Scoop's comments:
Edge of Madness, also known as A Wilderness Station,
is a quietly competent if decidedly non-commercial film about life in
the Canadian wilderness circa 1850. It was filmed on location in
Manitoba, directed by the same woman who did Better than Chocolate, an
international hit that Tuna and I both liked. Sarah Polley was listed as
a producer in the film's advance publicity, and she was to have starred
as well, but Polley dropped out of the project for reasons unknown to
me, and her role went to unknown Caroline Dhavernas. You've never heard
of Dhavernas, but she is lovely and definitely has some talent. The role
required a wide range of emotional states, physical challenges, a
beautiful singing voice, and extensive nudity, all of which she
delivered with the aplomb of a seasoned pro.
As the story begins, a young woman stumbles into a
remote town from somewhere in the wilderness.. Half-crazed, starved, and
frost-bitten from a long trek through harsh and frozen country, she
spins a mad tale of killing her husband. The young man who passes for a
constable in this outback hamlet must try to determine who she is and
what, if any, truth resides in her story. The actual story is revealed
slowly, inside her flashbacks, as he interrogates her.
It seems that she was a good and talented student,
pretty and sincere, at an orphanage school for girls when she was chosen
by a pioneer to be his bride. Although she was originally ecstatic about
a chance to begin a life and start a family, her husband turned out to
be an emotionally distant man who wanted a wife for the value of free
labor, and to act as a release for his violent sexual urges. She
therefore found herself trapped in the middle of the wilderness,
isolated from human society, with a brutal monster.
The young investigator was torn by his
responsibilities. The woman had already confessed to actions which
clearly constituted premeditated murder under the law. She had waited
until her husband's back was turned, then clubbed him over the head with
the biggest rock she could wield. Yet the constable and everyone else
could see that she was a gentle and good person who was only doing what
must have seemed like the only thing she could have done to escape her
life of involuntary imprisonment. In order to further accentuate the
helpless of her predicament, the story adds a sub-plot about a local man
who tried to rape her while she was in her cell, only to be foiled at
the last minute by the constable.
The film would have been much better if it had decided
to follow that excellent premise through to the end, because at that
point it was standing very solidly on the kind of profound moral ground
normally reserved for Kieslowski, asking the audience to determine
exactly what was "right" in this context. She was in fact guilty of
murder, but who among us could cast the first stone. Who could prosecute
her after knowing her predicament? And if a society does prosecute and
hang such a person, what does that say about the value of its laws and
institutions.
Unfortunately, the director was not Kieslowski, and
her source material was not that profound. The story took two easy
cop-outs. First, the girl turned out to be pregnant, thus saving her
from the gallows. Second, and far more expedient, she turned out not to
have committed the crime at all, thus completely resolving the moral
dilemma without ever confronting it, and freeing the character to pursue
her life and fall in love with the gentle and honorable constable.
In essence, although it is a small Canadian film, it
managed to create a Hollywood ending. Even so, the yarn wasn't bad, to
tell you the truth. I think the story gave a believable account of life
in those times and the motivations of the various characters, but it had
profundity in its grasp, and let it go.
