The Woodsman - A Review of sorts

Someone asked me about "The Woodsman," way back in December of 2006, in my then-unsuspended livejournal. Her question, and my answer, which is a review of the film, of sorts, follows:

Have you seen the movies The Woodsman with Kevin Bacon and/or Hard Candy? How did you respond to those movies? Do you think they reflected truth? Or merely echoed what it thought society wanted to see/hear?

I did not see "Hard Candy," as the marketing and other things I saw for it seemed to pander too strongly, if not entirely, to those elements of society, which James R. Kincaid has described in Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting as, in so many words, "the attraction-repulsion complex" of the mainstream viewer. This one seems as if it was made mainly and too-muchly for just the dollar, in which I am not interested.

I did watch "The Woodsman" in the autumn of 2005, though, and never got to making a journal entry about it at the time. So, what I would have said, then, more or less follows.

I thought the portrayal an accurate one, or accurate enough, in so far as what things are like for the child lover, pedophile, pedosexual, whatever. I see things rather uniquely though, of course, if you will forgive what might appear to be pretension on my part, so far as these sorts of things go.

One observation I'd like to make is in regard to the "beating scene," where Bacon beats the would-be child abductor to a pulp. I forgive the director and writer and producer their viewpoint, as they, probably, do not stand where I do, do not look out the same windows as I do, and even if they did, a film needs to earn money, and to do so needs to give the viewer what the viewer demands as redemption for their sin of the time and ticket purchase for such a film. That's all, in my estimation, this particular scene was: the viewer's redemption for any dark thoughts might've crossed their mind as they squirmed in their theater seats. It is couched, of course, as Bacon's revenge for his lot, as Bacon's self loathing and self-flagellation for his own sins.

This provides a seque to my only other observation upon the film, and what was to be the main point of my lj entry upon it way back then. Again, while one must forgive the filmmaker's wallet's needs, and who'd dare to say such a thing any old way, when the film closed and the credits rolled, my thought was only, "close, but no cigar." Not that one should be an apologist for the pedophile, but where I felt, from an oh so personal standpoint, was that the film, after having approached so closely something else (redemption scene aside) retreated in the final analysis, to the expected and typical, leaving at least a few viewers as empty as before they arrived.

"What are you saying?," you are likely asking. It's this. The film makers gave Bacon a lover, gave him a partner who could forgive him himself, and even a sister who might let him rebuild a relationship with her. However, they failed so solidly in something which may not have hurt them, or anyone else, something that may have cost the writer and director nothing but the creation of something more memorable than the film was, which as a result is "not very," in my estimation. There was nothing prevented those film makers from giving Bacon a lover with more promise.

Hot, to be sure, she was. But, as the scene with the bird-watching (was there some silly metaphoric cliche in that scene, too) girl demonstrated, Bacon had not changed for his years behind the bars, and the beating of the pedophile across the street certainly didn't change him, even if it convinced the film goer they were a-ok. He remained, in one of the closing scenes, where he's shown with his lover, the same girl-loving, girl child hair-scent-imagining pedophile he was when they closed the gate of the penitentiary, first years before, then months before, at his entry and exit. Nothing had changed at all, except that now he had a lover, perhaps a partner. Except, as perhaps only the discerning pedosexual might have noticed, she was just and only to be another typical lover of such a one as Bacon.

At first glance, she's plenty different. After all, she knows who Bacon is. That much is clear and confessed. However, equally clear (in the scenes of the two) is that if she does indeed love Bacon, hers is a love that is of the forgiving kind, rendered more from a point of pity, I think, than from any other place, or perhaps from the position of caregiver at best, but so, so, so far removed, in my estimation, from anyone he himself, or me for sure, might call a lover. That is, if she does love him, then she loves him in spite of who he is, or maybe even because of who he is, but decidedly not for who he is, for that would not be love, but rather, a sin.

Perhaps the worst kind of sin for a movie maker, I do not know.