Dark Places

Rated in comparison with Gone Girl, which in book form was different in genre and form, Dark Corners is a total fiasco. Even if we overlook the name and reputation of the author (who didn’t write the screenplay this time, but only gave the director her blessing, whatever that’s supposed to mean), it’s still a disappointment. The source material had already “dramaturgically” suffered from an overabundance of narrators, which served to form a complex, fully non-nostalgic portrait of rural America in the 1980s (where amorality and violence could be seen not only as a means of escaping from poverty, but also as a metaphor for the demise of the local agrarian way of life). However, four hundred pages of text is not the same as one hundred minutes of film. Dark Corners is rushed and agitated, with no atmosphere or suspense. Though starting the film with a murder promises a detective story, at the end of which the killer will be revealed, the investigation is too predictable and tedious to arouse our curiosity or to leave space for us to get involved in the investigation ourselves. The numerous flashbacks rarely add to the detective storyline, nor do they raise or answer questions about the identity of the killer; rather, they tell us in advance what Libby will learn from the next witness she visits. In short, they are redundant. Gathering and assessing information are set aside in favour of Libby’s character transformation as she changes from a passive woman who based her “career” on the assigned label of victim into an active woman who takes actions more or less without the help of men (in the book, Lyle is even more of a burden). Charlize Theron impressively (and with restraint) portrays this transformation, but because of the constant jumps in time, we don’t spend enough time with Libby to get into her inner world as thoroughly as we do in the book, which works much more with the heroine’s cynical commentary and does it better. The alternating between empathetic character study and reserved crime thriller causes the film to fail on both genre levels. Equally lacking in concept (or out of tune with the director’s concept) is the work of Greengrass’s cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd. Though he manages to accentuate the bleakness of the plot with the right lighting and muted colours, he applies a raw documentary style (shaky handheld camera, zooming) even in scenes where a calming effect would be desirable and where making it obvious that someone is holding the camera and spontaneously reacting to the action only draws attention away from the dialogue. Similar doubts are raised by the work with colour in relation to various flashbacks. Whereas grainy black-and-white is justifiable in the memories of the murder, which are very reminiscent of a semi-amateur 1980s horror movie on an often-watched VHS tape, why are the memories of other characters and memories that are supposed to be objective filmed in black-and-white (though no longer grainy), but the flashbacks tied to the point of view of Patty and Ben are not? Whereas the director turned the often caustic and brutal novel into a restrained, slightly sentimental psychological drama, the cinematographer understood it as a variation on Capote’s groundbreaking true-crime novel In Cold Blood. Because of that, the viewer is best served by reaching for the book instead of going to the cinema. 55% (06/19/2015) (less) (more)