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By
WAYNE KLEIN
The title of David Koepp's film and Stephen King's novella acts as an apt metaphor for the main character's emotional struggles and the psychological terror visited upon him and his ex-wife. Johnny Depp plays Mort Rainey a famous mystery and horror writer who suffers from writer's block in the aftermath of a nasty separation from his wife Amy (Maria Bello). Koepp's deft but somewhat predictable thriller catches your attention immediately when John Shooter (John Turturro) shows up on Rainey's doorstep accusing the writer of plagiarism. Normally Rainey would write him off as another obsessed, wacko fan (remember the root of the word fan is, after all, fanatic) but he did steal another writer's work at the beginning of his career. All of this would be easily handled by Rainey's friend Security Expert and former Police Officer Ken Karsch (Charles S. Dutton) but Shooter plans on taking out revenge on Rainey, his ex-wife and all those Rainey knows if the author doesn't rewrite the story "Secret Window" with Shooter's name on it and the ending "fixed up."
Depp gives a nicely detailed, powerful performance as Rainey. Although Maria Bello role isn't as showy, she also gives a nicely nuanced performance as Rainey's estranged wife. Hutton and Dutton aren't quite given as much to work with but manage to etch memorable characters from their supporting roles. Hutton's Ted begins as something of a villain but we soon gain a sense of sympathy for the man that Amy has an affair with. Koepp best known for his scripts ("Jurassic Park," "Spiderman," "Panic Room" and as writer/director "Stir of Echoes, "The Trigger Effect") works best with the material when he focuses on the psychological terror of the film and the anguish felt by Rainey, Amy and even Ted (Hutton). Koepp uses a number of nice techniques to provide additional visual detail beyond the narrative that tells us about the characters psychological states and reveals what is truly happening in the story.
The high definition transfer gives additional depth and a sense of space to even the darkest sequences. The color reproduction and sharp image quality make "Secret Window" one of the nicest transfers I've seen this year. With its extreme lighting conditions and the use of various filters to highlight the characters emotional states, "Secret Window" was, no doubt, a challenge to do such a great looking transfer of for DVD. The subtle use of sound throughout the picture translates well to the 5.1 format. We have little details sneaking out of each speaker gradually drawing you into Rainey's darkening world. Philip Glass' evocative score benefits the most from the beautifully detailed sound transfer with startling clarity to the sound.
Unlike lots of films, the featurettes actually amount to something. The three behind-the-scenes featurettes reveal almost as much about the production techniques used to make the film effective as the commentary track. What's nice is that a lot of the comments in the featurettes focus on different areas of the film than most of the commentary track making them complimentary. "A Look Through" is both the most general and informative of the three featurettes. Great care also has been taken to make the featurettes informative with comments from the director, actors and costume designers about how they used their crafts to communicate the gist of the story.
"From Book to Film" discusses the unique challenges of adapting a story from one medium to another. Koepp points out some of the compromises and changes that he had to make from King's story to make it effective on screen. Unlike a lot of self serving comments from film directors, Koepp's experience as a writer demonstrates that his instincts about the changes are on target.
"Secrets Revealed" focuses on the challenging optical effects that allowed the smooth, gliding camera moves and optical effects depicting the psychological state of the main character. The roving camera is reminiscent of David Fincher's work in "Panic Room" (which Koepp wrote and co-produced) but its purpose tied into what's occurring in both the character's lives and the story. We also get a glimpse of the animatics used to help pre-visualize the difficult camera moves. The best part of "Secrets Revealed" is seeing Depp interact with himself in the voice of other actors. There's a scene involving a dialogue with himself (you'd have to see the sequence to understand) where he banters back and forth imitating Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, Roman Polanski and others. Luckily, these very funny, odd moments were changed during the looping of the film (where dialogue is re-recorded for a scene after the shoot). Otherwise, audiences would have fallen out of their seats laughing.
Koepp's comments provide insight into the thinking process from writing the script, directing a scene to changing a scene in postproduction. It's clear that Koepp carefully thought out all elements of the script. He also makes it clear how much of a collaborative process the film became once production began.
A riveting psychological horror film, "Secret Window" may become a tad predictable at points but that's really due to more to the jaded films produced by Hollywood more than anything else. Koepp's tight direction and nicely tailored script fits the material's themes into a fascinating thriller. While certain elements are predictable, Koepp keeps much of the material fresh by using unusual visual techniques. Depp and the entire cast give great performances that help keep the story fresh and suspenseful. |
