So this one’s going to be a little different in terms of why I picked this movie to write about. I mean, I thought it was awesome when it came out, and the trailer for this movie was spectacular. But it has another little separate thing that’s very interesting to me. So this movie comes out in August of 2000, which, if I’m doing the math in my head, I think I am still working at the comic book store. Which also means that I’m working for either $5 cash or $5 store credit. Which ideally is not really that much, but I was also going to college, so the timing of it makes sense in my head. But after seeing this movie and seeing the fashion/props, this was the first time I had seen a movie where I was like, “I want something from this movie.”Which is kinda crazy considering I’ve seen and loved Aliens. I love Alien. All movies that have insanely cool props. And also, this is 2000, when maybe some of that stuff wasn’t insanely overpriced like it is now. But let’s just say I happen to be following on eBay an auction of someone, maybe even the designer of the film, selling off a bunch of stuff from this movie. And sure enough, Jennifer Lopez wears this insanely cool, I assume, metal headpiece in one of the scenes. She also wears this insane red dress with black spider webbing all over it, but I’ll get to that in a second. This headpiece is listed on eBay.And the opening bid is $5. So, of course, I’m like, I am getting this headpiece. But essentially, anything over $100 is way out of my price range. But for seven days, I’m bidding back and forth, trying to make sure that I’m winning this item. And would you believe, in the very last minute, I remember watching it clear as day. It hits $325. And I lose it. To this day, it’s my biggest eBay regret. To this day, I always look to see if someone else will sell it. Who knows where this piece is? But one day, I will find it, and I will own it. I also should mention that the red dress with the black spider webbing also sold for like $350.So the entire outfit I could have had for under $1,000.Whereas now I probably would have had to spend $5,000 on them. But anyway, I absolutely adored this film. Love it, and I don’t know why people don’t talk a lot about it. I also want to add that the director of this film is probably my favorite director of all time, just because of what he’s able to do on screen. And because of that, these next three articles will be my three favorite films that he has done. But let’s get into this one. Sorry for the long-winded intro.
Here is the setup. Catherine Deane, played by Jennifer Lopez, is a child psychologist working with an experimental technology that literally allows her to enter the mind of a comatose patient. She uses this to try to reach a boy who has been unresponsive for years. The FBI has been hunting a serial killer named Carl Rudolph Stargher (always 3), played by Vincent D’Onofrio, who kidnaps women, drowns them in a specially designed glass tank, and then bleaches their bodies to turn them into what look like porcelain dolls. Just as the FBI closes in on him, he has a massive neurological seizure and falls into an irreversible coma. His latest victim is already locked in a flooded tank somewhere, and they have maybe forty hours before she drowns. Nobody knows where she is. So FBI agent Peter Novak, played by Vince Vaughn, convinces the team to let Catherine go inside Stargher’s mind to find the location. And the moment she crosses into his subconscious is the moment this film becomes something else entirely. And probably why this director is easily number one in my book. I will not describe what is in there, so you’re just going to have to trust me and watch this one. I won’t spoil anything.
Now the cast. Jennifer Lopez is Catherine Deane, and I want to say something about her performance that I think gets lost in how people talk about this movie. She is really good in this. There are some scenes in this film where it is actually kind of terrifying, and she does an amazing job of acting in this. This was 2000, she was at the height of her pop star fame, and this is essentially the first movie she made after her debut album. That is a bold choice, and it paid off. She also does The Wedding Planner after this, which I know is kind of what’s considered her big push to stardom, but honestly, I think this is the best she acts in any movie. Vince Vaughn is Peter Novak, and it is worth noting that he was deliberately trying to break out of the comedic box he had been put in at that point. This is the same instinct that made him take the Psycho remake two years before. Which he kinda goes on hiatus for two years, I think, because of all the bad press he gets. But I think this script was just too damn good for him to pass on, so hence he has been playing the serious role again. And of course it’d be rude of me to not mention that in 1996, he was in Swingers and is probably the coolest cat ever on screen. That movie I’ve seen way too many times, and I love it, and it’s a classic, but it’s a classic that everyone’s seen, so maybe not article-worthy for my book. Also, a super underrated gem with him is Brawl in Cell Block 99 by Craig Zahler. There he is, the most insane psycho I’ve ever seen in a movie, with the most calm-looking face you could ever imagine. Which honestly reminds me of how he played Norman Bates in the Psycho remake. Full circle. And then there is Vincent D’Onofrio as Stargher, and this is an all-time performance. He plays the comatose killer across multiple versions of himself inside the dream world, including a scared god version, a traumatized child, and a broken adult man, and he makes all three of them feel real and connected. We all know that this guy has insane acting chops. But for the 107 minutes of this film, I know he’s not in all of them, but he is working every muscle he has. His wife reportedly refused to sleep in the same bed with him for two weeks after seeing the movie. I’m going to mention a bunch of films that he’s in, but the first thing I wanted to call out is this guy’s never won an award? How insane is that? Not a single Emmy? But let’s name a bunch. Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, Gar in Salute of the Jugger, and Edgar in Men in Black, to name some films. And on TV, he is Detective Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, I think the best one, and Kingpin in Daredevil. The guy is the best. I know people always like to say Gary Oldman is amazing. I honestly think D’Onofrio is right there with him. How about Dylan Baker being in there in a solid supporting role? Total recognizable face. Dean Norris shows up before he is Hank Schrader on Breaking Bad. And Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who you may know from Secrets and Lies, the Mike Leigh masterpiece that got her an Oscar nomination, plays one of the research scientists. Solid cast all the way through. And I am skipping Jake Weber and Pruitt Taylor Vince. Solid.
