52 Films by Women Vol 4. 40. A VIGILANTE (Director: Sarah Daggar-Nickson)
Olivia Wilde conquered television in several seasons of House,
the medical diagnosis drama starring Hugh Laurie that ran at least two seasons
too long – when Gregory House drove through a wall, I was lost. Then she
transitioned to movies, with supporting roles in Tron: Legacy and Cowboys and Aliens. Then
she turned to directing: her 2019 debut feature, Booksmart, a broad comedy
about two nerdy high school students who decide to party on the night before
graduation (why not after – because it needs an ending) is currently in cinemas
and has grossed $16.2 million dollars in the US alone after 14 days of release,
not bad for a film without stars – Lady Bird took thirty-one days to
reach that figure. Last year, Wilde went full Edward Woodward.
Woodward became a big star in the US as The Equalizer, a
vigilante who got justice for people who had none – equalling up the scales,
see. Sadie, Wilde’s character in the film, A Vigilante, written and directed by
Australian-born, New York City-based Sarah Daggar-Nickson, does the same thing.
A victim of an extreme form of domestic violence – her husband (Morgan Spector)
killed their son Cody and slashed Sadie’s back several times - Sadie advertises
her services informally. Abused woman can call her number. If they begin with
the words, ‘I’m looking out the window, and the trucks won’t stop coming’, she will
answer, if only to correct their grammar, ‘it’s looking out of the window’.
Invariably wearing a wig or changing her hair colour, Sadie
arrives at the house wearing black leather gloves. She’ll tell the abused wife
to go to another room. She will make a demand of the abusive husband: ‘you will
sign over the house and three quarters of your savings to your wife. Then you
will leave. If you try to hurt her or the children, I will kill you.’ The man
will laugh. Then Sadie gets to work.
Daggar-Nickson doesn’t show Sadie inflict the blows that
will force men to do as she says. She does not want to make pleasurable the
visual spectacle of Olivia Wilde kicking backsides. We see the afters: a man in
a suit with a bruised face signing a form, then phoning his bank in a quiver to
arrange the transfer. We see Sadie’s
afters: the bloodied knuckles, the trip to the gym, punching the heavy bag,
over and over. She traces a drawing, a doodle, really, that she keeps pristine
in plastic. She screams, a wrench of pain, as if in permanent child birth. She
goes to a bar to drink whiskey, although she would be better off buying a
bottle and drinking alone.
The film – at least the first two thirds - is interspersed
with scenes of Sadie at group, listening to stories of abuse, how the women had
their sense of self taken away from them. These are women who escaped. They had
undertaken ‘the leaving moment’, words handwritten, something women are asked
to relive, as it defines them taking back control of their lives.
At first, the drama appears to be sequential, as if Sadie
returned to group in between meting justice. In fact, the group scenes are
flashbacks. Sadie is combing a vast area of forest, which she shades on a map.
We don’t see her doing this, but she’s searching for her husband. As he has not
been declared dead, she cannot collect on his life insurance. Even if he were,
wouldn’t she be suspected of murder? Insurance companies are not charities.
We see three instances of Sadie ending domestic abuse. In
the second, the man is bound and gagged in the family home. The wife wants to
give Sadie more money, but she won’t take it. ‘I wish I didn’t have to ask,’
she says, apologetically. In the third instance, Sadie knocks on the door of a
house. A young boy answers. ‘I saw you in the store,’ Sadie explains. ‘I
thought you needed help.’ The boy lets Sadie in. The mother, the perpetrator of
abuse, is lying on the sofa. Sadie pours a saucepan of water on her midriff.
That wakes her up. When the mother fights back, Sadie slams her again a door
frame. She finds a key and frees another child, who has been kept prisoner. She
tells the boy, the freed one, that they’ll be taken into care but if he gets
into trouble he is to give her a call. ‘Why can’t we come with you?’ the boy
asks reasonably. ‘You wouldn’t be safe,’ Sadie explains. Plus it’s like totally
illegal. The boy doesn’t Malala her (see Booksmart).
About that ill-advised lone drink in a bar: Sadie is asked
by the bearded barman, ‘where do I get my forty per cent?’ (This is a reference
to the hit of alcohol.) ‘I just came here for a drink,’ Sadie responds. Walking
back to her car, she is attacked by two men. Sadie fights back and leaves them
reeling. ‘Don’t do that again,’ she hisses. She is an expert in Krav Maga, a
form of self defence developed for the Israel Defence Forces, combining
wrestling, boxing, judo, aikido and karate moves, basically ‘attack is the best
form of defence’. We see her (in a flashback) pick up a paperback Krav Maga
manual – it is quite thick – and bend it as if about to tear in half. However,
Sadie is no book burner.
About two-thirds of the way through, the film’s rhythm
changes: Sadie looks at her shaded map and notices a spot in the centre, like
blood. Then she is knocked unconscious. It is the strike back that we
anticipate – obviously there are a lot of abusive husbands who want vengeance –
but the perpetrator is not who we expect.
In the last third of the film, generic contrivance kicks in.
To get free having been bound with duct tape to a chair and left alone whilst
her attacker goes out to get food, Sadie digs her nail into a vein and bleeds.
Then she has pulled a real nail out which she uses to cut the tape. I know what
you’re thinking: huh? I think she somehow pulls the nail out of the chair, not
that she has one secreted in her arm. At any rate, incredulity is elicited. She
attacks him unsuccessfully. I don’t think her heart is in it. He pisses her off
by tearing up her son’s picture. He also smashes one of her hands. Somehow she
flees and runs to a bunker that has a trampoline that she uses to block the
entrance. While inside, she binds up her injured arm. In the end she faces her
attacker across an empty swimming pool, describing his twisted need. Then she
rushes him.
Logic will tell you how this should end up. However, this is
the movies, a world where the death of people with long charge sheets (list of
felonies) isn’t investigated, even on the insistence of the insurance company.
It is a world in which a person can stride purposefully with a black briefcase
before the credits roll.
A Vigilante isn’t entertainment. It cannot offer catharsis. No
amount of money – even if paid – can make up for the loss of a child. It
describes a social problem without really suggesting how it should be stopped,
or even what is at the root of male violence against women (gratification
through the use of power). It does not suggest how love and trust can be
repaired. It does say that the vigilante urge is a mask for something else:
pain. We know this from the Batman movies. It says that women
can acquire the strength to fight back, that men should accept responsibility
for their actions. It also suggests that the subject cannot be tackled without
resorting to B-movie dialogue.
Wilde is the reason to see the film, portraying a committed,
complex woman living in a world of pain. There is an irony: just as she
delivers her best screen performance to date, Wilde has stepped behind the
camera. A Vigilante suggests that cinema’s attempt to show powerful,
physically confident women on screen is still a work in progress. But then
Sadie’s confidence can only co-exist with pain.
Reviewed at the Kiln
Cinema, Kilburn, North West London, Friday 7th June 2019, 18:00
screening
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