TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Film review: Ryan Reynolds listens to 'The Voices'
Pet whisperer: Ryan Reynolds provides voices for his characterâs pets, Mr
Change Size
Pet whisperer: Ryan Reynolds provides voices for his character's pets, Mr. Whiskers the cat and Bosco the dog.
Ryan Reynolds is a sensitive, young psychopath whose pets make him do bad things in The Voices.
Open in a small American town, a busy factory, a man in a pink jumpsuit ' it's Reynolds, named Jerry, at his daily job preparing bathtubs for delivery.
Jerry's boss asks him to officiate at the seasonal party committee. No one goes to office parties willingly, and Jerry's eager acquiescence is clue number one to his craziness.
Clues two and three are his concerned psychiatrist, Dr. Warren, and his pets, with whom he has conversations after work.
Usually horror films follow the victims. But The Voices keeps distance with Jerry's far away stare. He's our subject, slightly askew, an awkward fast talker that frightens with kindness: Jerry's scary because he's sweet and well-intentioned.
When Jerry tells his psychiatrist he wants to ask fellow party-planner Fiona on a date, Dr. Warren encourages him, provided that he's taking his medication, which staves off the voices that his mother, too, heard. This begins the tragic backstory. Childhood for Jerry was no bed of roses.
He takes his inheritance in the form of Mom's internal monologues ('Mom-ologues'), which take the form of his pets: Mr. Whiskers the cat and Bosco the dog. All these voices are Reynolds' own and the Canadian actor manages an impressive range between the Scottish feline and American Mastiff, the comedy and the killing.
The Voices was hailed as a 'black comedy,' which is usually code for bad taste, and some critics dismissed it as schizophrenic. Yet The Voices is appropriately polyphonic; it jerks you around emotionally, scenically and tonally ' it's a bit like being inside Jerry's head.
Party-planning becomes a party becomes a conga line ('like on a cruise ship,' says Jerry's crush, Fiona, an incongruously-placed Brit). Jerry asks Fiona on a date, she stands him up, she flags him down ' caught outside a bar in the rain. They go driving to some greasy spoon diner and Jerry, for 'fun,' asks her the names of three biblical angels. 'Michael, Gabriel, and ' Lucifer!' The truck slams into a deer which, now a hood ornament, asks Jerry (via his voices) to end its pain. He does. Fiona goes running; Jerry follows falls, and stabs Fiona with a knife. He asks if she's in pain. She is.
It's a grisly scene. Characters throughout the movie are pained as a consequence or premonition of Jerry's voices.
Mr. Whiskers encourages Jerry's killings while Bosco expresses disappointment. These exchanges are funny, and so are other surreal scenes, like the conga line and hip dialogue. ('If I untapped you we're gonna get on the fast road to mental health!' Jerry says to Dr. Warren.)
But some viewers might ask if it's appropriate that The Voices make light of murder and mental health. Others might wonder if director Marjane Satrapi knew the kind of film she wanted to craft ' comedy, horror, thriller, satire.
But these scene-shifts give fidelity to The Voices' vision. The film's crazy because Jerry is. Rarely do movies manage this kind of structural integrity.
And always there's a tinge of bitterness, like the hangover of Jerry's delusions, also known as reality. As Jerry continues his killings we glean more of his sad life-story. Some of these details are maudlin ' 'I'd make believe the stars are my friends' ' while others, like the tattoos sprouting beneath his bathrobe, conjure new complexity.
The audience is torn between sympathy and antipathy, and the Voices' voices ring true with the extremes of today.
Photos courtesy of 1984 Private Defense Contractors
________________________
The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post
_______________________
The VOICES
Director: Marjane Satrapi
Producer: Adi Shankar
Script: Michael R. Perry
Run time: 103 min
Production company: 1984 Private Defense Contractors
Pet whisperer: Ryan Reynolds provides voices for his character's pets, Mr. Whiskers the cat and Bosco the dog.
