This film is going to upset many of its viewers. Most people go into a movie with some expectation that it's going to get set up in the first few minutes to tell a certain kind of story, and stick with it. Exceptions might occur in some "art" movies - but this doesn't seem very artsy - or a thriller; there's nothing thriller-like here at all in fact - until halfway through, when it all changes 180 degrees.
Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is a 40is struggling singer playing a small coastal city in Alaska. At the beginning of the film she's at an outdoor wedding and she happens to break up with her boyfriend, a member of the band she's singing with, and needs a ride home which she gets from Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) a somewhat older man who works for the lesbian couple that own the house where the wedding takes place. The low-key Joe and the more aggressive Donna form an uneasy friendship, that uneasily leads to a romance complicated by the fact that Donna's introverted teen-aged daughter Noelle (Vanessa Martinez) also has a crush on Joe, who she sometimes works with.
So this is a low-key drama about working-class people struggling and finding love in a remote town, right? There are several scenes set in a bar where Donna finds work after leaving her band, lots of dialogue about how tough the fishing is, how rough things are now that a canning plant has closed down - there are a couple of brief shots of the factory, cleaning up for a last time. We have Kris Kristofferson playing his typical menacing but charming adversary in the background, involved some way in Joe's questionable past; a sort of love-triangle, a difficult mother-daughter relationship, and the uneasy situation he finds himself in when his much-younger half-brother Bobby (Casey Siemaszko) shows up needing help with a little job...
At this point, as Joe and Donna and Noelle accompany Bobby on a boat trip to a remote island, the uneasiness starts to build - what exactly is Bobby up to? Why is he upset that Joe is bringing the two women along - but unwilling to tell him not to? On their first night, anchored in a small bay, we find the answer to these questions but they bring on more problems that carry through to the end of the film. Soon Joe, Donna and Noelle are stranded on the island, fending off starvation, cold -- and the possibility of murder. The low-key family/romantic drama has become a frightening survival-thriller with no easy or positive outcome in sight.
So we have one kind of film that quickly and surprisingly changes into another kind, but what is really remarkable about Limbo is that there's a third film lurking beneath the surface from the first moments to the last, that really makes itself known only near the very end - unless you're sharper at noticing what's going on beneath the pretty blunt and sometimes stereotypical dialogue and characters than I was on a first go-round. "Limbo" is about the very nature of storytelling, in all its forms - lying, exaggeration, the tricks that memories play, the stories we're told that end up being lies, and the lies we tell ourselves. In an old abandoned shack on the island, Noelle finds a hundred-year old diary, and reads from it every night for the couple of weeks the trio are stranded. The diary recounts hardships and privations, and joys at the wonder of nature; it also carries sometimes-subtle reflections of Noelle's feelings about her mother, reflected back when Noelle is informed that the stories she was told about her biological father have all been false. The revelations in the last few minutes, when we think about what they have to say about the characters we are watching now, on this little island, say just as much to us about the conversations and flashes of earlier histories that we've heard throughout the film, and we begin to question where and with whom real truth ever lies - and whether it matters as much as the stories we choose to tell, and the ways in which we embellish those truths, for good or ill.
I have some problems with "Limbo" that I tend to have with a lot of Sayles' films - many of the characters seem to be...characters; much of the dialogue is wooden and sounds written; many of the little touches he throws in (Noelle being vegan and her penchant for self-mutilation) seem obvious and generic. But the central performances are all so excellent (particularly Martinez, whose career seems to have alas gone nowhere), and the ending so elegant and so miraculous in its achievement of wrapping everything into a grand and beautiful inquiry into the power of myth-making and storytelling, that I can largely forgive the faults. Overall, a brilliant film with one of the very best endings I've ever seen.
Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is a 40is struggling singer playing a small coastal city in Alaska. At the beginning of the film she's at an outdoor wedding and she happens to break up with her boyfriend, a member of the band she's singing with, and needs a ride home which she gets from Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn) a somewhat older man who works for the lesbian couple that own the house where the wedding takes place. The low-key Joe and the more aggressive Donna form an uneasy friendship, that uneasily leads to a romance complicated by the fact that Donna's introverted teen-aged daughter Noelle (Vanessa Martinez) also has a crush on Joe, who she sometimes works with.
So this is a low-key drama about working-class people struggling and finding love in a remote town, right? There are several scenes set in a bar where Donna finds work after leaving her band, lots of dialogue about how tough the fishing is, how rough things are now that a canning plant has closed down - there are a couple of brief shots of the factory, cleaning up for a last time. We have Kris Kristofferson playing his typical menacing but charming adversary in the background, involved some way in Joe's questionable past; a sort of love-triangle, a difficult mother-daughter relationship, and the uneasy situation he finds himself in when his much-younger half-brother Bobby (Casey Siemaszko) shows up needing help with a little job...
At this point, as Joe and Donna and Noelle accompany Bobby on a boat trip to a remote island, the uneasiness starts to build - what exactly is Bobby up to? Why is he upset that Joe is bringing the two women along - but unwilling to tell him not to? On their first night, anchored in a small bay, we find the answer to these questions but they bring on more problems that carry through to the end of the film. Soon Joe, Donna and Noelle are stranded on the island, fending off starvation, cold -- and the possibility of murder. The low-key family/romantic drama has become a frightening survival-thriller with no easy or positive outcome in sight.
So we have one kind of film that quickly and surprisingly changes into another kind, but what is really remarkable about Limbo is that there's a third film lurking beneath the surface from the first moments to the last, that really makes itself known only near the very end - unless you're sharper at noticing what's going on beneath the pretty blunt and sometimes stereotypical dialogue and characters than I was on a first go-round. "Limbo" is about the very nature of storytelling, in all its forms - lying, exaggeration, the tricks that memories play, the stories we're told that end up being lies, and the lies we tell ourselves. In an old abandoned shack on the island, Noelle finds a hundred-year old diary, and reads from it every night for the couple of weeks the trio are stranded. The diary recounts hardships and privations, and joys at the wonder of nature; it also carries sometimes-subtle reflections of Noelle's feelings about her mother, reflected back when Noelle is informed that the stories she was told about her biological father have all been false. The revelations in the last few minutes, when we think about what they have to say about the characters we are watching now, on this little island, say just as much to us about the conversations and flashes of earlier histories that we've heard throughout the film, and we begin to question where and with whom real truth ever lies - and whether it matters as much as the stories we choose to tell, and the ways in which we embellish those truths, for good or ill.
I have some problems with "Limbo" that I tend to have with a lot of Sayles' films - many of the characters seem to be...characters; much of the dialogue is wooden and sounds written; many of the little touches he throws in (Noelle being vegan and her penchant for self-mutilation) seem obvious and generic. But the central performances are all so excellent (particularly Martinez, whose career seems to have alas gone nowhere), and the ending so elegant and so miraculous in its achievement of wrapping everything into a grand and beautiful inquiry into the power of myth-making and storytelling, that I can largely forgive the faults. Overall, a brilliant film with one of the very best endings I've ever seen.