One-man-show Willem Dafoe and cult director Abel Ferrara
have been collaborating on heady, cerebral existential cinematic fare for years
but have typically flown beneath the radar of most filmgoers who would have to
go an extra mile or two to find them.Which makes the forthcoming wide release of newcoming Greek director
Vasilis Katsoupis’ second feature Inside all the more peculiar: a punishing
endurance test that seems to quadruple down on the very things that made
Ferrara’s works sting so hard.While not
as densely cerebral as the last Ferrara-Dafoe collaboration Siberia, by
the end of Inside you feel just as drained by the steady but slow
cinematic embalming central star Dafoe and director Katsoupis take you down.
Experienced professional art thief Nemo (Willem Dafoe)
breaks into an ultra-modern high-rise New York penthouse owned by a renowned
visual artist who is away on vacation with the intention of pilfering a
self-portrait worth millions of dollars.In trying to open a safe door harboring the portrait he inadvertently
triggers the alarm system which promptly locks and seals him Inside the
penthouse surrounded by nothing but artworks, sculptures and little remnants of
food and water left in the fridge.From
here, the entire film consists of Nemo trying systematically to break out, to
procure food, to clean up despite the water being shut off, slowly going mad in
the process over the next few months of captivity. While a few other cast members like employees of the
penthouse building show up on security cameras and the unnamed artist appears
in photograph and in a surreal nightmare sequence, Inside (not to be
confused with Bo Burnham or New French Extreme horror of the same name) is top
to bottom poring over Willem Dafoe.With
no one but himself to rely on to survive, the film is keenly interested in extremely
tight claustrophobic close ups of the actor’s body, face, hands, feet, back and
legs, letting you see and feel the emaciation and physical/mental deterioration.Over the course of the movie, one starts to
lose our bearings and it is hard to know which end is up or down anymore.What is palpable in this film however is an
increasingly overwhelming sense of suffocation.
Right out of the gate, the film is a triumph of
cinematography and production design, lensed beautifully in widescreen by Color
Out of Space cinematographer Steve Annis.Mostly trained on uncomfortable close ups, birds-eye view shots, long
slow pans of the sleek interior decorum of the penthouse, the sterile but
beautiful penthouse over time starts to feel more and more oppressive and
threatening.The atonal minimalist
avant-garde score by Frederik Van de Moortel adds steadily to the sense of smothering
and choking, like you’re slowly withering away to the sands of time unable to
breathe or scream.Willem Dafoe has yet
to win an Academy Award which remains baffling as a cinephile. Clearly one of the world’s best actors, Dafoe’s
descent while painful to watch and experience is nevertheless brilliantly
performed with what had to be a wealth of improvisational acting.Few actors so confidently throw themselves
upon the mercy of the court quite like Dafoe does.
At the sneak preview, the audience was up in arms over Dafoe’s
swan dive back into experimental theater in a film that is tantamount to
exhaustive physical suffering. Almost
like a torture manual as things continue to go from bad to worse and the squalor
of the penthouse intensifies, Inside is a difficult, relentless and
uncompromising horror-thriller of sorts that drops you into a purgatory that’s
worse than Heaven or Hell. Fans of Dafoe
will have much to chew on while the average filmgoer will feel like they’ve
been beaten up. As for myself, I enjoyed
the steady descent into a bottomless pit without looking back but most viewers
are likely to abandon Dafoe’s solitary confinement passion play of sorts before
finding out whether he escapes or not. Dafoe
remains one of the greatest actors ever but this was a toughie to sit through.
