THE GIFT [2000]

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Directed by:
Written by: ,
Starring: , , ,

USA

AVAILABLE ON 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY [LIMITED EDITION] AND STANDARD BLU-RAY: 27th January, from ARROW VIDEO

RUNNING TIME: 111 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

The Gift

In a small town named Brixton deep in the American South, widow with three kids Annie Wilson supplements her meager income by doing `readings’ for the local townsfolk. She has the ability to see certain things in the cards that enables her to advise her clients about personal issues. It’s something she can’t explain; she knows only that it’s inherited and that it’s real – as are her visions of her dead grandmother. However, it doesn’t always make for the most pleasant of situations and sometimes it can put her in danger. Then Jessica King disappears and her fiancee Wayne Collins turns to Annie for possible guidance. Annie feels that she can’t help, but this doesn’t stop her from constantly getting visions of Jessica’s fate….

Amazingly I hadn’t actually The Gift before the other day, which is weird indeed, especially seeing as it had a major release. I vaguely recall that many horror and Sam Raimi fans were disappointed by what they saw as a formerly anarchic, unrestrained filmmaker losing his mojo and becoming bland and enslaved by the mainstream, though one can also see this, plus some other works, as a director not wanting to be pigeon-holed, trying different stuff, exploring different genres and styles. I do think that Raimi has sometimes struggled to find his footing in Hollywood, though his Spider-Man films [even the compromised third entry] really show bow love of a subject can elevate something as seemingly impersonal as a superhero movie and still shine strong while the Spidey ones since then just haven’t been able to get there. And then there’s the very excellent A Simple Plan. But enough about other films and properly on to this one, which isn’t really trying to be a horror movie – it’s got horror elements, but it’s really a Southern Gothic “mystery” with supernatural elements, featuring character types pretty common to the subgenre, emphasising acting and dialogue, usually telling its tale with restraint though there are moments where Raimi’s old overwrought style returns. I put the word “mystery” in inverted commas, because the identity of the killer in this story was obvious to me as soon as its murder was discovered; though I do wonder it that was intended, seeing as how poor a movie detective I often am. In any case, the film compels throughout as it steadily progresses, the collection of cliches given resonance by some excellent performances that are given plenty of room to breathe, while it certainly doesn’t lack for things like atmosphere and suspense for a lot of the time.

Billy Bob Thornton based elements of his screenplay on his own experiences; as a child he had a violent father who died young, while his schoolteacher mother was supposedly a psychic, the film a sort of tribute to her. Tom Epperson did a studio-ordained rewrite once Paramount became involved, largely because of the success of Thorton’s Sling Blade. It was Thornton who told Cate Blanchette about his script while filming Pushing Tin with him, while Raimi got to know about the project when his wife learned about the script and gave it to her husband to read, and even pushed him into continuing it when he found it too upsetting. Paramount wanted Thornton to play the tormented, possibly mentally challenged Buddy, but he was busy, and also probably didn’t want to play somebody who was in some ways similar to Sling Blade Filming took place in 8 weeks in several Georgia locations; Effingham County, Guyton, Georgia, Thunderbolt,  Springfield and Savannah, the latter being the most utilised. For the scene where Donnie violently enters Annie’s house and drags Valerie out of it, the crew was losing the light, time was running out to film it and the tight schedule didn’t allow for extra days, so Raimi quickly came up with the idea of putting several cameras rolling at the same time in several different spaces of the house and had the performers shoot the whole thing in an uninterrupted take. When Raimi was hired as the director of Spider-Man, the schedule for post-production of The Gift conflicted with his prospective work on the other movie. In the end, both Paramount and Columbia agreed to give Raimi more time to complete post-production on The Gift, so he could work on both simultaneously. However, a relative lack of studio push was probably one reason for it doing only mediocre business.

