LIMBO
US, 1999, 126 minutes, Colour.
David Strathairn, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Kris Kristofferson, Vanessa Martinez, Casey Sieszmasko.
Directed by John Sayles.
John Sayles is one of America's most original film-makers. He has written many genre entertainments like Piranha, Alligator and Battle Beyond the Stars. By the end of the 70s he began to write movies for himself to direct. They are not conventional movies and their themes range from memoirs of young people growing up in New Jersey (Return of the Secaucus Seven) to 1920s mining strikes (Matewan) to baseball scandals (Eight Men Out) to the harshness of guerrilla violence in Latin America (Men With Guns).
Sayles sets his movie in Alaska and capitalises on its magnificent scenery. It is a setting both of beauty and hostility to human survival.
The limbo of the title is an isolated island where three people are stranded. It is also their uncertain state of mind and spirit as they struggle to survive, to overcome the difficulties in their relationships and understand themselves before they are rescued or before they die.
David Strathairn has appeared in many of Sayles' movies, a reliable and versatile actor. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is as Donna (and sings particularly well). The relationship between the two is credible as is the tension with Vanessa Martinez as the needy teenage daughter.
Audiences who need resolutions in their movies will be frustrated. Those who prefer to remain in some kind of limbo with optional solutions will be more than satisfied. Sayles defines limbo as 'a condition of unknowable outcome'.
1. The work of John Sayles, his capacity for storytelling, delineating characters in depth, his social themes?
2. The Alaskan settings, nature, the snow and the mountains, the sea, the town? Land and water? A frontier? The musical score? Donna's songs?
3. The title, Alaska as a limbo place, limbo as an in-between place, neither here nor there? Limbo as an end place? The film's conclusion, the uncertainty of what would happen to the trio, they being in limbo?
4. The portrait of Joe, as a handyman, his working with Lou and Frankie, his past career as a fisherman, giving it up twenty-five years earlier, the accident, his sense of responsibility for those drowning, his being in a professional limbo? The film showing the details of his work, his life? A good man? At the hotel, the party, the encounter with Donna, the attraction? His beginning a relationship with her? His being persuaded to go fishing again, the exhilaration for him? The quality of his new life with Donna? Noelle and her initial antagonism, his reaction? His brother, his relationship with Bobby? Bobby's request for the boat? The clients? Joe's response to the invitation, his decision to go? Taking Donna and Noelle? It emerging that this was a drugs situation, the shooters, Bobby's death? Their pursuing the trio, their escape, going to the island? Their finding the hut, settling in? The passing of time, their needs, isolation? Noelle reading the diary, making up the story of the previous inhabitants? Hearing the plane, Jack Johansson arriving, his being friendly, sinister? Joe's decision, Jack leaving, their waiting for his return? Joe's life and its meaning as he faced possible death or salvation?
5. Donna, her age, experience, the quality of her life, its meaning, on the move? Her love for her daughter? Her singing, at the hotel? The encounter with Joe, the attraction, the sexual liaison? Moving in? Noelle and her reaction? Antagonism, change? The young girl, her age, loving her mother, protecting her mother? Their going on the trip? The reaction to the shootings, hiding on the island? Noelle, her fever, finding the diary? Reading it, making it up? A fantasy about life in the house, as related to her own life, to her mother and to Joe? The reconciliation in this limbo stage as they waiting for Jack's return?
6. Bobby, his relationship with Joe, his life in the town, the drug connections, hiring the boat, the voyage, the confrontation with the drug dealers, his death?
7. Jack, his arrival, sense of friendliness, sense of menace? His promise to return - to kill or to save?
8. An Alaskan story, a story of frontiers, of life on the frontiers in the hotels, the fishing? The drug world intruding on this frontier? The townspeople, the range of characters, the camera roving about the people in the hotel, the party, hearing their stories? The interconnection between them all? The film as a piece of realistic and symbolic Americana?
