Stoker (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Stoker |
| Original title | Stoker |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2013 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Park Chan-wook |
| script | Wentworth Miller |
| production |
Ridley Scott Tony Scott Michael Costigan |
| music | Clint Mansell |
| camera | Chung Chung-hoon |
| cut | Nicolas De Toth |
| occupation | |
| |
Stoker is an American Psycho - Thriller of the South Korean director Park Chan-wook , with Mia Wasikowska , Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman in the lead roles.
action
On India Stoker's 18th birthday, her father Richard is killed in a car accident. During his funeral, her mysterious Uncle Charlie appears, about whose existence she did not know anything until then. He gets it into his head to live with India and her mother Evelyn to help them deal with the loss of Richard.
The domestic servant Mrs. McGarrick disappears without a trace after a conversation with Charlie and is only later found dead in the freezer in the basement by India. The killer seems to be Charlie and when a little later his and Richard's aunt Gin comes to visit and Evelyn wants to clear up Charlie's past in a conversation, he also murders her with his belt.
At a later point in time, India has to deal with the teasing of some classmates and when Chris Pitt, who is particularly harassing her, tries to hit her, she stabs him in the hand with a pencil. When another classmate, Whip, shows up, it turns out that he seems to be on India's side. The other students leave, but India also rejects Whip and leaves. The following evening, watching Charlie and her mother grow closer, India escapes to a nearby diner where she meets Whip. Both go into the forest where they get closer until India bites him and makes it clear that she does not want to continue. Whip doesn't give up and tries to rape her when India's uncle Charlie suddenly shows up and ties Whip up. A fight ensues in which Charlie Whip finally breaks his neck with his belt. They both bury the dead body in the garden and India masturbates in the shower at the thought of Whip's murder.
While cleaning up Richard's study, India finds a drawer with letters from Charlie addressed to her. In the letters he documents his travels through the world, which he has already mentioned many times. However, India also notes that all the documents were sent from a mental hospital. Confronted with this, Charlie tells her about his past: As a child, Charlie murdered his and Richard's brother Jonathan, because he was jealous that Richard paid more attention to his little brother. Charlie did the deed by burying Jonathan alive in a sand pit. Then he lay down on the sand to make the counterpart to a "snow angel". Since India also does this in an earlier scene on their bed, this can be interpreted as an indication of a common mental illness. As a result, Charlie was sent to a mental hospital for several years and was only released on India's 18th birthday at his own request. Richard therefore went to the institution that day to pick up his brother and asked Charlie to stay away from his family in exchange for a car, money, and an apartment in New York. Charlie, however, who felt betrayed and hurt by Richard's behavior, beat his brother to death with a stone and staged the car accident.
At first, India seems to forgive Charlie for his deeds after providing Sheriff Howard with a lied alibi for the night of Whip's murder. He wants to go to New York with her and she seems to be getting involved. However, when he tries to strangle Evelyn, who seems to have discovered Richard's murder, with his belt and wants India to watch him, she shoots him with the rifle that she uses on many hunting trips with her father always used. She buries his body in the garden and leaves the property in Charlie's car the next morning without the knowledge of her mother, who finally wakes up in the house alone. When she exceeds the speed limit on the street, Sheriff Howard stops her and asks her why she is in such a hurry. She just replies that she wanted to get his attention and stabs him in the neck with the pruning shears Charlie used before. The sheriff, seriously injured, flees into the field next to the road where India kills him with her rifle. Parts of this last scene could be seen at the very beginning of the film. In addition, the madness that Charlie was suffering from seems to be manifesting in India as well.
background
The film brought in the budget of 12 million dollars worldwide. Stoker is one of the last films that Tony Scott co-produced before his suicide .
In the basic constellation around a seemingly intact family, in whose life the opaque Uncle Charlie suddenly enters, there are clear parallels to Alfred Hitchcock's film In the Shadow of Doubt from 1943.
Reviews
“In the best case, this is about the American fascination for violence, a topic that US cinema has already worked on in infinite variations. Stoker cannot add anything new to this. And so the film ends in a somewhat stale genre exercise that is beautiful to watch. But for the first time, parks magical images seem like dazzling stall magic. "
“Since Brian De Palma with his Carrie , nobody has dared to turn the tumultuous transition from girl to woman so highly symbolically on the outside - and that was almost forty years ago [...] For example, India drifts over with a boy to which she feels drawn, at night over a children's playground. And Park Chan Wook uses this standardized turntable, which can be found in every park around the corner, for a truly magical shift in perspective [...] Anyone who can overcome reality with such ease, with the simplest possible means - is rightly called Master venerated. "
“His special charm lies [...] less in the plot than in the fact that he draws his audience into a dream that imperceptibly turns into a nightmare. Except that you hardly want to wake up from it: its setting with the remote villa in the country is too beautiful, its strong colors too fascinating, its back and forth between the figures, who, gently guided by the hand of a player, move like a puppet through remote scenes . "
“Stoker is a feast for the eyes, but the severity of the rigid Hollywood codes overshadows the author's individuality. You have to translate the Americanisms first, and that takes a while. "
“All of the sophistication a thriller should have is finally eliminated by the script with bursting suggestive power. […] In fact, 'Stoker', for being so blatantly inspired by the works of Hitchcock, becomes an antithesis of the Master of Suspense, in that he robs the film of all threats in an exaggerated tone instead of delicately demanding the mysterious. "
“With Stoker, Park Chan-wook has made an excellent film debut in the English-speaking world. Sometimes the visual metaphors may be a little too much of a good thing, but the eerie mood, which the filmmaker knows how to stage without excessive excesses of violence, is sustained almost every minute of this horror thriller. "
Web links
- Stoker in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for stoker . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2014 (PDF; test number: 136 641 V).
- ↑ Stoker . Box Office Mojo. Retrieved June 21, 2013.
- ↑ Arnold Schnötzinger: "Stoker": Thriller in Hitchcock-style. orf.at, May 7, 2013, accessed on August 11, 2014 .
- ↑ Oliver Kaever: Horror film "Stoker": The magic of violence . Spiegel Online from May 6, 2013.
- ↑ Tobias Kniebe: Something is slumbering there . Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 9, 2013.
- ↑ Jan Schulz-Ojala: Beautiful nightmares . The Tagesspiegel from May 6, 2013.
- ^ Josef Lommer: film review . Critic.de of April 25, 2013.
- ↑ Stefanie Schneider: From inspiration, to adaptation, to destruction . CEREALITY - magazine for film culture . May 20, 2013. Retrieved October 3, 2013.
- ↑ Thomas Zimmer: Stoker - The Innocence Ends: Film Review . Serienjunkies.de . May 9, 2013. Accessed June 10, 2019.