Secret Window Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)March 10th, 2004
SECRET WINDOW
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: A-
Columbia Pictures
Directed by: David Koepp
Written by: David Koepp, novella "Secret Window, Secret Garden," by Stephen King
Cast: Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, Charles S. Dutton
Screened at: Loews Lincoln Sq., NYC, 3/9/04
Say what you want about the dangers of living in an urban jungle or the boredom of life in a provincial, bourgeois suburb. When it comes to downright danger, nothing competes with the out-of-the way rural retreats of the sort favored by writers like Stephen King and J.D. Salinger. Without neighbors to call upon for assistance when needed or an alert police force to comb the local limits regularly, anything can happen. Think of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." What gives the film its many frissons is that the principal character in David Koepp's "Secret Window," written by the director adapting a Stephen King novella, is a fellow living in a remote, upstate New York shack, so dilapidated that anyone can enter without so much as a wire cutter.
Yet when you hear that a psycho's motivation to do dastardly things is simply that he believes someone plagiarized and published a story he wrote, you may think, "Hmmm, writer? plagiarism? this sounds like a movie meant for a good indie company like Sony Film Classics." For a while, as Koepp goes about developing his characters, you're sure you must have wandered into an art house. Soon enough, the thrills begin, bloody action spread across the big screen, everything credible simply because director Koepp took the time to peer into the psyches of writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp), accuser John Shooter (John Turturro), Rainey's estranged wife Amy (Maria Bello), a big-city detective, Ken Karsch (Charles D. Dutton) sought by Rainey for protection because the local sheriff (Len Cariou) is an arthritic 70-year-old more interested in needlepoint than in investigations, and the real stealer the guy who captured the affections of Rainey's wife, Ted (Timothy Hutton).
Aided well by the signature soundtrack of the marvelous Philip Glass, photographer Fred Murphy pulls us in from the first moment with a close-up of Mort Rainey, sitting in his car, simmering and determined against the wishes of his alter ego to test his curiosity. He throws his wheels into reverse on a snowy night, rips a motel key from the wall, and opens the door to discover his wife in bed with the aforementioned Ted. After a violent scene to which we're taken back with just momentary, brilliantly illuminated flashbacks, Mort appears to accept reality by moving out though at the same time hesitant about signing the final divorce papers. Adding insult to injury particularly egregious since Mort literally demonstrates his inability to harm even a mouse he catches in his bathtub--a strange man with a wide-brimmed black hat, John Shooter, appears like a refugee from Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," demanding that Mort either own up to plagiarizing Shooter's story or better still, rewrite the ending using Shooter's own prose.
"Secret Window," which takes place mostly in upstate New York with parts in the wealthy Bronx section of Riverdale, was actually filmed in Quebec villages, particularly the town of Sacacomie on a lake of that name standing in for the fictitious Tashmore Lake. Not surprisingly, this is Johnny Depp's movie from start to finish, his character bearing an affection for the bottle and now particularly depressed and given to overlong, nightmare-invaded episodes of sleep. Anyone who has gone through a divorce can identify with the situation if the split is anything but amicable especially if the guy is being cuckolded. The writer goes through his days seeming not to care about much, wearing a moth-eaten bathrobe, talking only to his cataract-ridden mutt, frequently disconnecting his old-fashioned phone from its jack. Serious trouble erupts in a heretofore peaceful hideaway, yanking Rainey out of self-absorbed
melancholy.
The forty-year-old Kentucky born Johnny Depp, who in real life has been in trouble for inflicting damage to hotels, for troubled love affairs with actresses, and a moody aloofness (according to David Thomsen in his terrific "New Biographical Dictionary of Film"), often plays characters who are gentle, benign and nearly mystical. Though fond of indies (he has performed in such personal works as "Ed Wood," "Edward Scissorhands," and "Benny & Joon"), he is at home with blockbusters like "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Platoon." Though "Secret Window" is a big-screen choice, there's nothing conventional about a story involving the alleged theft not of Fort Knox but of a story which was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine some nine years ago, proof of which would supposedly end the threat to Depp's character and to the lives of his family members and friends.
We come away from this genuinely frightening picture with a greater appreciation of the kind of mental work good fiction writers must perform daily, whether in the mood or not, and the solitude that must be theirs for eight, ten, fifteen hours at a time when the novelists are either on a roll or so depressed with writer's block and family troubles that they make too much use of their comfortable sofas to take naps that last until mid-day.
Rated PG-13. 95 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
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