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Sons need love from their fathers
A film about the impossible relations between a father and a son, with a second younger son in the background. The father is an alcoholic. He is violent and brutal. He educates his sons, always under the influence, with the most tyrannical hand he can manage in that state. He terrorizes his wife and he blocks his sons in defensive attitudes. The elder son will turn aggressive and paranoid. The younger son will remain aloof and protect his sanity by this distance. The mother will suffer and eventually die. The elder son reproduces his father's domineering attitude with his wife and daughter and gets into a divorce that he negociates wrongly, accepting everything from his wife not to appear like his father, but to appear like a good father. This leads to impossible relations with his daughter that reacts defensively at once, keeping her distance with this father of hers she probably loves, because she needs him, and hates because she cannot communicate with him. He tries to do good but imposes it so harshly at times that a treat at a restaurant becomes an ordeal. Then he has to take care of his widowed father and that makes him jump over the edge of the abyss. A hunting accident becomes for him the core of a plot against him and teh community, and he becomes Jesus Christ the justice maker in his village. He sees some speculation but misses the point, which is the development of a skiing resort in the village, promoting it into a rich community. He does not want any change : he wants his explosive self to keep the environment that produced that explosive nature of his, which is morbid. This leads to his justice trip, killing the cause of his paranoia, killing a presumed assassin that is no assassin at all, and disappearing in the limbos of anonimity with two deaths on his conscience. This film could have been a masterpiece if it had not been told from the point of view of the younger son, but from the point of view of the elder son, which means from these limbos of society where he has finally recovered some distanciation that could produce a perspective, a vista back over his life. In other words we only have a thriller and we never come to a human tragedy. <
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>Dr Jacques COULARDEAU <
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Affliction (1999)
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, James Coburn, William Dafoe, Jim True, Mary Beth Hurt.
Running Time: 114 minutes.
Rated R for language and mild child abuse.

Director Paul Schrader's account of the troubles that child abuse can bring to those afflicted much later in life--the everlasting affect that the criminality and brutality of the fear it can cause. "Affliction" is not an uplifting film and it tends to drag throughout, but it can at times be very powerful and depressing. Small-town New Hampshire constable Nick Nolte investigates an accidental shooting that he believes to be murder; meanwhile, his personal life deteriorates as he is haunted by a horrific childhood terrorized by a drunken, abusive father (played brilliantly by James Coburn, who would earn an Oscar for the role).

The story twists and turns between two themes, but mainly gets tangled and disjointed by the end of the film. Schrader does not seem confident in choosing to focus more on the murder conspiracy or the father-son relationship between Nolte and Coburn. While Coburn's performance was celebrated, Sissy Spacek is very good as Nolte's wife and William Dafoe is perfectly casted as the concerned, loving brother. The final result of "Affliction" is melodramatic, slightly bleak, and overall implausible; however, the excellent roles carry this motion picture from the gutter and heighten it as a moderately effective drama.

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Paul Schrader's stark masterwork.
"Affliction" is a rare peephole into the abyss of our weaknesses - then a downward spiral into desolation and fear, or, as one character puts it: "Man's seduction into revenge."

Paul Schrader, who wrote "Raging Bull" "Taxi Driver" and "The Mosquito Coast," works here from Russell Banks' novel. Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is a second-rate sheriff in wintry, upstate New Hampshire who doubles as a worker for a landscaping contractor (Holmes Osborne) to make ends meet. He lives in a trailer. He wears flannel sweatshirts and raggedy coats. He smokes marijuana, drinks incessantly. Wade's pushed by almost everyone, his mind is half-clogged by his ex-wife (Mary Beth Hurt), a distant, cold woman who took Wade's equally distant, cold daughter with her when they divorced.

Nolte, in the best work of his long career, has a chewed-up face, bad haircut, slouchy demeanor. But his presence looms larger in "Affliction" than it ever has before. His outbursts of anger are matched solely by his father, Glen (James Coburn). Through flashbacks Glen's character is fleshed out as less a man than a force of hatred, tainting all those around him.

Rarely has been a performance so wickedly effective. Coburn, who won the Academy Award for this role, snarls, growls, cackles; he's a derivative of evil, a man who's been allowed to rule by fear and intimidation, a man who, when his wife dies, is still taken in by the son who truly hates him.

Their toxic kinship is surrounded by a curious murder investigation that serves as a catalyst to Wade's descent. It seems a town bigshot (Sean McCann) accidentally shot himself with a rifle in a hunting accident. Wade thinks otherwise. Possibly it was a murder. There is some evidence to support it, though "Affliction is no whodunit. Wade perceives the murder as a chance to finally best his detractors; we know it will only sink him further.

By the end, all of Wade's problems sink into one, and they all lead to one place: dad's house.