Death & The Maiden
by Roman Polanski
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Product details
Actor: Ben Kingsley, Jonathan Vega, Krystia Mova, Sigourney Weaver, Stuart WilsonDirector: Roman Polanski
Producer: Ariel Dorfman
Writer: Ariel Dorfman
Producer: Bonnie Timmermann
Producer: Gladys Nederlander
Producer: Jane Barclay
Producer: Josh Kramer
Writer: Rafael Yglesias
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 103 minutes
Release Date: 1997-04-15
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: New Line Home Video
Studio: New Line Home Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Death & The Maiden
Movie Review: Dark and Intense
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie explores the complex and intense emotions involved in seeking revenge for unspeakable acts of degradation and humiliation. Excellent cast, amazing performances. Dark but compelling film.Movie Review: A rather interesting plot...
Summary: 4 Stars
Roman Polanski. With Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Stuart Wilson
This movie probes into a topic that is rather controversial. The process of justice punishes criminals that commit crimes to sentences that remove their freedom and have tremendous impact morally because of the stigma created by the trial and jail time. But... how do we punish crimes against humanity that were sanctioned by a government?
The process of justice is also created so victims find vindication and can go on with their lives after the person "pays" for the inflicted crime or damage. In this movie, Sigourney Weaver plays the role of a woman who was brutally assaulted while held captive by men acting on behalf of a previous government. A doctor who was supposed to make the process safe for the victims, participates during her captivity and given so much power, he falls pray to his own devils and inflicts further injury on this woman during her ordeal. Back then she was blind-folded, so she recognizes in the doctor... by smell and voice sound, the man who made her suffer unspeakable torture.
The roles are reversed and she now has the power to extract vengeance and she sets out to get the doctor to confess what he had done to her. She wants retribution... she wants the doctor to suffer psychologically as much as she endured, but time is short and we see a give and take that is frightening, always wandering whether the doctor is indeed guilty, or the innocent stranger that triggers the memories of horrific torture. The movie leaves you with the sense that the punishment of crimes is a terrifying process because as we attempt to extract vengeance, we have to turn into the very character that we despise. If you come from a background where you and or yours have suffered due to political differences, you will find that this movie probes into the very issues that force thousands if not millions into exile.
Movie Review: Not as good as many claim
Summary: 3 Stars
If you have read the play by Ariel Dorfman, I think you will find this movie adpatation to be wanting. Though there are fine performances by Weaver and Kingsley, Polanski connects too many of the dots for the viewer, leaving little doubt as to the credibility (or madness) of the main characters. It was this very ambiguity that made the play so enjoyable, but this is not evident in the DVD.Movie Review: Nice ambiguous ending
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't think Sigourney Weaver was "underwhelming" in this movie at all. In fact, I thought her performance was subtle and, indeed, mesmerizing.
Other folks have done justice to the plot's description. But one must watch the movie to get a feel for revenge, or at least some answers, that Weaver's character is seeking after years of torture inflicted upon her (especially after seeing her so nervous and jumpy in the beginning of the film).
What I like most about the film, and it's a trademark of Polanski's that draw me to his films, is the ambiguous ending. The "good" doctor wasn't killed, good didn't win out over evil, and the end wasn't tidied up, Hollywood-style, just to make the public feel good. It's not the way life works out.
"Death and the Maiden" is definitely one of the most underrated movies of all time and it's worth the time watching. - Donna Di Giacomo
Movie Review: mesmerizing
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of Sigourney Weaver's best accomplishments as an actor. Her character has to go through so many emotions at the same time. "Death and the Maiden" is definitly a great thriller. It is a 'Who done it' that willkeep you guessing to the very end. Ben Kingsly also does a wonderful job, is he a villian or not? You positively won't know in this pyschological tale of intrigue and suspense.
Summary of Death & The Maiden
Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Ariel Dorfman's stunning play about the legacy of torture has more in common with the director's first film, Knife in the Water (with all the latter's unnerving ambiguities about power, sexual transgression, and confused alliances among three people) than a straightforward political parable. Sigourney Weaver (a bit underwhelming in this role, but good overall) plays a former political prisoner in an unnamed South American country that has gone democratic. She is married to a government official (fine work by Stuart Wilson) heading up official inquiries into the practice of torture under the former regime. Still shattered by her experience, Weaver's character seeks safe haven in closets of the cliff-top house she shares with her husband. But when the latter comes home in the company of a seemingly nice fellow (a brilliant Ben Kingsley), she believes she recognizes the stranger as the interrogator who raped her repeatedly in prison. She violently takes him hostage, and what ensues is a hurricane of fury and confusion, as Kingsley's terrified character denies all accusations, Wilson's guilt-ridden spouse can't decide whom to defend, and Weaver turns her psychosexual rage into a weapon of humiliation. Dorfman adapted the screenplay himself, but there's no question that Polanski is leading us down a familiar path of human betrayal and terror that he crossed in such films as Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, and Bitter Moon. At times stunning in its bluntness and compelling to the last, Death and the Maiden literally takes us to the edge of oblivion, where--in Polanski's films--the hardest truths always seem to fall into a heretofore unknown perspective. --Tom KeoghDrama Video
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