I love
digging up obscure gems. You know, the type people haven’t quite heard of, with
very little but instinct to recommend it to you. The subject matter for this
one is close to my heart so that alone attracted me – mainly out of curiosity
as to how the topic was handled. Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn are also pretty
darn close to my heart. It was like slipping on a comfortable pair of tracksuit
bottoms really. I knew it was going to be nice and comfy from the start – and oh
yes, I was right…
Susan
Sarandon stars as Helen Prejan, the nun who wrote the true story of the time
she spent as the spiritual advisor, and in time, friend of convicted murderer
Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn). Poncelet is on death row. More specifically, he
is on death row in Texas, so he stands even less of a chance of knocking his
sentence back down to life imprisonment. But he lacks the funds and the
expertise so he reaches out to Helen Prejan, almost completely by coincidence
and so starts a life altering experience for both of them. Helen’s aim as a
Christian and his spiritual advisor should be to get Matthew to take sacrament
but Helen is aiming for something a little higher than mere form. Matthew is
someone she considers a friend, and she has mere days to get him to truly
accept and take responsibility for his actions and their consequences…
I pretty
much knew what the film was the moment Helen and Matthew had their first
meeting at the prison. I don’t mean this as a bad thing; it’s good that a film
has an agenda and sticks to it. It just mean that the film was possibly a
little less striking for me because I had seen others, others I had considered
better for different reasons. What the film is, is essentially the argument
against capital punishment – an argument that I fully support by the way. I say
I found the film less striking than others, what I am in essence talking about
it Wes Anderson’s Into the Abyss. The only difference with this film is that
the arguments are slightly veiled and put to us via the now familiar faces of
Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. It is not an unbalanced story; Poncelet’s victims
get equal airtime. Through Prejan’s painful encounters with the parents of the
young couple Poncelet and his accomplice raped and murdered we are painfully
reminded that Poncelet is there for a reason. I was especially fond of the
portrayal of the male victim’s father. While the girl’s parents are slightly
more along the “classic” Texans one may imagine in this case – baying for
Poncelet’s blood – Mr Delacroix is more complicated. He does not forgive
Poncelet and he definitely wants him to be executed but… I guess this is a good
way of showing that even through one of the greatest pains in the world the
issue of capital punishment is confusing.
The way
Poncelet is portrayed is basically used to underline how he is dehumanised. We
never see him in his cell, like Sister Helen we only see him in the visiting
area of the prison and in court. Camerawork is used to put Poncelet in the
middle of a cold, lonely, dehumanising landscape; especially poignant at the
family visit preceding his execution where he is chained to a chair and must
converse with his family “from a safe distance”. He is not even allowed to hug
his mother farewell. Sister Prejan uses nothing but words to reach out to him
but arguably manages to do touch him more than all the dehumanising the prison
system does. Some may argue what she does falls largely in the “too little, too
late” category but I don’t know really…. I think we are almost definitely on this
earth to learn and grow, and if Poncelet was able to do that right down to the
last minutes of his life is this a bad thing or a good thing?
Although
this is clearly not a documentary, the fact that the film feeds off real events
comes through well in this film. In fact Sister Prejan’s “enquiries” to the
prison guards about the whole system almost tangs of rather stilted public
information films (although this is not to question Sarandon’s acting – fully
deserving all the accolades she got for her performance in this film). And its
reality renders the film truly heart-wrenching. It goes out of its way to make
of Poncelet a very realistic villain; not a “monster” or a inhuman cartoonesque
killer but a poor, uneducated young man who went astray. And the parents are
real too in their suffering and confusion. But don’t let their pain cloud you
into thinking that Poncelet deserves to die. The real question is, is
inflicting the same pain on another mother really the solution?
Don’t write
Dead Man Walking off as just another soppy movie. It presents a very cleverly
constructed argument with some first class acting. It will push you to think.
And feel. And if that’s not what you want from a film, I really don’t know how
to help you…
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