Edmond | Review

Meditation on human psychosis is both laughable and chilling.

A ringing endorsement that there should be at least one state-provided shrink available for every twenty living adults, Stuart Gordon takes what is essentially a sparse uncharacteristic screenplay from one of the better American playwrights and creates a facile psychotic exhibition that manages to serve up chunks of chills and thrills of the “guilty pleasure” type. While the film’s protagonist remains a caricature and certain reflections and conclusions are far-fetched, William H. Macy beautifully masters the most righteous of ways to the path of self-destructiveness and best personifies the person in most need of a security blanket. While the commentary is weak and the script is one note, Macy chalks up another performance worth noting and Mamet goes off the deep end – surely fans will thank him for it.

After a look into the future reading that qualifies itself as the worst draw in the history of Tarot-card deals, how Macy’s character gets from point A to point zero follows somewhat of the same parameters as how Cruise’s character gets emotionally taken for a ride in Eyes Wide Shut. Manhood, sanity and sexuality are up for sale in this cityscape. In a land of temptation where everything is negotiable, Macy’s Edmond tries his earnest to find a comfort zone – a hard task when the playground is an urban jungle that eats the weak alive and when you happen to have the quality of being as humanely unsympathetic as possible. Edmond makes Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle look tame and Macy’s character is perhaps a less friendly bigot than the one De Niro played. This journey into the night is spooky, not because of its overuse of the word “spook” (like Bickle, this one is weighty on the racism), but because each encounter is charged in tension.

With short-lived appearances from a well-known grouping of names and faces in the film biz (some Mamet-regulars) the plague of the screenplay is the one too many confrontations that contribute to Edmond’s revolt and distaste for an unfair society. Such frequencies in similar scenes do not solidify the exploration of the character – instead it is citing one too many examples that needn’t be addressed. Recognizably Gordon’s adaptation still feels like the theatre piece on which this is based on – the play is probably a whole lot better than the screenplay. Gordon is a filmmaker who has dabbled mostly in the horror-genre, so he is capable of making a psycho who isn’t aware that he is one, into a butcher’s knife sequence that will stay with you long after the film’s end. The material is enough to make anyone cringe and that includes investors who balked at the idea for the making of the film for a good two decades prior to 2005.

The tangy moments aren’t necessarily found in how these characters are interacting, but in what is being said, and thus it comes across at times like an inventory of framed moments that even with a short runtime don’t supply the subtext with enough backbone. By no means does this rank among the staple works of Mamet’s catalogue, but the script’s final resting place, the numerous shooting locations and the jittery presentation of the key character helps create an overall sense of uneasiness. Mamet could have added further depth to this exploration of the incendiary world which can make the normal Joe turn into a psychopath, but just the curiosity of a Mamet-product and retaining the trademark Mamet-lingo should bring several onlookers to this crime scene.

Fantasia Film Festival 2006.

Rating 2.5 stars