Sounds of crickets chirping and frogs croaking introduce the fog-shrouded lake and cypress trees which are on the edge of our little town of Brixton [cue chuckle from all UK readers]; the same shots, or variations thereof, will return several times, nature being permanent while people can come and go, their issues somehow seeming trivial by comparison, even though a lot is going on – enough, indeed, even if you take the supernatural out, We see Annie’s three sons walking home from school while she’s busy with her cards hopefully providing her latest customer, though one who’s clearly been there before, even though we’re only privy to a small part of their dialogue. The next visitor we certainly do get to know though; Valerie Barksdale, who’s been beaten yet again by her redneck husband [sample dialogue, referring to a cat who left some scratches, “she didn’t like it when I killed her“]  Donnie, this time on several parts of her body with a razor strap. She advises her to leave him but she says “he’ll kill me if I leave” and also thinks he has a woman on the side. Then Valerie receives a phone call from her eldest son Mike’s school telling her that Mike, who’s full of rage due to his dad dying a year ago, has been in yet another fight. School principal Wayne Collins introduces to her his younger fiancee Jessica King, “Do you think we’ll live happily ever after” he asks Annie; she then sees a pen fall off a table [though the inference that she has telekinesis here isn’t followed through] and a muddy leg, in the first of a few possibly over the top moments which don’t entirely fit, though this one’s probably the worst; we even see the pen’s giant shadow fall across Annie’s face. Then Valerie visits her  friend Buddy Cole, who’ll fix her car door for free and offers to drive her home but who’s been having “bad thoughts” and has to suddenly stop the car to calm down.

Finally home, Annie is accosted and threatened by Donnie who considers her to be “no better than a Jew or a n****r”; the next day he returns to drag his wife by her hair into his truck, then threaten not just her but her kids. We’re asked to wonder if what Annie is doing to pay the bills is really worth it, though she does have a grandma who appears, first seen through a sheet in a lovely shot, to tell her that “there’s a storm”  and to “always use instincts”. Yes, we’d seen it all before, even back in 2000 – well actually no, not me because I hadn’t seen this film, but you get what I mean – we even have a storm starting immediately after it’s been mentioned. Yet we’re caught up in Annie’s situation, indeed in the plight of anybody we meet in this town which seems to contain one example of of the most popular standard Southern Gothic types. And now we visit a party and learn that a character we’ve only briefly met before fits into another; the local slut. We see Jessica go off to have sex in a lift with another man, though Wayne seems more interested in Annie anyway. Their dialogue fills in some of the backstory about Jessica; her husband was killed in a factory explosion, an event she didn’t exactly predict, though she had a sense that something bad was going to happen the night before and even tried to prevent hubby from going to work in the morning, a revelation which might have had a more powerful effect if shown in flashback. Mike is sad that mum won’t talk about dad or hasn’t taken him to visit his grave for a while, while it seems that Buddy has daddy issues of a different kind. Then Jessica’s car is found without her in it, suggesting that she’s been kidnapped. Sheriff Pearl Johnson is dubious about Annie’s “gift”, leading to one of the film’s few amusing moments when she “sees” a fence, leading to the response “Do you know how many fences there are”? – but the visions she has do lead to the discovery of Jessica’s body, and then the arrest of the prime suspect – but did he do it?

I imagine that there would have been a time when the idea of Raimi doing a lengthy courtroom sequence sounded daft, but here it is and it’s good and given a fairly unique edge by the discussion of psychic powers. The afore-mentioned “visions” are often relegated to quick shots, and tend to rely on the obligatory loud musical note to try to get the viewer to jump, but the longer ones do stay in the mind, perhaps most notably an encounter with a guy playing a fiddle beside the lake who suddenly looks menacing while his playing becomes discordant, which is a great cameo by Danny Elfman whom, considering his other work with Raimi, I’m surprised didn’t score this. Also unsettling is when Jessica’s body is dug up and she appears to be looking at Annie; simple stuff bur effective. But the most intense bits feature realistic, believable human threat, fear and violence, Raimi really pulling off such moments with skill, perhaps especially a scene where somebody is set on fire for terrible wrongdoing; we’re divided between feeling the horror of the situation and understanding why this person is having this being done to him, sympathising even with the perpetrator. I’ve already mentioned that the mystery was very obvious to me, but on the other side of the coin, this allows for some queasy tension to develop. The climax is exciting enough though one of the things that happens in it makes little sense; we know that Annie “sees” stuff,  but this is perhaps taking that idea too far. It’s also  very convenient that she often has the right visions at just the right time that the plot requires, but we never forget that her “gift” is a highly ironic one because if she didn’t have it she’d have been able to avoid all sorts of trouble.  She can’t be that bright though if she fails to lock her front door behind her even when she knows someone may be lurking outside.

