When art strikes a nerve

Tonight I went to a screening of the film Anesthesia starring Sam Waterston.  Without giving too much away, at the center of the film is a senseless attack by a probably-homeless drug addict after a specific encounter between the attacker and the attacked.  On my way out of the screening, there was a probably-homeless drug addict who picked a fight (fight is the wrong word, since the guy's target was trying to ignore him) with an exiting audience member that eerily mirrored the lead-up to the attack in the film.  My friend who had accompanied me to the screening joked, "Is that guy with the production? Did they hire him? Are we in the film? Where's Sam Waterston?"  It was incredibly unsettling after watching that film to see the drug-fueled anger that had the very real and visceral potential to escalate to random unprovoked violence with tragic consequences in a second, just as it had in the film.

Which leads to my opinion of the film.  I was uncomfortable watching it.  Very uncomfortable.  I love everything Sam Waterston does, and his work here was no exception (and was supported by a wonderful ensemble including particularly beautiful work by Corey Stoll, Gretchen Mol, and Glenn Close), but I can't say there was much of the film I actually enjoyed watching.  It made me feel like the walls were closing in, and I guess it quite literally struck a nerve, as my discomfort turned physical when it actually gave me an incredibly annoying nerve/ muscle twitch over my rib-cage for most of the film that had me checking my pulse to make sure I wasn't having some sort of medical emergency.  Sitting there watching so many characters try to avoid fully engaging with life made me yearn for a breath of fresh air (which, much of the time, was thankfully what Gretchen Mol's character provided).  There's an episode of Homicide: Life On The Street my class watched in college in which [SPOILER ALERT] Vincent D'Onofrio's character is torn in half by a subway car as he's pushed between the car and the tracks during a rush hour commute.  He's alive for the duration of the episode, with the growing understanding that as soon as the subway car moves, he will die.  As he comes to grips with his situation, the police work fruitlessly to find his girlfriend (who is, unbeknownst to everyone, jogging right above them) so she can say goodbye.  The episode is incredibly harrowing (and, if I remember correctly, ends with a shot of the girlfriend running on the subway grate directly above the subway car as it's being removed from D'Onofrio's character's dead-any-second body), and while I thought it was one of the best hours of television I had ever seen, I also hated it and will never ever watch it again.  I couldn't get it out of my head, and I desperately wished I could.

When Anesthesia finished, my reaction wasn't so immediately "that was brilliant but I don't want to ever see it again," but it did remind me of my reaction to that episode of Homicide.  I had a difficult time separating my emotional (and apparently physical) reaction to it from whether I thought it was actually good.  Normally my enjoyment of a film correlates to my evaluation of it, but I realized that if someone asked me what I thought of the quality of this film, with the exception of the universally great acting performances, I would not know what to say.

And then I exited and witnessed the unsettlingly similar random explosion of hostility that mirrored the film's central action.  On the subway on my way home, I couldn't stop thinking about the film and, more specifically, how the interaction that led to the attack is a moment so similar to those that I have either witnessed or been a part of countless times since moving to New York.  The film was so uncomfortable because everyone and every situation (well, with the exception of that teenage brother/ sister sex conversation -- seriously, I thought the film was going to have an incest story line) was so real.  When I got home, I found myself wanting to talk about one aspect of it with my fiancé (who has not seen the film)… and then I wanted to talk about another part of it, and then another and another, while he smilingly kept saying, "you don't have to tell me the whole plot."...  But I did.  Because I needed to talk about the film I had just experienced.  In fact, rumbling around in my head was a comment Kristin Stewart’s character says at one point in the film….  She says she “craves” human interaction… and while mentally reviewing the film, I think that was exactly my need as well.
   
So I've decided it is in fact a very good film.  Because I'm writing about it at 1:45 am and have an intense need to discuss it.  And if that's not successful art, then what is?