Erik's thoughts on "Stoker"

      A Cinderella story where some day her Prince does come (with the necessary shoes and all), Stoker, the English-language debut from South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook, is a film about a young, recently father-less woman named India, confused and grief-stricken, teased and misunderstood. It's also, however, about conventional narrative made more; it gets to be the Princess at the ball, but only until midnight. Dressed up and executed as a Hollywood thriller in which a mysteriously evil other romances Mom and becomes a regular household fixture, Stoker, shot in Nashville, Tennessee with no sightings of The King, follows a familiar structure that is improved upon and complicated by its rigorous thematic details. Also strengthened by Park Chan-Wook's exquisite visual eye and playfully twisted look at female sexual maturation in the age of crude high school boys and high culture-wannabe family folk, the film is a clever gender studies delight with much to discuss.

     If the story of a woman blossoming into womanhood sounds routine, rest assured that the disturbing things turning India on sets her apart from other on-screen heroines, and yet she is not without empathy. Whether it be the thought of her Uncle playing piano alongside her, prompting her to lustfully cross her legs tightly, or the image of her uncle in the woods murdering a teenage rapist provoking her to masturbate and reach orgasm in the shower, India's sex drive revs up when recollecting dangerous scenarios involving both her unfortunate self and others. In many ways, her Uncle serves as a representation of the realm of the sexy unknown — while high school girls riding the school bus fawn over him in public, in private, India crushes the most. The two are linked in more ways than one. 

     Within a film tickled by visual and theoretical dualities, India and her Uncle share a sort of telepathic bond, one which incorporates an otherworldliness resemblance to the uncanny. As the Uncle's dark past is revealed, the viewer senses a peculiar familiarity between him and his niece; early on, we see India wave her arms and legs on her bed (as if in a Snow Angels position), a comforting motion shared by her uncle in a frightening expository flashback. When India is threatened by high school boys, Uncle, sensing danger, is never far behind (although India can sometimes fend for herself, i.e. a scene involving a pencil and the subsequent glorious closeup of bloody pencil shavings). And what to make of the funeral sequence in which India's Uncle appears to communicate with her through internal thought? The genes in this family breed crazy.

     The dualities can be found everywhere throughout the film, whether it be via various insects' fascination with India and her Uncle, or the playful sight gags provided by Park Chan-Wook's camera (a late in the film confrontation between India's mother and Uncle starts in one room with two front doors, one open, one closed; the Uncle strangely enters via the closed one). The editing also invites thematic similarities, often with visual transitions emulating punchlines. Some highlights include a stuffed bird's egg dissolving into an iris of India's eye, a vulture eating the innards of a dead carcass cut to India enjoying some ice cream in a decrepit basement, and a close-up of India's mother's hair being brushed as it morphs into flowing wheat fields central to the plot.

     An outcast who grows to become the master of her domain, India's interest in hunting for sport — the lasting connection between her and her father — will be a topic of discussion for many upon the film's conclusion. She protects those who need protection (her mother) and, by film's end, she even protects her own reputation (is that a Psycho gag involving the sheriff's oversized sunglasses peering down at India as if she were Marion Crane?). Although the film doesn't break new ground — its secrets are revealed too cleanly, spelling out more than it should feel obliged to — Stoker is always interesting in the way it presents itself, from the inventive opening credits to the empowered feminine closing moments. Here is a film about a family that was never tight knit, and maybe that was for the better.


Highly Recommended