Guestposting by Meyer: Our Mr. Brooks

Hey, folks – you’ve noticed I’m a little quieter than usual; that may continue for a bit (I have a chance to get away for two weeks and I may take it!) but I am not leaving you abandoned. Here to fire up your synapses and provoke your thoughts is the always provocative Dick Meyer, on Kevin Costner’s latest flick:

Our Mr. Brooks

This week I saw Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner and William Hurt. It’s a polluted little movie that put questions into my muddy stream of consciousness that I have yet been able to get clear on. Since Anchoress and her loyal cohorts actually read, digest and think before responding to online stimuli, I thought I would open the question to the floor.

The movie is well crafted, visually stylish and the acting was mostly very convincing. The plot is ludicrous. Kevin Costner is Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year in Portland, Oregon and has a hot wife and a mild manner. He is also, gasp, a serial killer, Portland’s notorious, uncatchable Thumbprint Killer. William Hurt is the physical incarnation of his sicko alter-ego in the style used by Ron Howard in A Beautiful Mind. Demi Moore plays a detective determined to catch Mr. Thumbprint. The plot and the backstory are ludicrous. The violence is close up, lingering and repulsive. I found the movie entertaining and riveting.

So my first question is, “Why?” Why am I entertained by an implausible violent story? I was never bored. Why would a large group of energetic, talented and really rich movie people spend so many months of theirs lives making something so perverted and reprehensible? Why would Andrew Sarris, a distinguished film critic, say the movie is “one of the most successfully and most outrageously sick and immoral movies I have ever seen”?

On a deep level, what is soothing, or likable, or even addictive – whatever – about this movie and this kind of movie? Perhaps it’s the sort of Brothers Grimm theory: the movie imagines and shows you nightmares that lurk deep inside you and the collective unconscious and it is comforting to see them played out and then walk away, safe, fat and happy. It’s part of making the human neurological calloused to the infinite, violent and creepy things that could happen. I think this is a standard theory, but I don’t find this argument very compelling but have no real alternatives.

Also, Mr. Brooks and Demi Moore are both very rich. We are told specifically that Detective Demi is worth $60 million. They are both perfectly groomed and live in totally manicured, beautiful homes. How come? I think the movie makers have something very intentional going on here, but what? Is being hyper-rich and living in a fully-controlled, groomed, aesthetic environment the current collective image of Shangri-La, so that populated it with violent, but handsome characters has some deeper emotional effect on us? Perhaps snuffing out people is the ultimate control, as good as having our own private jet. Costner’s character is also a devoted ceramicist; there was nothing vaguely criminal about him. And, like Hannibal Lecter, our most distinguished serial killer, he has perfect and instant knowledge and mastery of the world. So maybe we like that mix of mastery and wealth and style.

I think by current standards, this was not a hyper-violent movies. But it was a movie made with major yuppie-era, 40-something stars, with high technique. It worked on me on some level. And I don’t know why.

– Dick Meyer