Flesh and Bone

Flesh And Bone is not the glamorous pair up you'd expect from a matrimonial Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. It's a dark, grim and menacing tale of corrupted innocence, evil deeds and the sour fate that brings them full circle. Quaid plays Arlis Sweeney, a small time vending machine dealer with a dark past. His usual charm and appeal is gone here, a stormy, traumatized sheet on his face instead of that usual mile wide smile. Arlis harbors a troubling secret: He watched his no good criminal daddy murder an entire family when he was but a youngster, leaving him a haunted soul. His path crosses with rowdy, promiscuous Kay Davies (Meg Ryan) a girl with mysterious secrets of her own which eerily relate to Arlis's own past. When demon daddy re-enters his life, there's a thunderclap of portentous dread that mounts on the horizon like the ashen clouds of southern Texas where the film was shot. His name is Roy Sweeney, and he's played by a cackling James Caan, slithering into the skin of a character so unredeemable and nasty that we feel the slime emanating from the screen. He's a guy that danger follows around like a curse, and for better or for worse, Arlis must reconcile his own twisted mind and bring the legacy of bloodshed to a halt. Tagging along with Roy is a skanky and very young Gwyneth Paltrow, basically walking collateral damage. It's a heavy thriller with few breaks for breathing room, but it rolls with the violent, south western pulp we've come to love from artists like Cormac McCarthy and the like, adding it's own moody, laconic pace that heightens to unbearable tension with little notice and less flair, making it hit you all the harder. Supporting turns weigh in from Christopher Rydell, Barbara Alyn Woods, John Hawkes and character actor Scott Wilson as Arlis's dodgy business partner. Great stuff if you can shake the doom and gloom off after and hold onto the stark beauty and tragedy that it's laced with.

I've been thankful for many things during the strange journey that has been my life. Among them was that I had never seen nor heard of Gwyneth Paltrow before seeing Steven Kloves' unsung, too-often trashed work, Flesh and Bone. Although this film has been deemed unwatchable by some; primarily, I suspect, by those who simply cannot deal with Meg Ryan in any form, Flesh and Bone is entirely watchable and often engrossing.

I stumbled onto it by accident one afternoon, when the film I had paid to see suffered a projector crash, leaving me to wander the nearly empty multiplex at my leisure. Flesh and Bone, said the sign over the door. Hmm. supernatural thriller with voodoo elements? Well, not really, although the scene that greeted me as I entered: a very scary-looking James Caan, with shotgun, skulking through a shadowy interior, made me think my initial assessment had been close (I had entered its theater a few minutes after the film had started.) Just a few more minutes passed before I realized that I was in the presence of something, at the least, unusual. First, considerable time elapsed without Dennis Quaid flashing his '55 DeSoto grille grin even once. In fact, he was scowling like all getout. Meg Ryan barely smiled either and it was well into the film before she first flipped her hair (while talking about pickles). Very strange. Being something of a sucker for films that cast against type, I was getting pulled in. But WHO was the spooky chick who kept walking in and out of various scenes, shoplifting something in almost each case?

That was Gwyneth, of course. If she had played the role of the deeply alienated Ginnie later in her career, she certainly could have pulled it off, but the mystery of her character, the thing that made you try to imagine the circumstances that had created such a creature, would never have manifested. It just would have been Gwynnie playing Ginnie. I'll be honest, I've remained immune to the whole Gwyneth thing. To me, she's something like Gouda cheese; certainly edible, but best if you're in the mood for a snack with somewhat more aroma than flavor. I admit that I've always dug her Mom, Blythe Danner, among the most delicately fair of all cinematic flowers. But I loved Gwyneth Paltrow in this film, still do, and always will. I don't think she stole the show, as some seem to, but her perfectly-played Ginnie was absolutely essential to it.

The rather default brutality that lurks in Flesh and Bone could seem artificial, but against the historical backdrop of Texas, where it is set, the film's slant makes sense. Texas history has been drenched in blood and tragedy from the start; Cabeza De Vaca, the lonely, ignominous demise of the LaSalle expedition, which foundered and was swallowed up on its Gulf Coast in an attempt to navigate the Mississippi northward, conflict with Spain and Mexico, the Comanche terror, the slaughter of its vast buffalo herds, its rape by oil and cattle culture, Texas politicians (just hitting a few high spots). Merely passing through the state can give one the sense that a loose black hole is about, not a massive one, but big enough.

