ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Chris Messina

The Secrets We Keep: Digging Up the Past

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It’s one thing when your past comes back to haunt you. It’s another when you attempt to haunt it back.

Set in post-WWII America, The Secrets We Keep follows Maja (Noomi Rapace), a dedicated, suburban housewife and mother who seems to be living the American Dream. Things change, however, when she sees Thomas (Joel Kinneman), a man who she believes committed war crimes against her in the past. Angry and looking for revenge, she kidnaps him and ties him up in their basement. As Maja and her husband Lewis (Chris Messina) try to discern the truth about her story, they also must attempt to keep their nosy neighbours and the police at bay until they can decide what to do next.

Directed by Yuval Adler, The Secrets We Keep is a solid thriller that offers the right amount of questions to keep the mystery and intrigue going throughout. The first feature by screenwriter Alan Covington, Secrets is a strong debut that almost feels like a one-act play at times. Though the film moves around its location, the most effective scenes take place in Lewis and Maja’s basement as they attempt to uncover the truth regarding Thomas’ history. While Kinneman and Rapace are effective in their roles, the highlight of the film is Messina as he sifts through the stories of both leads and attempts to discern reality from fiction. Messina has a certain look about him that breathes sympathetic yet he also has the ability to unleash a seething rage when necessary. As the heavily-burdened husband, Lewis, Messina has the opportunity here to show his range as a man torn between his wife and a stranger. 

There’s an element of the feminine empowerment on display in The Secrets We Keep that makes the film feel relevant. Ashamed of her past, Maja has built a new life with a family that she loves. However, as her memories seem to become reality, she feels that she must deal with the man that she believes to have ruined her life. As Maja steps up to fight back against her alleged assaulter, she also fights for her husband to understand the deep pain that she has repressed for so long. (Interestingly, the film takes place in the Post-War Era, a time when everything was supposed to be viewed as a ‘golden age’, despite the fact that it was ignoring far deeper social issues.) In this way, Secrets shows a deep concern for the victims of past abuse and the need for them to speak their voice in an effort to reclaim the fullness of their lives. 

Further though, Secrets speaks as much about the need to forgive as it does about uncovering the truth. Obsessed with the pain of her past, Maja is convinced that Thomas is guilty and is willing to go to whatever lengths are necessary to get the confession that she so badly wants. To her, an admission of guilt from Thomas is a sign of validation, not only as affirmation of her story but also to prove it to her husband as well. 

Nevertheless, Lewis’ response is interesting here. While he believes his wife about the trauma of her past and remains supportive, he also recognizes that the road they’re taking now could destroy their future. In this way, Lewis sees Maja’s inability to forgive as a roadblock towards moving on with her life (and their life together as a family). On the surface, it could be argued that this is an attempt to placate the damage of his wife’s past but there remains an earnestness within Lewis that suggests otherwise. Though he exists at a time of toxic masculinity, Lewis truly cares for his wife and wants her to be free. (Even so, without giving spoilers, roles do continue to shift throughout the film.) For Lewis, forgiveness is not a means to forget but rather to release our hurt. In this way, Secrets is willing to ask the question of what it means to face the actions of the past and whether or not there is a space for grace for the future.

In the end, The Secrets We Keep is an entertaining and intense ride that keeps your interest and engages the audience. While Covington’s script starts quickly and builds momentum well, the most important questions lie with its relevance to the moment today.

The Secrets We Keep is now available on VOD.

She Dies Tomorrow: The Long Nights Journey into Death

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She Dies Tomorrow. 

Maybe. But she’s fairly certain that she will.

Written and directed by Amy Seimetz, She Dies Tomorrow introduces us to Amy (Kate Lyn Shell), a young woman who is convinced that her life will come to an end the next day. While she has no idea how or when it may take place, her belief in her oncoming death is so strong that she remains frozen within its grasp and virtually immobile on her living room floor. Worried about her safety, Amy’s friend, Jane (Jane Adams) rushes to her home to check on her. However, after listening to Amy’s anxieties, she soon begins to carry the same fears about her own life and she passes those along to others.

Poetic and visceral, Seimetz’s film is a cinematic ode to pain and suffering. While the film features fascinating performances, it’s Seimetz’s use of visuals that are most notable within the film. Filling her screen with a terrifying mixture of shadows and light, she purposefully crafts every moment within Tomorrow to make the viewer uncomfortable. Through her use of long takes, bleeding colours and alternating between awkward silence and classical music, Seimetz presents the viewer with a graphic representation of the filtered mind of someone who suffers from severe depression and anxiety. This is not a film that wants you to like it. 

It’s a film that wants you to feel it.

While she has no specific reason to suspect her own death, Amy lives in a constant state of self-loathing and fear. Having lost all hope, Amy fears the rise of a new day and what trauma it could potentially bring along with it. Hers is a life that has become entirely bereft of the underpinnings of optimism at the hands of chance and self-loathing. However, what’s most terrifying about Tomorrow may not be what happens to Amy but rather the affect she has on the world around her.

Though she never intends to pass her feeling onto others, her friends are soon reshaped by her pain. Moving like a virus (which seems appropriate in during a global pandemic), this loss of hope and fear of the future infects one person after another, eating away at their psyches and personal relationships. In many ways, the expediency of the anxiety points to the fragility of the human psyche, especially as it pertains to the concept of death and the unknown. For example, though her family lives seem stable, Jane’s suspicion of her own imminent demise causes their world to shatter as well. As they question their own mortality, their blissful ignorance is lost and celebrating a birthday becomes a pointless exercise.

