Thanks for the memories!

best movie i've ever seen.

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I read the novel a couple weeks ago and thought it was a masterpiece, couldn't put it down. The character of Wade Whitehouse and how he progressed from childhood to his 40s was masterfully related. So I just got the movie on Netflix. Ugh. The movie is SO rushed, with almost no back story whatsoever, that there is no logic behind how anyone acts. Nothing about his youth and how his high school sweetheart and he supported each other through their family issues, nothing about the 2 older brothers who died in the war, totally sugar coated the violent father (one smack in one flashback!), cut major plot points altogether. Basically where everything flowed and you could understand how he got to a point and you felt bad for him in the book, the movie he just seems nutty.Read the book, it is a rewarding, haunting experience that will stay with you. The movie is good actors trying their best but it is a mere shell of the source material.

"Affliction", based on the disturbing novel by Russell Banks, is a monumental "little" film. It's one of those independents that got overlooked by the public but not by the critics and certainly not by fans of the incomparable Nick Nolte. I won't give a lot of details or a plot summary since it's been done several times already."Affliction" is the story of how alcoholism is a disease some family members "catch" but all are affected by negatively in some way. James Coburn, family patriarch, has the disease. Nick Nolte, eldest son, catches it. And both Willem Dafoe, youngest son, and Mary Beth Hurt, wife, are affected by it. The wife is beaten into submission years before while the youngest son in scared to death of his father and as he says in the film, "I was a careful child and I became a careful adult" (explaining how one episode caused him to be very careful around his father and thus, it is now his role in life).But for this film, we are focusing on Nolte and Coburn who are so intense in this movie it is beyond belief that there was not a two-fer Oscar win for their performances. This is a father-son screen story for the ages worthy of a Greek tragedy. And as we join them at their current ages and the current stage of the battle, they are a frightening dynamic to watch.See the story in the Trivia section of the preparation conversation between the director Paul Schrader and Coburn. It is a true shame that we were not given the opportunity to see Coburn truly act more often. I always liked Coburn since he seemed likable but his career was a string of mainstream mediocrity in which he was punching a clock. This role shows us the depth of this man's talent that sadly Hollywood and he wasted with choices more like the embarrassing "Snow Dogs" than true acting vehicles such as this.For Nolte it was yet again another shaft by the Academy. People seem to be happy to equate Nolte's talent with the infamous mug shot that is so happily reprinted from a substance-related arrest. Why I do not know. I cannot think of another actor that I would lay down my money to see and know that am guaranteed my money's worth from his efforts at least. As someone mentioned in the comments, Tom Hanks (who also lost out on an Oscar in the same category losing to the lead role from the most insulting and disrespectful film made in many years, "Life is Beautiful"), would never have considered taking Nolte's role. Never. He is not going to take a role which contrasts with his "good guy" image and so we are treated to an endless stream of "average, nice guy wins" roles from him while Nolte, who takes more chances than any other actor in Hollywood, is continually ignored. This part is as skillfully crafted as his role in "Mother Night". You can see more of his talent in "Nightwatch" and more recently in "Off The Black", another small film he makes a big impact in. All ignored by the Academy.Nolte's skill makes his paranoid reactions to situations believable where other actors would make it comical or simply awkward. His anger and angst as well as his broken personality bursts out of the screen. Throughout this film his character PLEADS for help in every way he can without sacrificing that tough, leathery exterior that "real men" are supposed to have in this country (at least of that generation, that last generation it was expected of) and that his father holds up as the highest achievement any man can attain. But he is a broken man, broken deep inside where it is nearly impossible to repair and must start with a soul being opened up completely like a gutted, helpless fish which is not something men growing up in a situation like this can ever do, during or after (though honestly there is never an after ... it is always during ... and it is for the rest of your life). Nolte makes it all so real and genuine many comments on this board say he "must not be acting and must really be like this". I don't know Mr. Nolte personally and I am certain others saying this do not. It's just one more way of snubbing his immense and honest talent in favor of what the news media and the hammerheads on the internet would rather have you believe is the Nolte that matters, that is, that infamous mug shot.And what different "thing" does Nolte bring to every role? What makes the actor so unique? One thing I always notice is the walk, the gate of each character. In "Affliction" it is a rhythmic, self-assured stride as he is protecting what little of his insides there is left to try to save. But as the anger and the madness take him, the stride is hard, punching, and off-center.In "Off The Black", his stride is also off-center, physically with his right foot pointing out and his left foot pointing in as he angles through his uncertain life, uncertain of himself and his place in the world.I'm running out of room as I always do but Sissy Spacek and Willem Dafoe make big things of their smaller parts and flesh out the fun house mirror-feeling of the central figure's life that keeps us all off-balance to the sudden and brutal end.Schrader directs this group to a perfect film in my opinion. It builds to a deafening, disturbing crescendo in steady, well-timed measures. He was also overlooked for the Oscar for what is his best film since "American Gigolo".See this film. It cuts to the bone and then scrapes across the bone in a long slow draw.

