The Owl's Cry (2009)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The owl's cry |
| Original title | The Cry of the Owl |
| Country of production |
UK , France , Germany , USA , Canada |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jamie Thraves |
| script | Jamie Thraves |
| production |
Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre , Malte Grunert , Jennifer Kawaja , Julia Sereny , Sytze van der Laan |
| music | Jeff Danna |
| camera | Luc Montpellier |
| cut | David Charap |
| occupation | |
| |
The Owl's Cry is a film drama and thriller based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith . Jamie Thraves directed the 2009 US - Canadian - German - British - French coproduction with Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles in the lead roles.
This is the third adaptation of Highsmith's novel after the French feature film by Claude Chabrol and the German television production by Tom Toelle (both from 1987, also as The Owl's Scream ).
action
The divorced engineer Robert Forrester spies on the young Jenny Thierolf because for him she symbolizes the harmony that his own life lacks. One evening Jenny discovers him, but instead of reporting him, she invites him to her house, where they talk.
Shortly afterwards, Jenny, who considers the meeting with Robert to be a sign of fate, breaks her engagement to the hot-headed Greg. Her decision is met with incomprehension among her friends. It invades Robert's life, waiting for him in front of his apartment or his place of work. Robert, who is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with Jenny's advances, hopes that a prospective promotion and transfer will provide the necessary spatial distance.
One evening, Greg Robert's car brakes on a country road and beats him. Despite Greg's physical superiority, Robert manages to knock his opponent unconscious, who falls into a nearby river. Robert pulls the unconscious man out of the water and leaves him on the bank.
When Greg is reported missing, the police interrogate Robert because they do not rule out death through negligence or intent. To make matters worse, his wife Nickie told the police that Robert once threatened them with a gun during their marriage. According to a report in the newspaper, Roberts' announced promotion is withdrawn, a close work colleague distant him, and Greg's father attacks him on the street. A body is found in the river that police believe may be Greg's dead body, but identification is slow due to the advanced state of decomposition. Eventually Jenny commits suicide believing that Robert is a harbinger of doom in her life. Shortly before that, you hear the owl's cry, which gives the film its name. In her suicide note, she writes that she and Robert met after he stalked her. Roberts landlord gives him notice of the apartment.
Socially isolated and released from work, Robert meets a widower from the neighborhood who offers to move in with him. A stranger, whom Robert believes he recognizes Greg, fires a pistol through the apartment window and seriously injures the neighbor. Robert is placed under police protection. Shortly thereafter, Greg is arrested; he betrays Nickie as the instigator of the idea of going into hiding to get Robert into trouble.
Robert decides to move out of town. He visits Jenny's vacant house one last time. There he meets Nickie and the drunk Greg, who has been released on bail. Nickie tries to persuade Robert to name Greg as the sole culprit to the police, but he refuses. At this moment Greg receives a call from his father, who informs him that the widower who was shot died of his wound and that Greg is now a murderer. In a rage, Greg attacks Robert with a knife. He can knock Greg out of action, but Nickie is injured in the argument by Greg's knife. Robert tries to help Nickie, who is bleeding profusely from her throat, but then dies. With a bloodstained hand, Robert stares at the bloody knife lying on the floor and thinks about picking it up and making himself a suspect in a supposed crime. Then "the owl's cry" sounds again to guide fate, as it did shortly before Jenny's suicide. The last picture shows him in a shot from the outside, through the window of Jenny's house - a reminiscence of the first pictures in the film, in which Robert watched Jenny through the window.
Film and novel
The film is based close to the original, but allows itself some changes in the details, including added or removed secondary characters. The figure of Nickie's new husband, the pale Ralph Jurgen, is missing. While in the film Robert learns at the police station that Greg is still alive, in the book he receives this information from Ralph (whereupon Robert calls the police). The argument between Robert, Greg and Nickie at the end does not take place in Jenny's house, but in Robert's apartment. The repeated reference to the Louis Armstrong song A Kiss to Build a Dream On is also an invention of the filmmakers.
The title of both the book and the film refers to Jenny's idea that the events in her life are predetermined by fate and announced in advance: the owl is as much a herald of death for her as the appearance of an unknown man in her childhood, the the death of her younger brother followed, and Robert, who represents her own approaching death in the course of the plot.
Patricia Highsmith's former partner Marijane Meaker stated in an interview that the author had drawn the figure of Nickie as a kind of "accounting" based on her (Meakers) model.
background
The Owl's Cry was created between October and December 2007 in the Canadian province of Ontario . The film was released directly on DVD or Blu-ray Disc in most countries . The few exceptions were France and Canada, where the film received a (limited) theatrical release from August 19, 2009 and May 21, 2010 respectively. The German DVD and Blu-ray were released in June 2009.
reception
“The British director and author Jamie Thraves, who previously made music videos, creates concentrated and elegant, sparse images that have something anticipatory about them [...] but ultimately it's the kind of technically competent, deliberately slower, grim nightmare that leaves you rather cold grab one. ”- Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
"No trace of tension [...] Director Jamie Thraves, who also wrote the script, fails to bring out the many fascinating aspects of the novel." - Bruce DeMara, Toronto Star
“Atmospheric psychological thriller with good actors, whose latent tension is fed by the ambiguity of its characters.” - Lexicon of international film
“Jamie Thraves staged the perfidious game of disturbed souls with a psychological feel and skillfully plays with the expectations of the audience.” - Cinema
Web links
- The Cry of the Owl in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Certificate of Release for The Owl's Scream . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2009 (PDF; accessed on February 24, 2018).
- ↑ Helena de Bertodano: A passion that turned to poison - Article in The Telegraph, June 16, 2003, accessed December 8, 2011.
- ↑ The Owl's Cry in the Internet Movie Database .
- ↑ Press release ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. for the German DVD publication on Zehnachtzig.de , accessed on December 8, 2011.
- ^ "British writer-director Jamie Thraves, who hails from music videos, works up a crisp, elegantly foreboding visual bleakness […] but, overall, it's the kind of technically proficient, deliberately paced, grim sleepwalk that leaves one cold rather than cracked open. ”- Review in the Los Angeles Times , March 12, 2010.
- ↑ "A far cry from suspenseful […] director Jamie Thraves, who wrote the screenplay, fails to draw out the novel's many intriguing elements." - Review in the Toronto Star , May 20, 2010.
- ^ The Cry of the Owl in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed December 7, 2011.
- ↑ Review on Cinema.de , accessed on December 8, 2011.
