The Woodsman

Sugar and spice: Pedophiles are people too in The Woodsman

By Jeannette Catsoulis

In the movies, he always looks the same: frozen and unhealthily haggard (he doesn't sleep well), the eyes haunted and inward-looking. Then there's his body language, a weary, trudging gait as though walking through custard. He never smiles, doesn't talk much, and flinches when others--women, especially--address him without warning. He's the man with the sexual secret, and over the course of the movie we can be reasonably certain it will be revealed, probably with disastrous consequences.

Like Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid) furtively shielding his homosexuality in Far From Heaven, these characters offer actors the possibility of critical attention (Quaid received a Golden Globe nomination) and an opportunity to get minimalist. Often this involves long stretches of standing and staring. In the case of Walter (Kevin Bacon), the recently-paroled pedophile of The Woodsman, both activities take place at the window of his apartment which conveniently overlooks an elementary school playground. (One of the film's several thunking improbabilities.) Like a diabetic living above a candy store, Walter's efforts to keep the journal his therapist recommends are continually derailed by the cartwheeling preteens across the street.

Still, he's trying. He has a job at a lumber yard, a sympathetic boss (David Alan Grier), and a well-intentioned brother-in-law (Benjamin Bratt) whose disgust lurks only millimeters beneath a sincere desire to understand. Walter also has a girlfriend, a brassy-but-vulnerable co-worker named Vickie (Bacon's wife, Kyra Sedgwick) who seems undeterred by his past. Though Vickie's interest in Walter may not be entirely healthy--she's nursing extensive damage of her own--their scenes together provide welcome moments of genuine softness in a film where the protagonist's every emotion feels, by necessity, rigidly controlled.

Few things incite a lynch mob more than the scent of pedophilia, and The Woodsman is a grim and courageous attempt to shed light rather than scorn. First-time director Nicole Kassell, amplifying Steven Fechter's stringent play, places Walter's problem within a general framework of sexual victimization. Tentacles of incest touch more than one character, and--in the film's most unlikely plot thread--Walter witnesses the creepy exploits of another sexual predator. But in straddling the fence between sympathy and condemnation, Kassell's honest ambivalence may be both The Woodsman's greatest strength as a film and its greatest liability as a marketable product.

Two scenes stand out as chilling examples of near-perfect acting. In one, a watchful police sergeant (Mos Def) recounts to Walter his own version of the Red Riding Hood story, and the actor's icy line readings and absolute stillness impart a menace beyond the words themselves. In the other, Walter follows a young girl (an amazing Hannah Pilkes) to a park bench where we see first-hand the fragility of rehabilitation. The scene is remarkable, not just for the shock of seeing Walter transform into a real human being--wavering precariously between self-loathing and desire--but also for its sense of measured inevitability. I was instantly reminded of Nicole Kidman's bathtub scene with the young boy in Birth and its similar "How far are they going with this?" momentum.

The Woodsman is smart enough not to ask us to forgive Walter, or even understand him (he doesn't understand himself). Even so, no film has addressed this topic with the gut-wrenching realism of Todd Solondz' 1998 gem, Happiness. Bacon is good, but Dylan Baker's devastating performance as a psychiatrist lusting after young boys remains the gold standard for sexual agony. And Solondz' film seems aware of the fact that a culture which openly sexualizes children--and fetishizes youthfulness--shouldn't be surprised by inappropriate responses.

A recovering alcoholic once told me an essential step toward rehabilitation is accepting that you will always be what other people think of you. This struggle lies at the heart of The Woodsman, and is the reason Walter may re-offend. "I'm not a monster!" he screams when his sister refuses to see him. But in her eyes, he is.