Movie review

Limbo, Written and Directed by John Sayles

Rated R, 2hours, 6min. Showing at Guild 45th,

I have always loved John Sayles movies. He has a unique way of creating beautiful and thoughtful films, with complex characters and stories rich in human drama. Sayles' latest film, Limbo, which opened June 4, continues that tradition.

Sayles is one of the few American filmmakers who consistently address some deeply political subjects. Over the years he has dealt with union organizing during the coal mine wars in the depression (Matewan, 1987), corruption and racial conflict in the inner city (City of Hope, 1991) and rural Texas (Lone Star, 1996), and death squads and military mass murder in Central America (Men With Guns, 1997). Sayles can take on complex political issues without falling into overly simple us-versus-them stereotypes. While his movies clearly condemn some brutally oppressive situations, they tend to focus more on the complex, flawed, and often well-intentioned people that participate in or are corrupted by these oppressive situations. His characters are rarely heroes, rarely villains, and rarely simple.

Not all of Sayles films are so explicitly political (e.g. Passion Fish 1992, The Secret of Roan Inish, 1994), but most of them have that wonderful sense of human imperfection. His characters muddle their way through tough times, screw up, get stuck and eventually find new strength and new direction. In the end things look like they will work out, but not perfectly and not easily. Much will be left unresolved.

Limbo is one of Sayles less overtly political films, but his political sensibilities show through, especially in the beginning. The movie takes place in Southeastern Alaska, a land in the midst of change. The resource-based industries that have been the mainstay of the region's economy--timber, canneries, pulp-mills--are closing. The new economy is growing on tourism, especially the cruise ships that ply Alaska's Inside Passage (or "floating geriatrics wards" in the words of one soon to be unemployed cannery worker.) To many of the new players in this community, Alaska is a resource to be exploited or a product to be sold. To the people who live there, it is their life and their home.

Sayles is brilliant at capturing the sense of a community, as he does here. At first, it is hard to tell who the main characters of the story will be. Through snippets of conversation from fisherman and cannery workers, handymen and cruise ship executives, the film weaves together the personalities, the experiences and the conflicts that make up the community.

This is the world of Joe Gastineau (played by David Straithairn, a veteran of several of Sayles films), who emerges slowly as a central character. Joe is a former fisherman who left the trade after his boat sank under him with two of his friends as crew. Twenty-five years later he is still scarred by the death of his crew and his life is adrift.

Into his life wanders lounge singer Donna de Angelo (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) fresh from her latest crashed relationship, and Donna's moody and distrustful daughter Noelle. Donna is a drifter, running from gig to gig and from guy to guy, now middle-aged and unsure of her future. She, like Joe, is adrift in life and trying to find her footing.

Then there is Noelle, her daughter (played by Vanessa Martinez). Noelle is brilliant and creative, but distrustful and disaffected from her mother. She hates the constant moving, the constant change and she sees the world as a threatening place. Donna cares for her, but never seems to really connect or try to understand her.

For a while things look like they will work out for Joe and Donna. His employers have a gillnetter they have acquired and convince him to take it out for a run, the first time he has been fishing since the accident. He and Donna hit it off, and their low-key and offbeat romance looks promising. It seems like they might both be getting back on their feet.

Things take a turn for the worse when unexpected circumstances leave the three of them stranded and dependant on each other for survival. From then on, the movie focuses on the drama between the three, suddenly thrust together in unexpected and difficult circumstances. The tensions between mother and daughter come to the fore, especially Noelle?s anger at her mother for getting her into the situation (which seems to Noelle a lot like some of the other move-in-with-boyfriend disasters her mother has gotten them into). However, they are also able to rebuild some trust, to understand each other a little better, and to find some hope in the midst of their hardship.

Ultimately, Limbo is a powerful story about redemption, as three people whose lives have been adrift suddenly find themselves able to mean something important to each other. Sayles covers some important if subtle political issues with the contrast between the human connections they make and the exploitive, Alaska-as-product view of the cruise-line and timber executives. But politics is in the background of the deeply human issues the film explores as three people struggle to find their way out of Limbo.