Jack undergoes
treatment in ‘the jacket’.
LOVE
AND
DEATH
the jacket
TACKLING TWO OF THE GREAT THEMES, JOHN MAYBURY’S NEW FILM, THE JACKET - FEATURING POWERFUL
PERFORMANCES BY ADRIEN BRODY AND
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY AT THE CENTRE OF A STELLAR CAST - TAKES ITS CENTRAL CHARACTERS AND ITS AUDIENCE INTO UNCHARTED TERRITORY.
NICK RODDICK REPORTS.
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The Jacket is a disturbing, often relentless but ultimately uplifting story about a number of issues which pretty much sum up the state we’re all in, 21 years on from George Orwell’s dystopian 1984. It is also a very impressive and unusual piece of cinema.
Directed by John Maybury (Love Is the Devil) from a screenplay by Tehran-born, Orange County-raised, Massy Tadjedin and a story by Tom Bleecker and Marc Rocco, The Jacket encompasses a variety of themes. These include the aftermath of the (first) Gulf War; the problems of dysfunctional families; experimental and intrusive ways of treating mental illness; the disregard of the justice system for anyone it can’t physically punish; and, above all, the redeeming power of love - all fused together by a brave and mesmerising performance from Adrien Brody, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of the title role in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist.
“Adrien isn’t your archetypal heroic leading man,” says Maybury, “but what he brings is an interesting, enigmatic quality to the role. And because he’s not the stereotypical hero, there’s more of an edge and more danger to that character, which makes the character’s silences much richer and denser. It’s what he doesn’t say that’s interesting.”
Brody plays Jack Starks, who suffers from trauma-induced amnesia after being shot in the head during Operation Desert Storm, and who finds himself confined in a hospital for the criminally insane as a result of being in the wrong place - a road in rural Vermont - at the wrong time, when a young fugitive who has given him a lift abruptly guns down a police officer.
It is the kind of script that actors and film-makers dream of. And yet, like so many such movies, The Jacket almost fell prey to negative serendipity in the early stages of planning.
Developed by Mandalay Pictures, headed by producer and former studio chief Peter Guber, the film’s ultimate form stems from a partnership with Section Eight, and the determination on the part of that company’s owners, George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, to give a number of experimental and innovative film-makers the chance to make a mainstream Hollywood movie - much as Soderbergh himself, having cut his cinematic teeth on films like sex, lies and videotape and King of the Hill, eventually found himself directing Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s 12.
Soderbergh, recalls Maybury, “said he wanted to bring film-makers like myself, Todd Haynes, Harmony Korine - who are kind of on the fringes, not just of mainstream film-making but on the fringes of independent film-making - and to bring us into the mainstream, to give us access to Hollywood studios, star actors and stuff like that. It seemed like an incredibly attractive proposition.”
But it was a proposition that Soderbergh almost didn’t get the chance to put to Maybury, who quite simply didn’t believe that the voice on the other end of the phone really was the Hollywood director. In the end, Soderbergh had to fly to London to convince him.
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