Flesh and Bone is a promenade of the gravitationally doomed. Everyone in the film seems to be drifting toward the event horizon of an unseen singularity, just beginning to be stretched out of shape. Closest to oblivion is James Caan's chilling Roy Sweeney, a character in the mold of Christopher Walken's very bad dad in At Close Range but chicken-fried to the brink of carbonization; a man for whom conscience is no longer even a concept. Plunging close behind is his son Arliss (Quaid), someone who, after matriculating under his father's brutal tutelage, has become an exile to his own life. His flickering soul is not quite dead yet, but give it time. Meg Ryan's Kay Davies, the unknowing survivor, as an infant, of the film's opening horror, is a type of gently tragic heroine one can see anywhere, but most often in the South, the most culturally monolithic and unforgiving region of an unforgiving America. (Texas is the West but also, most certainly, the South.) Free-form and fundamentally cheerful personalities like Kay's may not always fare well there, unless legitimized by kids and a ring; something her character is beginning to understand as she pops, drunk, out of a paper cake at a roadhouse hoo-rah. Paltrow's Ginnie is possibly the most recent gravitational captive, but she has entered the plunge with cryogenic conviction, forming a binary dark star with Caan's character.

I liked this little film enough to collect it and have never regretted it. There is real psychological texture, a noiresque sense of doom, convincing intimacy set against a vast West Texas backdrop, a house haunted by ghosts living and dead, a brief, poignant performance by the never-failing Scott Wilson, a great score by the brilliant Thomas Newman (I started watching the TV series Boston Public just to hear its opening theme music, which he composed) and a closing scene as mythic as that of any cowboy classic. The film's conclusion flirts a bit with improbability but still works because, dear friends, karma does exist. It's not just a hippie word. Leave the Anti-Megs to their own gravitational plunge and enjoy.

This is not a film where everything appears obvious. It is dark and complicated. It is about how the past haunts you and affects your life in the present. It is the stuff that Freud would have fun dealing with.

The stars in this film give performances that are among the best in their careers.

Dennis Quaid (Frequency, Far From Heaven) is clearly the lead in this picture as the son of a soulless murderer and thief (James Caan). He carries the devil with him through his life and it affects his relationships with women. He runs into an abused housewife (Meg Ryan, in a non-romantic role), and they travel the back-roads of Texas together. Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakesphere in Love) is a thief that plays Caan's companion, even if he is old enough to be her grandfather.

This is written and directed by the Oscar nominated (Wonder Boys) writer of all of the Harry Potter movies, Steve Kloves. He does a fabulous job.

Definitely a movie to watch when you get a chance.

"Flesh and Bone" remains to be one of the great films of the nineties, sitting alongside "Bright Angel" as one of the decade's most tragically neglected classics. Perhaps the fact it contains such a high degree of subtlety was why it wasn't appreciated when it was first released, the most frequently stated criticism being that its climax is dramatically unsatisfying, yet its somber ending works perfectly. Outside of "Hurlyburly" it is unquestionably Meg Ryan's finest performance, the same going for Quaid who gives his character a quiet desperation that becomes quite devastating by the end. Caan is great as always, but it is Paltrow who really impresses, playing a role bereft of the sugary sweetness that plagued the majority of her roles that followed. Scott Wilson also shines in a small but memorable role. "Flesh and Bone" may never receive the attention it deserves, which is a shame because it is unquestionably a lyrical masterpiece, beautifully shot and acted, recalling those low-key gems of the seventies like "The Rain People". Highly recommended.

I'm not sure how many other fans of this excellent film realize that it's really an argument against determinism--in this case, biological determinism, but it could also be used as a valid refutation of environmental determinism. Father/murderer James Caan believes that since he himself is evil, and since his son's blood is the same as his, then his son Arlis (Dennis Quaid) must also have evil tendencies--as if Arlis is powerless to act otherwise. Arlis even buys into this nonsense: "It's not in your blood"; "If you're born to it..." He lives a solitary life, as if he's afraid that establishing a close relationship with someone would endanger them, because of the evil taint of his bloodline and his consequent evil potential--which isn't really there at all. But he realizes at the end that we all make our own decisions by means of our free will, and that our bloodline has nothing to do with that process. ("That's nothing. It's only blood.") Dostoevsky knew this too, when in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT or THE POSSESSED (I forget which) he shows how the revolutionaries of that era believed that "the environment" determines all human action--and he also saw how dangerous this idea is. The 20th century was a grim validation of his prophecies.