Friday
14 August '09
FRAGMENTS aka WINGED CREATURES (2008)―On an ordinary day, in ordinary suburbia, in an ordinary diner, tragedy strikes with the same awful inexplicable suddenness of real-life. Five ordinary people, their lives forever changed when an ordinary man walks into the diner. An exiting customer unwittingly holds the door for him―pleasantries are exchanged—but this man is anything but ordinary, he is a deranged gunman, without motive, without warning he randomly opens fire on the patrons. In an instant, the perfectly ordinary day is transformed into something extraordinary.
This is the story of five people, five different lives inexplicably intertwined, forever changed by the slimmest of margins, by the cruelest twist of fate. Although the story is held together loosely by the initial central event, the film is quite literally fragmented, too little story; unequal screen time is devoted to each character. There is negligible character introduction, apart from a brief shot of Anne Hagen riding in a car; this makes it difficult for the audience to connect with the characters.
Out of all the tragic stories, I found young Anne’s (Dakota Fanning) the most dramatic. Losing her father in a random act of violence, the teenager has an epiphany as she turns her suffering over to god; Anne speaks to god, she proselytized with an evangelical religious zeal of her father’s heroic bravery. The truth however is far more tragic and lies bottled up inside of her. Dakota Fanning’s transition from child to young adult actress is well under way, with no foreseeable stumbles in the road. Dakota continues to demonstrate her mastery of her craft in the way she handles this particularly tricky performance.
The waitress, (Kate Beckinsale) reaction is the most realistic; Carla is a single mother who waits tables, who is too young and too pretty to be tied down by a constantly crying baby. Carla has various sexual liaisons with men as she neglects her baby. Esurient Carla eventually uses the baby as a flimsy excuse to make romantic overtures to Doctor Bruce. Unfortunately, for Carla, the doctor has troubles of his own and he is disinterested. On performance, Beckinsale's role is so commonplace that on the surface it offers little challenge. This makes her portrayal of the stressed-out mother even more convincing.
Poor Jimmy (Josh Hutcherson), Anne’s friend is consumed by his own domestic problems. Introverted and timid, he has a brother in a coma from action in the Iran War and his parents simply don’t understand him. He suffers probably the worse trauma as he has a gun pointed at his head as he and Anne cower under the table. What’s most poignant is when he desperately reaches out to Anne for friendship, whereas Anne in the grips of a religious fervor rebuffs him and instead calls upon him to witness her father’s heroic bravery. Jimmy alone knows the truth . . .
The true hero in this drama is Charlie, an unassuming driving school instructor (Forest Whitaker) who stands up and distracts the gunman, by all accounts he should have been fatally shot, but he escapes with just a scratch. Believing that luck is on his side, he launches into a desperate stint of compulsive gambling, falls in with loan sharks, and descends into a death spiral of yet even more frantic gambling. All the while, his daughter (Jennifer Hudson) is frantically searching for him. While Charlie’s story is not intended to provide comical relief or balance, it is comparatively lighter, and comes with a twist.
Doctor Bruce’s (Guy Pearce) situation is the most complex. By sheer happenstance, he exits the diner after buying a cup of coffee seconds before the shooting occurs. He even holds the door for the murderer, offering a pleasant “good morning.” His subsequent failure to save one of the victims sent to his hospital devastates him. Dr. Bruce finds himself troubled by his inability to save lives even though his colleague tells him that they are mere doctors not God. To compensate for his feeling of insecurity, he launches into a quixotic questionable treatment regiment for his wife’s migraines that causes more problems than it solves.
These are the questions acclaimed Australian director Rowan Woods attempts to answer in this engaging but ultimately unsatisfied Crash-style ensemble drama FRAGMENTS. “Winged Creatures” is indeed a bird that fails to fly―not quite a turkey, however, considering the prodigious talent involved this unfortunate movie never manages to soar above your average Lifetime drama.
FRAGMENTS (2008) ** ½