The “types” mostly develop into real breathing human beings. Blanchett is simply superb as her character who’s tortured on more than one level and barely has time to grief but insists on putting a brave face on stuff. Her character is fairly well written though not very well written, but her detailed yet subtle performing makes up for this, aided by the frequent closeups of her face. Most of the cast is fine, with the exception of Katie Holmes as Jessica, who’s overacting doesn’t make her rather unsympathetic character any more interesting. Keanu Reeves must have surprised many in 2000 with his frightening villain roles in this and The Watcher; we believe that this horrible man still believes  that he should tell the truth in court. Simmons provides just a bit of levity as the Sheriff, providing another funny moment when Annie comes into his office wanting to help and he has so little respect for her [what he sees as] nonsense that, before he finds himself able to bring himself to give her some attention, he looks in his box of ordered donuts and suggestively says to a colleague “I could have sworn there was an eclair in there”. And it’s nice to see Greg Kinnear’s blandness being a virtue for a change. Showy camerawork is understandably avoided, but cinematographer Jamie Anderson gives us some highly evocative outdoor images, so much so that you can virtually smell the willows and are often drawn to the skies, while Christopher Young’s appropriately fiddle-led score tends to hold back throughout; bombast is generally avoided though there are some eerie soundscapes reminiscent of Young’s Hell material for Hellbound: Hellraiser 2. The Gift is really one of those films where good old craftmanship on most levels is able to turn something that probably shouldn’t be that good into something totally engrossing and rather memorable.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

 

4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

New 4K remaster from the 35mm interpositive by Arrow Films and Shout! Factory
I simply couldn’t fault the picture of this release. The colour palette varies throughout but the transfer makes even the dark and samey ones look alive and vibrant, while the blacks are stunning. Flesh tones are very realistic and a very pleasing and evenly distributed level of grain completes the experience. While I can’t compare this to previous releases, I’d say please don’t be put off by the fact that this is from an interpositive!

4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)

Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio and optional lossless stereo audio

Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

Brand new audio commentary by critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson
The first of two very different commentary tracks that replace the one on Via Vision’s Australian release features two – Australians. Heller-Nicholas I was certainly familiar with but Nelson I don’t recall hearing before. The pair, who liked but didn’t love the film until recent viewings, aren’t interested in being scene specific, instead delving deep into revealing interviews with people and themes; I was a bit lost when they went on and on about gender, but the essence of Southern Gothic is acutely explained by Heller-Nicholas while Nelson considers the film’s depiction of the locale to combine both cliches with authenticity. Nelson also thinks that some of the material about dealing with grief which supposedly attracted Blanchett was cut out, while Heller-Nicholas goes into aspects like this film being part of a cycle about women trying to deal with their powers in a time when also domestic violence was frequent in movies. Both quote together a lot from interviews, from Blanchette meeting a psychic who located dead bodies for the CIA and told her some things that later came true, to Raimi saying that style was a dead end after The Quick And The Dead and moving onto films which were more about the process. Very engaging for the most part, and I can’t imagine any listener coming away still thinking that Raimi was selling out or losing his touch here.

Brand new audio commentary by critic Meagan Navarro
While Navarro clearly considers The Gift to be just as good as Heller-Nichiolas and Nelson do, her track contrasts considerably with their one, which avoided commenting on scenes entirely. While she begins by repeating a small amount of information heard in the previous track, thereafter Navarro adopts the scene-specific approach, and is actually often telling us what’s happening, but that’s fine because she continuously gives us observations on scene after scene without ever seeming to run out of interesting things to say. She reveals what a thoughtfully put together film this is, from us learning a lot about characters through subtle details to there often being symmetry between scenes, such as the Sheriff’s three main scenes, the first two of which mirror each other while the final one concludes them, to scenes often being multi-layered. She also sees more humour than I saw. While I enjoyed both tracks, for me this one had the edge, but put together they provide great appreciation on a generally underrated movie, the only thing perhaps missing being criticism of some things in it; surely they don’t consider it to be perfect? Saying that, Navarro does seem to suggest, without actually stating it, that there wasn’t even intended to be a mystery.

