USA 2012 Fantasia imdb
“I shall call you… Rabbit,” is the most chilling line of any film this
year. Spoken slowly but deliberately with a slight lisp and a faint
Germanic accent by Vincent D’Onofrio, the voice alone places Bob
somewhere between Hans Beckert and Jeffrey Dahlmer. D’Onofrio’s
performance as Bob is a virtuoso effort by one of our great (albeit
under-utilized) actors, delicately inhabiting a brute, like a ballerina
trapped in a gorilla’s body.
“When I said I cast Vincent D’Onofrio, I was told that he was too TV… What The Fuck?! Have you not seen Full Metal Jacket?”
-Jennifer Lynch
Bob is a taxi driver whose specially modified cab makes it easier for
him to kidnap women, drive them back to his isolated rural home, rape
them and kill them. One day, he picks up Sarah Fittler (Julia Ormond)
and her ten year old son Tim (Evan Bird) at the movies where they have
just seen a horror film. After killing Sarah, Bob changes Tim’s name to
Rabbit, telling him, “I didn’t choose you, but I will make the most of
it.”
“I wanted to talk about abuse. I wanted to start a dialogue. The main thing is we have to fucking stop hurting the kids!”
-Jennifer Lynch
Rabbit becomes Bob’s servant, “You will have one job. You do what I say.
You clean up my house,” which begins with cleaning up the remains of
his mother. In time, teenage Rabbit (Eamon Farren) becomes Bob’s
reluctant student and it becomes clear that Bob intends for Rabbit to
become his son and heir.
“I wanted to write an original horror story… I decided not to do
something supernatural, which left serial killers. I had seen films
where someone is chased by the killer, Halloween, and I had seen films
where the police chase the killer, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, but I
had never seen a film where an ordinary person is parachuted into a
serial killer’s life and can’t get away.”
-Damian O’Donnell
Part of the genius of Chained is the way that Jennifer Lynch uses the
rhythms of a home and a life and a father-son relationship to lull us
into a form of Stockholm Syndrome along with Rabbit, only to twist the
knife and remind us that Bob is a monster. This also allows her to give
D’Onofrio screen time to truly develop Bob, to give him depth and
dimension.
“He’s tough to cut. You just want to look at him forever.”
-Chris Peterson (editor)
It would be easy to categorize Chained as a nature vs. nurture story,
but the film ends up being much more complicated than that. Lynch
reveals a story of generational abuse in tiny drips, each splash causing
us to reevaluate Bob’s life, but Lynch (and D’Onofrio) never let Bob
off the hook for his actions. His past is a reason, not an excuse.
“Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.”
-George Santayana
Bob sees Rabbit sometimes as a son, but mostly as a replacement. A
replacement for the kid brother that Bob tried to protect from his
father’s wrathful abuse and ultimately a replacement for Bob himself.
The greatest (and stupidest) tribute this film has received is from the
MPAA who slapped the film with an NC-17 rating, for scenes of violence
less gory, but more emotionally unsettling, than you will see from any
horror fantasy franchise like Saw, Halloween or Friday the 13th.
“It would be easy to hate them. I wanted to hate them, but everyone in
the MPAA were really nice people. When we went for our appeal, we played
the film and then we got to speak and the lady who gave us the NC-17
rating got to speak. We pointed to the Saw films as examples of films
that got an R rating with scenes much gorier than our film. They told us
that our film felt too real.”
-Jennifer Lynch
Giving Chained an NC-17 rating is another bone-headed decision in a year
when the MPAA seems determined to Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures itself
into irrelevance. I don’t mean to suggest that Chained should be viewed
in the same light as Bully, but there are worse films to watch with your
14 year old. And watching Chained would lead to a discussion about evil
– real world evil – that would never happen from watching the cartoon
carnage inflicted by Michael, Jason, Freddy or Jigsaw.
“If had made the movie more sexualized or funnier, I would have got away
with the violence. I could have made the violence hyper-sexual. I have
done that before, but it didn’t seem appropriate here. I could have made
the movie funny, but I don’t think that abuse is fucking funny.”
-Jennifer Lynch
Maybe the best part of the film is the sound design from D’Onofrio’s
voice to the pounding, percussive score that traps you in the nightmare.
It is almost possible to believe that you could follow the film’s plot
just by listening with your eyes closed and, in fact, in certain parts
of the film that is exactly what you can must do.
“And you, you that call yourselves collectors. Until now, you have all
sustained fantasies in which you are the maltreated heroes of your own
stories. Comforting daydreams in which, ultimately, you are shown to be
in the right. No more. For all of you that dream is over. I have taken
it away.”
-Dream from Sandman#14 ‘Collectors‘ written by Neil Gaiman
The problem inherent in most serial killer literature, whether on the
page or on the screen, is that we tend to make our monsters into heroes,
which is why Hannibal Lecter is getting his own TV series instead of
Clarice Starling or Will Graham.
Jennifer Lynch and Vincent D’Onofrio dive deep into the abuse that
creates monstrosities and emerge with the portrait of a complicated
human monster, who is not once allowed to be the hero. The MPAA may
believe that Chained is too real to be seen, but that is exactly why you
should see it.
