Christopher Walken is the undisputed master of the cinematic monologue: the long, discursive, twisting story, told entirely through acting, that slams the brakes on a movie (in a good way) and opens a portal to an even better movie in the viewer’s mind. pulp fiction is the obvious example, but there are many others, from Annie Hall to Billiard addictsand catch me if you can to addiction. Walken’s screen presence magnetizes these passages: his dancer’s poise, his unblinking gaze, and, above all, his strange, halting speech pattern.
One of Walken’s best monologues, up there with pulp fictioncomes from The comfort of strangersa disconcerting 1991 psychological thriller directed by Paul Schrader and written by playwright Harold Pinter (from a novel by Ian McEwen). Walken plays Robert, a creepy Italian sophisticate in white Armani who lives in Venice with his Canadian wife Caroline (Helen Mirren).
One night, Robert invites a vacationing English couple, Colin and Mary (Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson), to a bar he owns. Colin and Mary are lost and hungry, but there is no food in the bar. Robert serves them breadsticks and wine and tells them a fascinating and disturbing story about his childhood, his father, his sisters, and his first meeting with Caroline. As he speaks, the camera leaves his table and wanders around the bar, taking in the attire and rituals of his young male clientele and the enormous swordfish hanging on the wall, before Walken returns it to its gravitational orbit.
“My father was a very great man,” Walken recites in a strange, hybrid accent that reflects Robert’s upbringing in London (his father was a diplomat) and time spent in Canada. “All his life he wore a black mustache. When it turned gray he used a small brush to keep it black, like the one women use for their eyes. Mascara.”
There is much more to the monologue than that: a betrayal, an act of cruelty, perverse undertones. But these words resonate throughout The comfort of strangers. They open it, with voiceover, and return a third time at the end. They hum with masculine authority, pride and sexual ambivalence. Walken’s drawling cadence is a perfect vehicle for Pinter’s famous clipped phrases. They set the tone of discomfort for this film about obsession, disconnection, sex and sublimated fascism.
For his first act, The comfort of strangers follows Colin and Mary as they wander through the dreamlike labyrinth of Venice, trying to resolve an impasse in their relationship. Honestly, it can be a little complicated. Everett and Richardson are good; Armani’s costumes, Venice locations, Dante Spinotti’s cinematography and Angelo Badalamenti’s music are dazzling; and Pinter’s lines are full of resonance. But the pairing is boring, and the combination of Schrader and Pinter’s equally spartan styles is too austere. It’s a hard wooden bench from a movie.
But what Colin and Mary don’t realize is that Robert is stalking them. Walken haunts the background and edges of the frame, a white-clad echo of the small red-clad figure of Don’t look now. When he finally enters the story, The comfort of strangers receives an electrifying shock. Robert is polite but dominant; Colin and Mary are hypnotized by him even though they find him unpleasant. He insists that they stay in his ostentatious apartment, where the languid Caroline locks up their clothes and watches them sleep. In the middle of a slightly irritated but polite conversation with Colin, Robert punches him hard in the stomach and then gives him a classic Walken wink. The couple leaves the encounter disturbed but sexually charged. Then things get even weirder.
The comfort of strangers It’s a double date from hell, deliciously dark and rotten. Mirren is slightly wrong: she is too tough and insinuating an actress to play such a person, although she stands out in the film’s shocking denouement. But Walken is at his best. Somehow, like Robert, the lanky Queens actor embodies centuries of Old World decadence and cruelty, and his flair for blunt arrogance and poised unpredictability fit perfectly with Robert’s strangely confrontational seduction of the young couple.
Highlights of The comfort of strangers It is without a doubt that dazzling monologue. It might be too good for the rest of the film, which, in its live action, can’t muster anything so subtly disturbing. Christopher Walken may never have been more sinister, which is really saying something, and is more than enough reason to see this twisted little movie through to the end.
Soruce: polygon.com