Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek in "Affliction."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek Director: Paul Schraeder Rated: R, with profanity, strong violence Length: 114 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(Feb. 19, 1999) -- Seeds of violent despair have been deeply planted in Wade Whitehouse, a small-town New Hampshire cop. Relentlessly, they grow inside him. They are his Affliction.

They broke up his marriage, they mar his relationship with his girlfriend and they've driven a wedge between him and his 12-year-old daughter.

Wade (Nick Nolte) hungers for something -- anything -- to numb his pain. Perhaps that's why he lives amid the snowdrifts and whiteouts of this winter landscape.

Yet living in the same icy community is his spiteful, cruel father (James Coburn), whose long-term, virulent abuse is the source of Wade's anguish.

Both Nolte and Coburn have won well-deserved Oscar nominations for their roles.

Affliction is the latest film adaptation from a novel by Russell Banks, who also wrote The Sweet Hereafter, another moving exploration of damaged souls in a winter of discontent.

Affliction starts as a mystery. A wealthy weekend vacationer is shot while hunting deer. Since Wade's duties rarely extend beyond school crossings, he dives enthusiastically into the murder. Perhaps he senses salvation for his meager life.

Then Wade and his girlfriend, Margie (Sissy Spacek), drive out to the old family farm to visit his parents and are shocked to find his mother has died of exposure after his penny-pinching father refused to turn up the heat.

Leaving Margie to handle his father's household, Wade returns to the murder investigation. Soon, we see that the hunter's death may not be what we'd thought. It comes to mirror the complex, violent struggle within Wade.

Affliction is a challenging, highly impressionistic work. It has been astutely written and directed by Paul Schraeder, whose screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and his own Hardcore, show an affinity for damaged characters who revert to primordial violence.

Schraeder also gets the most out of his actors.

Coburn, in a career filled with dusty cowboys and sly spy spoofs, has never been given a part of such disturbing dramatic power. He's frighteningly believable.

Even more astonishing is Nolte, who brings to life Wade's doubt, anger, regret, feeble moments of hope and surrender to despair. Always an interesting actor, Nolte has never been better.

Affliction has own afflictions. The dreamlike narrative can be confusing, and the story's narrator (Willem Dafoe as Wade's big-city brother) seems superfluous.