"The Clearing"

Robert Redford as a kidnapped CEO finally lets go of his boyishness, but can anyone hold a candle to Helen Mirren?

By Stephanie Zacharek

Jul 2, 2004 | "The Clearing" represents a precise, chilly brand of filmmaking that's hard to warm up to. It doesn't matter that much of the picture takes place during the daytime: It's still washed in late-evening bleakness. Even the sunlight looks depressed.

But the unleavened somberness of "The Clearing" doesn't mean it's dead. This is the first movie directed by Pieter Jan Brugge, who has made a name for himself mostly as a producer (his credits include "The Insider" and "Bulworth"). Considering how many contemporary movies today are both fast-moving and brain-dead, I hesitate to accuse Brugge of not being flashy enough. But even though we can see a kind of sly intelligence at work here, Brugge hangs back too much -- the picture feels inert just when it could use some silent, sustained jolts of electricity.

Yet in a strange way, even the morose tastefulness of "The Clearing" works in its favor -- chiefly because it serves as a matte gray backdrop against which its actors seem gravely alive. Robert Redford plays Wayne Hayes, a wealthy Pittsburgh executive who, on his way to work one day, is kidnapped by Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe), a polite, disgruntled, but unhinged hardworking citizen, who was formerly employed at a company Wayne used to run. Arnold packs Wayne into the trunk of a car and drives him out to the woods; he claims to be taking Wayne to a remote cabin, where he'll be kept until Wayne's family comes through with the ransom money.

The picture cuts back and forth, deftly, between scenes of Arnold and Wayne trekking through the woods and keyhole views of the restrained, dignified anguish of Wayne's family, particularly that of his wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren). Investigating Wayne's kidnapping, the FBI roots around in some of Eileen's more painful memories: Wayne once had an affair with one of his employees, a dalliance Eileen thought she had squelched when she demanded that Wayne terminate the woman's employment. The early moments of the movie, and a few brief flashbacks, give us only brief glimpses of Wayne and Eileen's life together: Before Wayne leaves for work, the two of them sit in the garden of their preposterously large, recently built home. Wayne, in shirt and tie, sips his coffee with the bland impatience of a man who's already on his way out the door, even though he's sitting still. Elaine lounges in a robe (she'll be going for a swim in the couple's massive pool later) and makes suggestions (urging him to call up this or that acquaintance, for example) that Wayne seems to ignore, only until he reiterates them blankly minutes later, as if he'd come up with them himself.

That early scene is almost like a stock snapshot of the long-married couple who have been together so long that each knows exactly how the other works; it's impossible to tell whether they care for each other beneath all those layers of predictability or are just so bored they can't even be bothered to leave. But just when you think "The Clearing" is too simplistic to have any dramatic edge, the actors dig in and flesh out the stark framework of the story. (The script was written by Justin Haythe; he and Brugge conceived the story from which it was adapted.)

Next Page: Redford has finally surrendered to the plainspokenness of the lens

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