Holy Smoke

I should just come out and say this first: I seem to be drawn almost exclusively to flawed movies, and my opinions on them are based not on somebody else's standard of filmmaking, but on whether or not a work provokes me, informs me, delights me. All very personal stuff -- made even more eccentric by the fact that I'm much more interested in art that is quirky than art that approaches perfection. It is as if the more perfect and formed a thing is, the less soul I find in it.

All of which should give some indication why I enjoyed watching the marvelously muddled 2000 Kate Winslet/Harvey Keitel piece Holy Smoke. Janet and I rented it and watched it last night -- five years after it made headlines in the British press, which was all a-twitter about Winslet's non-buff body. In the media, the storyline about Holy Smoke seemed to be Winslet's career path -- avoiding the superstar route in the wake of Titanic and choosing to act in challenging material.

The short version:  Aussie girl goes to India, joins an ashram, is brought home by parents who send her off into the Outback to be deprogrammed by an American cult expert.  A battle of head games ensues.

Here's the thing: Holy Smoke is a story about spirituality, power and free will. Other reviewers have talked about the erotic themes -- it's a disturbingly sexy movie -- but I didn't walk away from the experience thinking that director Jane Campion made it because she wanted to explore eroticism per se. Rather, Winslet's erotic power is her counterbalance to the powers that oppose her. As a spiritual movie, Holy Smoke doesn't offer any easy answers or obvious parallels. It speaks obliquely, in symbols and gestures.

I can understand why others would hate it -- the storytelling in the final third of the movie is distinctly non-Hollywood. Our screenwriters and directors seem to intuit the auidence's need for a telegraphed punch with a big wind-up and delivery: Here comes the point! But Holy Smoke gets weird, on purpose, and leaves you to take meaning from the emotional destruction of Keitel's character and Winslet's response.

To me, the ending was beautiful, an allegory for what spiritual experience often does to us  -- it lays us low, strips us bare, removes all our comfortable props. The film is also admirable because both of the characters have an arc. Each one arrives at a unique new realization in a fashion that is both independent and causally connected. Keitel must be humbled. Winslet must learn compassion and love.

We each come to God, or spirit, with our own needs. It's kind of like watching a movie in that way -- what I see is not what you see. Which is why we need more art, not more of the same.

Comments

[Mark Forman]

Wow-I'm totally on the hook. Can't wait to see this. Excellent review.

[jmsloop]

I saw this film in the theaters when it came out, mainly because I'm a huge Jane Campion fan. My memory isn't fresh on my reactions, but I know they were two fold. First, I thought the dominant story on Winslett was a reasonable one. Until I saw her in this role, I don't think I respected her, but she deserves it. And it's not just that it's a gutsy film choice or that her character was a LONG ways from Rose, it's more that she was just so damned deliciously believable in this role.

Secondly, and more importantly for me, as a person who was once a youth inclined to run off to an ashram himself, I was thrilled to see a film that partially deconstructed the notion of "deprogramming." So, yes, Dan, this one gets a thumbs up from me as well.