Film - Jonathan Romney on a bold independent who goes on getting better
The dictionary definition of "limbo" on the poster of John Sayles's film of that name is "a place of arrested possibilities; a condition of uneasiness or apprehension". This driest of poster tag lines is unlikely to enhance box-office receipts. Still, you can't fault it for accuracy. Limbo is very much about apprehension and suspension - which is something more radically unsettling than the traditional suspense you might be expecting. Limbo drops us, along with its characters, in the middle of nowhere, then leaves us wondering whether there's any chance of a safe passage back. As a narrative strategy, this is as radical and as pitiless as you'll find in mainstream American cinema.
You might not expect narrative extremity from as dependable a figure as the American independent stalwart Sayles. He has long embodied a go-it-alone ethic, making enjoyable, accessible films that are nevertheless considered uncommercial because they are serious-minded, unglamorous and politically informed. But recent films have become stranger and increasingly complex: Lone Star was a time-jumping Tex-Mex mystery that confronted Oedipal trauma with racial politics, while even the comparatively simple The Secret of Roan Inish - ostensibly an Irish-set children's tale about magical seals - was really concerned with the relations between oral narrative and local history.
Limbo is Sayles's boldest stroke yet. Its first half is an ensemble drama set in a small community - the sort of narrative that Sayles has often excelled at, notably in his sprawling industry tale City of Hope. So we think we're in for two hours of getting to know the population of a troubled Alaskan fishing town. Alaska is about to become one huge theme park - local businessmen are planning to market evocative place names such as Whale's Causeway and Island of the Raven People, and to peddle adventure and the "illusion of risk". The characters roll by - two middle-aged lesbian entrepreneurs, the town's glamorous no-gooder (craggier-than-ever Kris Kristofferson) and Joe, an ex-fisherman with a painful past (Sayles regular David Strathairn). Then there are the newcomers - lounge singer Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who's seen too much of life and the road, and her tormented teenage daughter Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), who's seen too much of her mother.
Things are heading for a glorious sprawl, and the film teasingly promises to explore every imaginable path. And then Sayles yanks away the carpet, suddenly limiting his narrative options with one audacious stroke. If you don't want to know how, skip the next paragraph. If you can stand to find out, he does it by dropping his three main characters in limbo, taking Joe, Donna and Noelle on an unexpected fishing trip and leaving them stranded on a remote island. This is both outrageous narrative string-pulling and something like real life, in which things are more likely to happen suddenly and inexplicably than by the reasonable types of chance permitted by Hollywood narrative. The three are forced to become a nuclear family under rather more urgent conditions than they'd planned. And when Noelle discovers a journal left on the island a century earlier, she takes control as a storyteller in a way that opens up psychological resonances considerably more disturbing than the stage-managed chills of The Blair Witch Project.
Simple as it is, Limbo is a film so richly complex that Sayles is almost obliged to pull in his net before it all spins out of control. His journalistic, investigative streak is always to the fore: when fish is served at a business lunch, we already know the fish's history. And few US directors get the same depth of characterisation from their actors. Donna could have been another stock chanteuse on the skids, but she's given a hard backbone of angry, compassionate anxiety by Mastrantonio. Newcomer Martinez sends ripples of ambivalent disturbance flowing under the surface of Noelle's pasty, vulnerable ordinariness, flying in the face of the repertoire of teenage stereotypes currently dominating even the smarter US movies.
Strathairn continues to be America's most underrated actor - it's somehow appropriate to Joe's character that the lines around Strathairn's jaw are taking on a distinct shade of Gary Cooper. But Joe is less like a western hero than another brand of strong, silent hermit: Sayles set out with Joseph Conrad's characters in mind. There's a distinct echo of Conrad's island novel, Victory, in which, if A-level memories serve, a character professes: "He who forms attachments is lost." Limbo is about connections between people and the danger of those connections, and consequently it really does feel like a dangerous ride in uneasy company. It's appropriate that a film about fishing should expertly reel us in and then, like the salmon in the ominous credit sequence, leave us helplessly floundering.
"Limbo" (15) opens on 21 January at selected cinemas nationwide
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
