it's the turn of British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom to derive vicarious visceral pleasure (and share it with the male section of his audience) from the humiliating and horrific bludgeoning of pretty women on screen -- not imaginatively edited for impact, but shot blow by blow in brightly lit suburban homes. Inspired by a 1952 pulp fiction novel by Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me is clinically efficient in presenting the descent into madness of a cold-blooded murderer with an angelic, boyish face. And a deputy sheriff in a Texas town called Central City, to boot. He's Norman Bates updated -- the film is set around the same time that Hitchcock's Psycho was made. Lots of soulful R&B music then, accompanying Lou Ford (Casey Affleck, chillingly convincing) as he drives around in his car nonchalantly. His face rarely betrays any emotion, yet, the sheer impassiveness makes him intimidating. 

"The problem with growing up in a small town is, everyone thinks they know who you are," Lou's voice over tells us, a little cockily, you think, because nobody actually knows him, although there are a few perceptive souls who come close. He narrates his own story, and we're party to his confession. Like he is leading us along the trail of senseless violence and dead bodies he leaves in his wake and by watching him doing it and getting away with it, we're guilty too. Of course, the title will have you believe that Lou has a killer inside him he doesn't know, nor can control. Likewise, he apologises and/or makes love to his female victims (in a roughshod manner that's exceedingly disturbing to watch) before he pulverises them mercilessly, leaving their faces smashed out of recognition. 

Like all screen psychopaths, there's a back story about an abusive father, a dead older brother etc. Lou lives in a beautiful, spanking clean house lined with bookshelves and a pretty piano that he often plays with feeling. His neatly gelled hair isn't out of place for even a moment; he agonises over his stiff ironed clothes, speaks with impeccable politeness, and appears strangely untouched by his own actions, when confronted by the law, or even a victim back from the dead.

On his first meeting with a prostitute, Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), whom he's been dispatched to drive out of town, she hits him, he hits back, they make rough love, he whips her bottom with his belt, she moans and says, "Don't say you're sorry." He repeats the procedure with his fiancée Amy (Kate Hudson), whose back is marked by Lou's blows and she appears to have enjoyed the beating. What does this say about the two women? That they're madly in love with a man who thrashes them routinely? That they enjoy this degrading, tortuous sex? And what does it say about the filmmaker, who, in scene after scene, portrays it matter-of-factly? As though his only business is to let the protagonist narrate his story as honestly as possible, and facilitate the telling with his objective, unflinching camera? 

There will always directors who find ingenious ways of justifying extreme violence on film. You only need to watch Oliver Stone speaking of Natural Born Killers -- "I never approached NBK with the idea it was real. It was cartoony violence to me, over the top." Von Trier will tell you Antichrist was born of his worst depression ever. Hitchcock said, "Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprint." 

The problem with such films made by highly skilled craftsmen, is their misplaced sense of honesty to art, often at the cost of titillating an audience not necessarily equipped to process the horrors unfolding on screen.