UNEASY RELATIONSHIPS HAUNT A 'CLOSET LAND'

By Terry Kelleher

(Newsday, 1992)

 

As far as its humanitarian sentiments are concerned, "Closet Land" is Operation Just Cause.

Her debut film establishes beyond doubt that writer-director Radha Bharadwaj is firmly opposed to oppression and torture, whether committed by the male against the female or the state against the citizenry. It's hard to dismiss a film that ends with quotations from an Amnesty International report and Mohandas Gandhi.

Unfortunately, the pretentiousness of "Closet Land" is almost thick enough to obscure its principles. We need those closing statements as a reminder that the movie has something to communicate besides a sense of its own importance.

The time is unspecified, the place a nameless totalitarian (or at least authoritarian) state. Madeleine Stowe plays the Woman, an author of children's books who finds herself under arrest for "subversion." The Woman protests to her interrogator - identified in the cast of characters as the Man - that her stories "have no more depth than cotton candy." She's too modest, of course.

The Man (Alan Rickman) produces the Woman's latest manuscript, titled "Closet Land," which concerns a little girl who dreams up colorful characters to calm her fears after her mother locks her in a closet.

Isn't it true that the Woman had a bad relationship with her late mother? Government snoops taped a mother-daughter talk in which the Woman lodges a familiar complaint: "You were never there for me."

Isn't it true that the Woman has a bad relationship with closets? It certainly seems that way, since she can barely bring herself to utter the "c" word.

Isn't it true that the Woman has a bad relationship with the opposite sex? We get a hint to this effect when she runs around in nothing but black underwear while a disembodied voice screams, "Frigid! Closet whore!"

Isn't it true that "Closet Land" is some sort of political allegory? The Woman cannot tell a lie. She finally acknowledges that shutting a child in the closet is the moral equivalent of "shutting a people away."

While the questioning persists - punctuated by hideous torture involving pliers, a hot poker and electricity - brief animated sequences reveal how the Woman, like the girl in the story, takes refuge in her imagination. The animation is hardly eye-popping, but it offers some relief from the studied colorlessness that dominates the rest of the film.

The single set, designed by Eiko Ishioka, is a room furnished with a small forest of classical columns, an inverted-pyramid table, a couple of angular chairs and numerous drawers containing mysterious files and instruments of torture. All that's missing are signs saying "Universality," "Symbolism" and "Caution: Heavy Drama in Progress."

With the Woman blindfolded, the Man disguises his voice and pretends to be a second, more brutal inquisitor and the broken "Prisoner XYZ." If "Closet Land" were a stage production, such "tripling" might be seen as an economy move, but it does provide the resourceful Rickman with a juicy acting opportunity (particularly when he bites into a ripe tomato and simulates regurgitation). Stowe ably conveys the Woman's courage as well as her weaknesses, although the character's early attempts to dissemble are too transparent.

The defining moment in "Closet Land" comes when the Woman and the Man chant opposing slogans at each other. "There is no justification for cruelty, there is no justification for cruelty, there is no justification for cruelty," she insists. After several more repetitions, she has him saying it. And she'll get no argument from us.

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page