Isolated music and effects track

Haunting Visions, a newly filmed interview with actor Chelcie Ross [13 mins]
Ross played Kenneth King, a fairly minor role, though he was often onset watching Blanchett. He admits that he had concerns about the script, feeling it was incomplete and wouldn’t translate well to film.  He also says that “trying to relate to that tragedy was very difficult” in terms of what befalls his fun-loving character, and feels that he and Simmons disappointed Raimi in the scene where he’s supposed to fall into water, Simmons catching him before he was able to do the entirely of what he thought was expected of him.

Savage Waters, a newly filmed interview with editors Bob Murawski and Arthur Coburn [13 mins]
Murawski speaks for the majority of this interview, Coburn, who’s not with Murawski in person, only sometimes being cut to. Murawski says that he didn’t initially like the fact that Raimi liked to work with two editors; Raimi would ask for two rough edits, then combine the best from each versions of scenes. Murawski also says that he and Coburn saw the film in different ways, he seeing it like a Giallo and temp tracking it with Ennio Morricone tracks from such movies; this approach was significantly altered and 90% of the final cut was Coburn’s. And apparently Raimi directs like Orson Welles!

.Southern Gothic, a newly filmed interview with composer Christopher Young [7 mins]
I always especially enjoy pieces about the music in a film, so I wished that this particular interview was longer [the one on thew Via Vision is three minutes longer], especially seeing as Young says that he “loves” the score that he wrote for The Gift. He recalls that he’d been dying to work with Raimi ever since he saw The Evil Dead and even several times sent him music – though it was only because of music supervisor Chris Innios and Murawski that it eventually happened – that he’d sample little known Southern instruments and alter their sound on the computer, and that he wanted the fiddle to be heard in the swamp nightmare scene to start immediately but “the director knows best”.

Four archive featurettes: The Gift: A Look Inside [11 mins], The Making of The Gift [7 mins], The Cast on Sam Raimi [3 mins] and Sam Raimi on The Cast [5 mins]
These featurettes, made when the film was just about to come out and on the 2001 DVD, are the usual promotion stuff, with everyone praising each other, but do contain a few interesting comments, albeit ones which the first audio commentary often quoted from. Nonetheless it’s nice to have these included,  and I liked Reeves not knowing that he’d been auditioning for ten minutes before Raimi told him. Typically, there’s some nice if all too brief filming footage too.

Promotional interviews with Sam Raimi [6 mins], Cate Blanchett [3 mins], Keanu Reeves [2 mins], and Giovanni Ribisi [2 mins]
More commentary material can be heard here, though Reeves always seems sincere when he expresses love for characters who have an issue and grow to rise above it, and I liked Blanchett thinking that Raimi shied away from the scary stuff in the script.

Footage from the film’s world premiere [4 mins] 

Music video for “Furnace Room Lullaby” by Neko Case [3 mins]
Featuring a lot of footage from the film and Case singing her rather powerful song in a red room and the same house that Blanchett’s  character lives in.

Theatrical trailer, TV spots and radio spots

Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Thinh Dinh

Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Bilge Ebiri, original production notes and and an excerpt from the book The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi by John Kenneth Muir

 

Arrow and the commentators they’ve used clearly feel that “The Gift” is worthy of re-evaluation as a major Raimi work, and, bar a few minor stumbles, I’d agree. Arrow present it in a stunning edition. Highly Recommended!

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About Dr Lenera 2016 Articles
I'm a huge film fan and will watch pretty much any type of film, from Martial Arts to Westerns, from Romances [though I don't really like Romcoms!]] to Historical Epics. Though I most certainly 'have a life', I tend to go to the cinema twice a week! However,ever since I was a kid, sneaking downstairs when my parents had gone to bed to watch old Universal and Hammer horror movies, I've always been especially fascinated by horror, and though I enjoy all types of horror films, those Golden Oldies with people like Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee probably remain my favourites. That's not to say I don't enjoy a bit of blood and gore every now and again though, and am also a huge fan of Italian horror, I just love the style.

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