Dischord Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)February 19th, 2003
DISCHORD
# stars based on 4 stars: 3
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten
Artistic License Films
Directed by: Mark Wilkinson
Written by: Mark Wilkinson
Cast: Thomas Jay Ryan, Annunziata Gianzero, Richard Bakalyan, Andrew Borba, Rick Wessler, Michael DeLuise, Alex McArthur, Jeanette O'Connor
Screened at: Sweetland, NYC, 2/18/03
To err is human. We may, then, have to forgive Alexander Pope for penning these lines; "All discord harmony, not understood/ All partial evil, universal good." All the 18th century poet had to go was to see "Dischord" and he'd be convinced that there's little harmony here despite the motif of music. Two pairs of people are discordant: one is a fellow whose idea of discord is to be lied to. He reacts to such fibbers with extreme prejudice. The other pair, the more interesting one, are a married couple who give evidence that, contrary to popular wisdom about how people should hitch up with those who possess similar interests, have a dysfunctional marriage for the very reason that they are in the same profession.
In a story written, directed, produced and edited by Mark Wilkinson, a highly successful, married pair of musicians, Gypsy (Annunziata Gianzero) and Andrew Borba (Lucian) have just celebrated their hitting Billboard magazine's number 6 on their recent album when Lucian surprisingly announces to his guests that his wife Gypsy will not be a part of his next project but will instead embark on a world tour. Gypsy, furious in her belief that her own song was responsible for her husband's hit album, surprises her fans by canceling the tour, giving up the violin, and becoming strangely domestic which reminds us of that California dentist who tried everything to win back her adulterous husband's love by giving up her practice and devoting herself entirely to him with disastrous consequences. When Lucian's emotionally disturbed half-brother Jimmy (Thomas Jay Ryan) emerges from a ten-year absence to spend a weekend on Cape Cod with Lucian amid reports of the murder of Jimmy's girl friend, scripter Wilkinson has a dandy bunch of character with whom to work his directing skills.
"Dischord" is not a mystery: we know in advance that Jimmy is a killer and that he has reasons to be hostile to women. It's just a matter of time before he goes for the jugular of his stunning sister- in-law while retired detective Dunbarton (Richard Bakalyan), who refuses to believe in a confession by yet another disturbed individual, takes steps to prevent yet another murder. The race against time (to defuse a bomb, to prevent a disaster, you-name- it) is so old-hat that you'd almost expect Wilkinson of trying to be campy.
The real story, then, is the psychological study of the two talented musicians and how a Iago-like jealousy works its corrosive ways on the union. In that regard Wilkinson wisely avoids the usual formula which would have the woman walk out on the husband who has rejected the way she interferes with his own celebrity but instead creates a masochistic wife who is ironically chewed out by her man for renouncing her gift.
There's a sharp story here, but what bogs down the movie is the lack of money. The project was shot in just nineteen days with a budget of under $200,000 which is less than one percent of the finances available to Mark Steven Johnson for the filming of "Daredevil." When you consider the restraints; the fact that the actors may not have been paid and that most of the funding seems to have gone into Ernst Kubitza's dazzling shots of the Cape in winter, "Dischord" is a neat bit of work. I would have liked to hear more of Lucian's New Age music. What we get here instead is the man's sitting at the keyboard, writing his chords on paper without actually playing them, seething at the noise that his brother Jimmy is making with Gypsy in the next room but is frustrated, rather, with Jimmy's apparent success in getting more of a rise out of Gypsy than he. The acting becomes overly melodramatic near the film's conclusion. What's more the performers seem uncomfortable with one another as though they had briefly met, were told that the shoot would be a quick one, and were left to their own devices to find chemistry.
Rated R. 102 minutes. Copyright 2003 by Harvey Karten at
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