As such, hope is a commodity easily lost in She Dies Tomorrow. Having placed their confidence solely in innocence, each character allows the creeping doubt of mystery to dissolve their faith in a future. As such, the film leaves more questions than answers regarding any form of joy that can be had in our lives, especially if death awaits us all around any corner. While this is undoubtedly a bleak perspective, Seimetz’s script is willing to simmer within it. Whereas some films argue for finding hope in relationships, romantic love or a belief in God, Tomorrow is looking for something tangible that it never truly finds. 

In Tomorrow, hope simply has no foundation upon which to take root.

Famed critic Roger Ebert once said before he died that ‘every movie needs to offer some sense of hope’. While it need not resolve all its issues or answer all its questions, he meant to suggest that hopefulness at some level was essential for the best scripts to land with the audience. At best, Seimetz offers the viewer the possibility of moving forward by allowing Amy to understand that ‘it’s okay not to be okay’. Having struggled with depression myself, I can attest to the fact that this is realization can be freeing to the human soul on many levels. Nevertheless, that small breath of air that the film offers remains very little and leaves the viewer with little to stand on.

Although credit must be given to Seimetz for bravely delving into the pain of depression, She Dies Tomorrow is an undoubtedly difficult film to watch. Beautiful and challenging, this is a film that requires a great deal of patience and courage to engage at the soul level. While pain is never an easy thing to watch, it is even more difficult to see it spread through others like a cancer, decimating all in its path. As such, whether or not She Dies Tomorrow is not the question that the film wants to ask. Instead, Tomorrow is most interested in looking for a reason to continue living.

She Dies Tomorrow premieres on VOD on August 7th, 2020.

Birds of Prey: Emancipation with an Edge

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‘Turns out I’m not the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation.’

–Harley Quinn, Birds of Prey

After the middling returns on Justice League, DC has broken away from their perceived Marvel-envy with a wide variety of films, ranging from the underwater epic Aquaman, teen-frenzied Shazam! and the dark and brooding Joker. With Birds of Prey, they continue the trend of well-written solo pieces that focus on character as opposed to forcing the next Avengers-type film. While cross-overs are inevitable (Quinn has already been confirmed for the James Gunn’s Suicide Squad film), the new approach has allowed each film in their canon to have their own flavour. Thankfully, Birds of Preycontinues the trend as a fun and free-wheeling burst of color and energy that breathes fire when it needs to and, more importantly, continues to breathe life into DC’s film slate.

Directed by Cathy Yan (Dead Pigs), Birds of Prey (or the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) reintroduces us to the unpredictable Harley Quinn. Finally free from her relationship with the Joker, Quinn suddenly finds that she has a target on her back and she’s forced to go on the run from narcissistic crime boss Roman Sionis (Ewan Macgregor), his right-hand man, Victor Zsasz (Chris Messina), and every other thug in the city. But things soon begin to even out for Harley when she finds herself an unexpected ally with three lethal women – Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez).

Wild and unruly, Birds of Prey earns it’s ‘R-rating’ (though surprisingly less extreme than it could have been) and plays with fractured story-telling and breaking the ‘fourth wall’. (In fact, the film has so much freedom that it begs the question as to whether or not DC has found their answer to Deadpool.) For her second time in the role, Robbie seems even more comfortable as affable anti-heroine, Harley Quinn, as she bounds through the film with playful enthusiasm. (Incidentally, newcomers Perez, Winstead and Smollet-Bell also prove to be solid female counters to craziness.) What’s more, Yan’s desire to bathe the screen in colour helps Birds of Prey become a visual treat. Told entirely from Quinn’s perspective, the film uses every brightly lit neon possibility from glitter bombs to a Madonna-throwback sequence in an effort to bring the chaos of her mind to life. As a result, the film becomes an erratic but playful venture that doesn’t always stick the landing with its humour but offers enough quality performances and entertainment to deem the film a success.

While the film follows Quinn on her quest for survival, the subtext of the film focuses on Quinn’s journey to spiritual freedom from the men in her life, especially the Joker (who remains unseen in the film). In a distinct shift from her debut in Suicide Squad, Birds shows off Harley’s intelligence rather than focusing on her physical beauty. All but forgotten in her first film, the character does have doctorate in psychology and Birds allows her to make use of it, without losing her wild side.

What’s more, after ‘emancipating’ herself from her relationship with Mr. J, Quinn sends a message to the city that she’s finally a free agent. The problem is, however, that this action emboldens the other men of Gotham’s criminal underworld who were afraid to hurt her for fear of Joker’s wrath. With this in mind, the film quickly becomes a metaphor for breaking free from the abusiveness of male-dominance in a culture that ignores the value and intelligence of women. Though men comment on the softness of her skin or her pretty face, few take her seriously as a threat on her own. (Incidentally, Quinn’s journey parallels that of the other women in the film as well, each seeking to free themselves from under the thumb of their male oppressors.) As a result, Harley’s journey becomes less about finding safety but more about finding herself, and empowering others to do the same.

Enthusiastic and rowdy, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) proves to be another successful entry into the suddenly energized DC canon of films. As the demented by intelligent Quinn, Robbie continues to create a character worth watching. Though the humour doesn’t always work, Birds of Prey is a visual treat with enough strong performances to suggest that his will become another viable franchise for the future. After all, if Quinn really isn’t ‘the only dame in Gotham looking for emancipation’, Robbie still has a lot of work to do.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is free to fly in theatres on Friday, February 7th, 2020.