Affliction, written and directed by the great Paul Schrader from a novel by Russell Banks, starts off like a story you've heard a thousand times. Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) is the sheriff of a small New Hampshire town. He's also a heavy drinker with an ex-wife who can't stand him and a daughter who spends her time pouting and asking to go home to her mother. One day a hunting "accident" leaves a wealthy businessman dead, and Wade sees this as his opportunity to prove his worth to his family, his town and himself. Under the hands of Schrader though, someone who has never taken the safe road as a filmmaker, this small town neo-noir thriller turns into a wrenching study of a deeply disturbed individual.What began as an intriguing mystery instead takes a descent into madness, unraveling this man and exposing the brutality that has long been dormant, waiting underneath the surface for the right circumstances to come about. Whitehouse is subtly picked apart by small disturbances, like a gnawing tooth ache and his ungrateful, unloving daughter, that Schrader intelligently weaves into this building sense of aggression and frustration. By the time his daughter refuses to get a Big Mac because her mother says it's bad for her, the audience is down to their last nerve the same way that Whitehouse is. It's an incredible display of bringing the viewer into the mind of it's main character, which builds to a final act that is shattering and terrifying.Schrader's script is immaculately staged here, the kind of intelligent writing where there isn't a single wasted moment. The first hour of the film is almost all character development, which services everything perfectly. It's all building the sense that things are coming to a dramatic climax, where every path, no matter how large or small, ultimately leads to one destination. As these minor distractions plague on him, Whitehouse continues his investigation into the death, but what takes a more center stage as the film progresses is his chaotic relationship with his father, portrayed by James Coburn. We start to see that it's this father/son dynamic that has made Whitehouse such a disturbed individual, his father being a terrifying bastard of a man who abused him as a child while he drank himself into short-tempered rages.In this dynamic, Affliction starts to become a study of what kind of impact that relationship can have on the development of a person, that can grow inside of him and change the course of who he is to become. Is Whitehouse a bad man at heart, or was he made that way by his father? He seems good when we first meet him, trying his hardest despite his character faults, but as he goes down this descent the audience is left to wonder if the father makes the man, if a different patriarch could have led him down a path much less dark. Coburn is a terrifying force here, a man who makes you uncomfortable from the moment he steps into the room. Even when he's not in a rage, you can feel it in the air, the fear that it can come at any moment. It's a palpable sensation that anyone with a short-tempered father can immediately relate to. Casting this man was a hard task for Schrader, as he had to find someone who could make the intimidating Nick Nolte quake in his boots, and there couldn't have been anyone more suited for the job than Coburn.Nolte's performance likewise is a work of art and takes us so thoroughly down this road to darkness that Whitehouse experiences. He makes you sympathize with him, perhaps even empathize as I most certainly did, which makes his explosion, his unbridled descent all the more wrenching. There's a scene where he lets loose, completely explodes on a tirade about how this town needs him, that is one of the most shockingly chilling moments I've experienced in some time. It leaves you unable to move, a towering display of machismo in the face of potential emasculation. This is what the film boils down to in a lot of ways, the things that make a man and what being a man really means.Interestingly, the story is told from the outside perspective of Whitehouse's brother Rolfe, played by the always great Willem Dafoe. Instead of having the story told through the eyes of Wade, instead we see it all as Rolfe looking back, filled with an eerie sense of remorse that he wasn't able to stop what was coming. Dafoe only appears physically on screen for about ten or fifteen minutes, but you can feel his presence looming over the picture the whole way through, as we occasionally hear him through voice-over. His intriguing voice captures the audience, giving Affliction a troubling, almost poetic neo-noir feel that broods while the characters explode. It's the perfect contrast to the towering work delivered by Schrader and his actors on screen. This is a shattering picture.

I went to a video store and bought Affliction for $10. I bought it home and I watched it with my grandmother. My grandmother did not like it, nor did I that much. But there were some good elements The acting was tops. James Coburn completely deserved his Oscar, Nick Nolte also deserved the nomination. In fact, the whole cast was brilliant. But, they were all unlikeable characters. There was a well written screenplay, but what was the point of it? The world wasn't depressing enough? I did not like Affliction and I was surprised to see how many on this website did. So I file this title under "Not For Every Taste".Affliction: ** out of ****. Rated R for Extremely Depressing Subject Matter & Language.