Now, the crew, and this is where I want to spend some real time. The director is Tarsem Singh, and this is his first feature film. Before this, he had been making commercials and music videos, and if you know one thing about his video work, it is probably REM’s Losing My Religion, which is just insane. I read that he came into this project with a very specific and very strange vision, and he fought for every inch of it. He said he wanted to go into the mind and play it like an opera, like theater. And he did. The production design draws from Damien Hirst, HR Giger, the Brothers Quay, Odd Nerdrum, Hieronymus Bosch, Nine Inch Nails music videos, and Marilyn Manson music videos. I honestly had to look up all of the inspiration for this movie, and this is the list. It’s crazy. It is a fever dream assembled, and it looks like nothing else. Tarsem also insisted on filming the opening sequence in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia, when the studio kept asking him why he could not just find an American desert. He said he knew exactly what that place looked like, and it was a different planet altogether, and he was right. This guy’s eye for what he wants is just right on cue. The costume designer is Eiko Ishioka, a Japanese designer who had already won an Oscar for her work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992. She was recruited specifically because of those costumes. The red dress with the black spider web on it is still the coolest image in my eyes to this day. She added a lot of the visuals to this that kinda get lost in movies, but when you have a director who is all about the visuals, you have to have a partner who gets his vision, and she totally did. He loved her work so much that he worked exclusively with her for the rest of his career until she passed away in 2012. The screenplay is by Mark Protosevich, which is his first produced script. He later wrote I Am Legend and did work on Oldboy. And the music is by Howard Shore. Yes, Lord of the Rings Howard Shore. Cronenberg’s regular composer Howard Shore. I recall having the soundtrack, and it would definitely be background music for me. Just music I’d listen to in the background for ambience. Just absolute awesome crew.
And now, like always, my favorite part: the quotes. And although this film doesn’t have a lot of super memorable ones, there are some really solid ones.
“My World, My Rules” – Catherine
“And what world do you live in?” – Carl
“Thank you for the horse” – Catherine
“Can you get me out of this fucking suit!” – Peter
Look, I think in 2000, not a lot of people knew what they were watching. So most of the reviews weren’t actually really great for this film. I do recall Roger Ebert gave it four stars and put it on his top ten list of the year. He called Tarsem a visual virtuoso. He was right. The movie made over 100 million dollars on a 33 million dollar budget, so I would say that’s a pretty solid directorial debut. This is a weird one. It’s on Amazon Prime for $6, which is out of my normal range, but I assure you it’s well worth $ 6. Think of it like a cheap entrance to a modern art museum, which I’m sure has got to be more than six bucks. Just be prepared. It is weird. It is dark. It is sometimes difficult to watch. But it is completely and utterly unique. And in a world where everything looks like everything else, that is worth something.
Fun Facts:
- The costume designer Eiko Ishioka told Jennifer Lopez that her costumes needed to feel uncomfortable because Catherine is a woman who is internally tortured. Lopez wanted them to be comfortable. Ishioka won. And every single frame Lopez is in those costumes, you can see exactly why Ishioka was right. The discomfort is in the performance. That red and black spiderweb dress you’ll see.
- Vincent D’Onofrio passed out during the filming of one of Stargher’s most extreme scenes. He was so deep in the character physically and emotionally that he simply blacked out on set. They called someone in, and he was fine. He got back up and finished the scene. That is an absolutely insane commitment to a role, and if you watch his performance knowing that, it adds another layer to how unsettling it already is. Reminds me of when he goes crazy as Kingpin in Daredevil.
- Tarsem Singh was classmates with Michael Bay and Zack Snyder at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Three completely different filmmakers. Three completely different visual languages. But they all came up together and all went on to make some of the most visually distinctive work in mainstream American cinema over the next twenty-five years. Whatever they were teaching there was working.
- I have to add these two images and cry about losing the headpiece again.
