My Being ME…

I’ve been thinking about not writing a thought about the
movie I just watched because I am too busy about my work. But the gravity of
the movie is pulling me so that I could share to you what enormous satisfaction
it has given me. It was compelling, in the sense that the topic it shares with
the audience is in trouble itself. But the filmmaker was able to bring a story
that will hold on the screen and watch every movement of the protagonist and at
times makes you want to throw your chair at him. 

The Woodsman was shown in the US last year, around December. With a subject that is very much controversial, of
course, we don’t get to see it here. It starts Kevin Bacon as an ex-con Walter,
just got out of jail after serving a 12-year imprisonment to charges of child molestation.
He wanted to start a new job while he is under probation. He works in a lumber
factory because the owner owes a lot to his family, as stated by the owner. He
lives in an apartment about 300 meters away from a school. He very sad looking
and is always conscious about his surroundings. He rides a bus to his work. And
he tries not to look at the girls on the bus.

Inside his apartment, he takes glimpses at the school,
watching the girls pass by. A detective (Mos Def) visits him at times giving him
threatening lines like he could be thrown out of the window anytime and nobody
would care.

At his work, he met a strange lady who has her secrets too.
But eventually, they became open to each other. He told his story of his being
a child molester, molesting girls, mostly 9 to 12 years of age. He visits a
shrinks, who tried to help him overcome his “disease.” His brother-in-law
(Bejamin Bratt) is his only relative who visited him. He never dared to expose
his past in his work, except for the owner. He leaves in isolation.
 
He thinks that everyone is also thinking like what he is
thinking. That old people like younger ones like him but don’t have the courage
to act the way he did, he only have guts. He even asks his brother-in-law if he
has dirty thoughts about his daughter. 

The film doesn’t bring us to feel sympathy towards Walter,
there are moments that you want to punch him in face or throw something on him
for being a monster, especially when he followed a girl in the park and chat
with her. The conversation was so unnerving and dark but turns out to be the
turning-point of his life. 

There were parts that I don’t like most, the part where he
became a hero. Without that, it would still be fascinating. That part became a
destruction of my whole experience, but just a little. 

Nevertheless, it was a movie worth watching. 

I’m out!