Product: To Die For (1995)
Rating: 4.0
"To Die For," a Non-Linear Social Satire of Dark Proportion
Nicole Kidman is excellent here as "Suzanne Stone-Maretto," the central hub of a two-hour-long blonde joke called "To Die For" (1995). It just may be Director Gus Van Sant's best film. If the film's darkly straight-faced humor weren't so blantantly bust-out-laughing obvious in its dialogue, the screenplay would be as dark as a noir film with Kidman as the story's femme fatale for everything happening in it. The film's non-linear narrative goes between normal story-line scenes, "afterwords" regarding the incidents in summary, and a scene having the in-character, narcissistic Kidman staring straight into the camera as though the audience were being brought straight into the film's narrative. Also bringing the audience straight into the film's narrative is a talk-show scene with both the parents of "Suzanne" and the parents of her husband, "Larry Maretto." This has the added effect of heightening the need for recognizing the wake-up, distress call on society, particularly involving the current television media which is what the film comments on directly. Even though the film was released in 1995, its point is just as relevant today, maybe even more so.It seems universally perfect as a comment on narcissism, schizophrenia, and psychological superficiality, here developed dually as a social object, perhaps even mass paranoia--recognizably using sexual overtones to provide at least part of its exploitation--and the implications of a pseudo-social mentality of acceptance-through-denial by consumers who don't recognize it. The more sex, the more reality t.v., the more Jerry Springer rednecks the film utilizes, the more it reveals the dirtiness of what people enjoy watching. The film here is standard intelligence training in psychology, and justified, because it pulls away the curtain showing a much darker image than an audience expects or knew existed. Appropriately, it is Critic Rex Reed of the New York Observer cited in bold on the back of the DVD case: "Humor, tragedy, sex--this movie has everything!"Matt Dillon plays "Larry," the newly-wed husband to "Suzanne." Dan Hedaya plays her father-in-law, "Joe Maretto," and Kurtwood Smith plays her paternal father, "Earl Stone." It's easy to see how she and her biological father have certain character traits in common.The side-story of "Suzanne" documenting the lives of three adolescents, two of them played by Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck (Ben Affleck's brother), comes center-stage later in the film when the point for having this side-story becomes apparent. Its relevance to the whole of the film's statement furthers the film's theme--that tabloid talk shows exploit and distort the normally private lives of typically poverty-level citizens, provoking them into things like violence, not only metaphorically but also directly, out of the interest in such things brought on by television consumerism. One of the non-linear elements has the parents of both "Suzanne" and "Larry" on a tabloid talk show, and it's no different than watching Jerry Springer. For this and other non-linear scenes, the film restrains itself from fully providing the reason for them until the film's very end as though it were reserving a joke's punchline.