The killer inside me can the violence be justified

The Killer Inside Me: can the violence be justified? | Film | The Observer 14/06/2010 15:03

The Killer Inside Me: can the violence
be justified?
Its savage and protracted depictions of women being beaten have
made Michael Winterbottom's adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel
about a psychopathic killer the most divisive film of the year. The
director has said that he wants people to see sexual assault for
what it is - 'horrible, nasty, ugly and pointless'. Here, two critics, a
writer and an actor give their opinion on whether the film's
violence is excessive

Mark Kermode, Romola Garai, Anna Smith, Nicci Gerrard
The Observer, Sunday 13 June 2010

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Too much violence? Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba in Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me. Photograph:
c.IFC Films/Everett / Rex Features

Mark Kermode: film critic
As with the source novel, the psychopathic violence depicted in The Killer Inside Me is
both disturbing and problematic. All too often film-makers use women as props to be
leered at, with glamorised assault a depressingly regular selling point. Within this
context, I understand entirely why Michael Winterbottom's film has so offended some
viewers. My good friend and colleague Simon Mayo (whose opinion I respect) found
the film vile and misogynist, an opinion that he put to Winterbottom when he came on
our Radio 5 show. In response, Winterbottom argued that such acts should be
repugnant, and that his intention had been to make the audience want to look away. In
fact, this is exactly what I had done – flinching from the screen at the sheer horror of
what was being depicted. What is impressive is that Winterbottom achieves this sense
of utter revulsion with visuals that are in fact no more explicit than the glamorised
gore of many mainstream thrillers. This is so often the case; compare the media fuss
that surrounded the shocking genital mutilation of Lars von Trier's Antichrist with the
virtual silence that met Crank 2 the same year, in which a woman's breasts are shot off
for supposedly "humorous" effect. In the case of The Killer Inside Me, I think the
British Board of Film Classification got it right when it said: "Although several scenes

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British Board of Film Classification got it right when it said: "Although several scenes
are very strong and impactful with the potential to cause offence to some viewers …
the scenes in question do not endorse or eroticise sexual assault, or pose a credible
harm risk to viewers of 18 and over." Personally, I found some scenes in The Killer
Inside Me worrisome and upsetting, but I respect the film for provoking such
uncomfortable responses. Winterbottom does seem genuinely surprised by the extreme
reactions to the film, and I remain agnostic on the subject of his exact intentions. But
the net result of his work has been to raise important questions about the depiction of
violence against women – whether intentionally or accidentally.

The Killer Inside Me
Production year: 2010
Countries: Rest of the world, USA
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 109 mins
Directors: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Bill Pullman, Casey Affleck, Elias Koteas, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Ned
Beatty, Simon Baker
More on this film

Romola Garai: actor
Normally when presented with other actresses' work I tighten my fake smile and try to
poison their tiny dog but I have to make an exception for The Killer Inside Me, which
is a good film. It is also a misogynistic film – but why shouldn't it be? I would argue
that something dark is lurking between the sexes and that it is seeping out into cinema.
The film expresses misogyny not simply in the actions of the central character – deputy
sheriff Lou Ford, played by Casey Affleck – but also in its overarching ethos, as it
denies the women involved enough characterisation to allow an audience to bond with
them and consequently feel their pain, humiliation and degradation. In wanting to see
women put in positions of sexual and physical disenfranchisement, film-makers such
as Michael Winterbottom or Lars von Trier (who directed last year's equally
controversial Antichrist) seem to be unconsciously expressing something that is not
unique to them.

Isn't cinema simply responding to a fear of – and desire to punish – women, especially
materially successful or sexually active women?

The world has changed quickly and, for some men, there is anger, confusion and
frustration at that change – a feeling of displacement and uselessness that is driving a
wedge between the sexes. It isn't a predicament I feel much sympathy for but I believe
it exists and should be allowed to be expressed. Just look at the bile meted out to the
cast of Sex and the City 2, a film that in no way deserved the fury that it engendered.

The actresses involved in this film, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson, did the film, I'd
imagine, because Winterbottom is a good director and it will allow them to be
perceived as "serious" actresses. The fact that talented and serious actresses would do
such a film is no surprise to me, but their roles are underwritten and depressingly thin,
which is true for most films that are seen by the critical establishment as "serious".
"Serious" films are films about men. Films about women and their concerns are seen as
frivolous, limited and, most damaging of all, niche. You only have to look at the recent
Oscar contenders such as There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, The Departed,
The Hurt Locker or, more recently, The Bad Lieutenant to see what constitutes a
"serious" film.



This whole debate is, of course, deeply self-indulgent, as most people won't see The
Killer Inside Me or Antichrist. But for those that do, I don't think we watch films to
agree with them but to engage with them. I don't think we shouldn't make films like
these and I don't think we shouldn't see them. Rather, I think we should respond to
them, with films of our own, tell our stories, tell the story of the female prostitute
living on the outskirts of a small town in 50s America from a female perspective and
create a critical climate where these films are respected. Meanwhile, as an actress, the
best I can do is stick to my guns and try to represent women as I see them and do films
that allow me that dignity.

Anna Smith: film critic
There are few drawbacks to the job of a film critic, but one is that you can't walk out of
a movie. I would have given anything for release from the gratuitous torture porn of
Wolf Creek. At points during The Killer Inside Me, I flinched, I gasped, I felt sick. I
wanted to hide behind my hair. But I didn't want to walk out.

