Wednesday Review: The Gift

I've said in the past that I want to keep my Wednesday Reviews spoiler-free. However, this is one film for which I can't give my opinion without spoilers, because my opinion of the movie is so strongly influenced by the ending. The movie ends with Gordo (Joel Edgerton) sending Simon (Jason Bateman) a video showing that Gordo may or may not have raped Robyn (Rebecca Hall), Simon's wife.

I, and a number of the other opinions I've read, interpret his dialogue to more strongly imply that he didn't rape her, but wanted Simon to think that he did. He stood to gain nothing from actually going through with the act. That really isn't enough to save the movie on a moral level to me, though. The primary concern that the ending shows is the questionable paternity of Robyn's child. The fact that she may have been raped seems to be treated as secondary.

I have to bring this up, because if I leave out this issue all I have left to say about the movie is positive. For the most part, it's well acted, directed, and written and that it has some really good scares. It also manages to avoid many of the typical cliches of stalker movies, with the movie never descending into a home invasion thriller. Gordo's primary goal is to make Simon suffer, not to come at him with a baseball bat. At one point his tactic of coming to their home and leaving them gifts is described as “reverse burglary.”

This movie seems determined to break through one cultural lie we all tell ourselves: Nothing in High School matters. It's something I hear a lot, but the truth is that those formative years have real lasting consequences that reverberate through the rest of our lives. Bateman's performance is fabulous, actually reminding me of many bullies I've known, who constantly find ways to blame their victims. Edgerton kills it as a man who clearly can't let the past rest.

When Gordo approaches the couple Simon shows obvious signs of resentment towards him, but tries to cover them up as if he has nothing to hide. Robyn, on the other hand, sees Gordo as a socially awkward guy who just wants to be friends, and is quite open to him. The tension between the two becomes more and more overt, and we spend much of the film with Robyn as our protagonist trying to discover what her husband did that hurt this man so deeply. Had we stuck with her perspective at the end, and shown her as caught in a conflict between two equally horrible people, it might have been less appalling.

For a thriller the movie has a very slow pace, without much action. The primary driving forces are psychological. There's exactly two scenes of physical violence in the film, only one of which is between two main characters, and that scene is both short and extensively built up.

I recommend this movie if you think you can morally tolerate the film I just described. It reminds me of The Birth of a Nation, presenting us with a high-quality film that tells a story that I really don't care to hear. The values are like something out of the Bronze Age, and it amazes me that Cape Fear dealt with a similar story in a more progressive manner in 1962, at least having the decency to show that defiling a man's family for revenge is something that only an utterly irredeemable sociopath would do.