It sort of goes without saying that if your father is, in
essence, the devil, then you're going to have some problems that
need to be worked through. Wade Whitehouse, the protagonist of
Paul Schrader's film Affliction, doesn't want to work through his
problems. And guess what: he doesn't live happily ever after.
Whitehouse is portrayed by Nick Nolte, in a complex performance
that has earned him several critics' awards and an Oscar
nomination. He does a good job playing a decent person whose
abusive alcoholic father Glen (James Coburn) has more or less
wrecked his life. Although Glen no longer has physical control
over his son, his reappearance in Wade's daily life after Wade's
mother dies has severe consequences. It's unclear to me, though,
how different this role is from, say, his character in The Prince
of Tides, another film about the effects of child abuse. Whereas
that film played like one of the better Sunday night TV
melodramas, Affliction approaches its material in a less
traditional way, with interesting but mixed results.
The rather minimal plot is set in gear when bigwig union man Evan
Twombley from out-of-town (the town here being snowy Lawford, New
Hampshire) is killed in a hunting accident. Wade, who acts as
part-time policeman and crossing guard in Lawford, suspects that
Jack Hewitt (Jim True), Twombley's young hunting guide, is up to
something. That Jack evasively lies to Wade about certain minutia
of the accident makes us doubt him, too. These suspicions are
confirmed by Wade's brother Rolfe (Willem Dafoe), who encourages
him to pursue a conspiracy theory based on the fact that Twombley
was set to testify about union corruption in Massachusetts. It
appears Twombley's son-in-law and Wade's boss might be involved
as well.
For a while, the mystery involving Twombley's death sustains
marginal interest, but it eventually becomes clear this is not
the crux of the film. In fact, Wade's investigation is, more than
anything else, an outlet for the anxiety and suppressed fear
surrounding his father. There are other outlets as well. Wade is
twice divorced from the same woman and, unsatisfied with the
custody arrangement for their daughter, seeks to reopen old
wounds and get revenge. He also pressures his live-in girlfriend
(Sissy Spacek) to think about marriage. And then there is that
gnawing toothache he keeps complaining about.
As Wade begins to drink heavily, his expected downward spiral
ensues. The most effective and universal aspect of this bleak
tale concerns the way the other characters (besides his evil
father) contribute to Wade's demise by backing off from his
problems and running for cover. The most powerful scenes involve
Wade and his daughter. She constantly asks to go home to her
mother and is not amused by Wade's attempts to entertain her,
although she professes to love him as well. By rejecting Wade,
rather sensibly I may add, if coldly, she breaks one of his only
connections to the world outside Glen's clutches.
Unfortunately, Affliction is so focused on Wade's relationship
with Glen, with its fairly predictable resolution, that the other
characters and storylines suffer for lack of development. We
never really get to know the Willem Dafoe character, for
instance. His voiceovers telling us that anyone
"afflicted" by Glen's evil can never really recover are
redundant, as are the flashbacks to Wade's childhood.
Perhaps it is Schrader's intent to present the world solely from
an "afflicted" man's perspective and to show how
foresight and rational thought can be blinded by emotions stirred
up from the past. If so, the film could have packed a greater
punch had its protagonist been more ambiguous and his problems
been explored more subtly.