Why? For one, it's an excellent film, and there is far more to it than violence, including
a suspenseful narrative and a spellbinding performance from Casey Affleck. Did I want
to see him beating Jessica Alba to a pulp? No, I certainly did not. But I wanted to
understand his character, and discover the resolution. I would have drawn the line
considerably earlier than Winterbottom, and this remains one of my criticisms. He may
be trying too hard to shock. But the nature of this protagonist's aggression is crucial to
his characterisation, and while Winterbottom has gone over the top, he's right to show
something of the hideous process so we can appreciate just how brutal he is.

Another film in cinemas this week is Black Death, a bubonic-plague horror starring
Sean Bean. In this, men are subjected to horrific, prolonged torture at the orders of a
woman. I haven't heard much outcry about that. Of course, male-on-female violence is
the greater social problem, but the fact that The Killer Inside Me has attracted so much
gender-based criticism is interesting.

So does this film promote offensive behaviour towards women? While I usually relish
the chance to give a scathing feminist reading, The Killer Inside Me didn't tempt me.
Only one, early scene troubled me. Lou (Affleck) responds violently to a slap from
Joyce (Alba), whom he's just met. She appears to be in considerable distress, but her
sobs suddenly change to sexual pleasure, and the two make love. This turnaround
seems precariously close to excusing non-consensual sexual violence.

Subsequent events are less ambiguous. Foreplay and S&M role play are eroticised, but
a woman who enjoys a spanking is not asking to be slaughtered, and this is made clear.
Yes, the gender dynamic is extreme, but I find it hard to get worked up about
something so obvious. I'm more likely to be angered by the insidious misogynistic
subtext in a romantic comedy. (In The Boat That Rocked, a rape plot is presented as
not just acceptable but downright hilarious.)

I admit that, as a woman, I prefer film noir featuring strong, intelligent femmes fatales.
But that doesn't mean that, as a critic, I can dismiss The Killer Inside Me as mere
misogynistic bile. Events are shown from the subjective viewpoint of a murderer,
whose actions are not condoned. Like most reviewers, I've warned of the alarming
brutality while praising the film's strong points. It's our job to see the big picture. Of
course, violence against women is abhorrent. But I'd hope the majority of people would
come out of The Killer Inside Me more convinced than ever.



Nicci Gerrard: author
A few months ago, I was in a car crash. The accident itself was eerily vivid – a slow-
motion episode experienced frame by frame in minute close-up, the raindrops on the
windscreen in the dusk, the gravelly sound of my brakes, the surprised face in the car
driving into mine – but the events before and after remain muted and blurred.
Afterwards, I felt shaken and queasy for hours.

As I write this, I have the same physical sensation, but I haven't been in a car crash,
I've been in a cinema, watching The Killer Inside Me. The film is beautifully made and
wonderfully acted, with shots like Edward Hopper paintings and nostalgic Hank
Williams music, and yet there are two scenes of such slow-motion, frame-by-frame
violence that the rest of the film has receded in my memory and what I carry with me
now is the fist coming down on a woman's face. And again. And again. Hard fist and
soft flesh. A gorgeous, generous subject turned into a pulped object ("stewed meat,
hamburger," says one character). Or a gobbet of spit landing on another woman's face
before she is hit, hard, in the stomach. And the pause. Then the boot. The urine
trickling out from her and the dress pulled up to show her body and conceal her dead
face. These two scenes in which the psychopathic central character of Michael
Winterbottom's extraordinary film murders the two women he thinks that he loves
flood the rest of the movie and almost drown it. That's all you can think about – it's
like listening to a symphony and having the volume suddenly turned up a thousand
times, so the music is lost and all that remains is the pounding pain in your eardrums.

Because [husband] Sean and I write psychological thrillers, we talk a lot about
violence. What is it for? How realistic should it be? It mustn't be comic, it mustn't be
naff, it shouldn't be pornographic and yet neither should it be too casual, too easy – as
if violence didn't really matter and a life was cheap, just a clue on the floor for the
clever detective to solve. Winterbottom has made a film about a sexual psychopath,
where sex and violence have fused and the act of murder is shown with the kind of
hyper-realistic tenderness of an erotic scene. He's crossed a line and taken the violence
that is part of film noir and blown it up, making it bigger, slower, louder, longer,
brighter, crueller, so that it overwhelms the entire film. His psychopath – a clean-cut
Texan charmer with cold eyes who calls women "ma'am" and lifts his hat – makes his
lovers into objects. He takes their beautiful, velvety bodies and blemishes them. He
mutilates their faces and snuffs out their voices. He pulps them. Some critics have
called The Killer Inside Me misogynist, but it seems brutally moral and indeed feminist
to me. He's showing sexual violence as it is: appalling, obscene, messy, inhuman, with
not a trace of glamour about it. More troubling is the fact that his victims are willing:
he seduces them by thrashing them into pleasure, and as his fists hammer down on his
first victim she manages to tell him she loves him still.

But the real problem is that this is a film, not a book. The novel on which it is closely
based, written by Jim Thompson, tells the same story, with much of the dialogue
intact, but there the meaning of the violence is not turned into a prolonged series of
beautifully-shot images of obliteration which are now making me feel so queasy. So do
I think it should be banned? No! Not for an instant. Do I think it's a good, serious
film? Yes (except there's some of it I can't remember because of its two central scenes).
Do I think that the violence has a moral purpose? Yes. Do I find it offensive? No, not
at all. Do I think it's excessive? Oh yes.

Nicci Gerrard and her husband Sean French write psychological thrillers under the
pseudonym Nicci French


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