- Actors: Rachel Weisz, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover
- Director: Joshua Marston
- Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Language: English
- Subtitles: English, Spanish
- Region: Region 1
- Number of discs: 1
- Rated: R
- Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
- DVD Release Date: October 4, 2016
- Run Time: 92 minutes
Though Complete
Unknown comes from a screenplay written for the screen by Julian Sheppard
and director Joshua Marston (Maria Full
of Grace), its narrative often feels best suited for a theatrical
production. It isn’t just that the script is dialogue heavy, or even the fact
that each act of the film has a convenient change of location. It feels suited
for theater because of the level of intimacy created within the narrative.
Michael Shannon and Rachel Weisz give such nuanced performances that I often
felt as though I knew them in real life. If a filmed version of these
performances gave me the impression I was in the same room as the actors, I can
only imagine the reality would be that much more impressive.
But Complete Unknown is about more than just the performances, and as
excellent as Weisz and Shannon are, Marston never allows the narrative to
exploit their range with petty melodrama or pointless emotional outbursts. This
is a film about ideas, examined through the framework of characters, real
enough to give the subject weight. There are questions raised about the impact
of large changes on the human personality, whether what we do has the ability
to alter who we are, but none of these ideas feel forceful within the natural pacing
of Complete Unknown.
The film takes place over the course
of a single evening, beginning with a conflict before moving on to something of
a mystery. Tom (Shannon) is having a birthday
party with close friends, though he is stuck on a troublesome dilemma. His wife
(Azita Ghanizada) has been accepted into a program across the country in California, forcing Tom to decide between leaving
everything to join her and staying to keep commitments made with his business
partner, Clyde (Michael Chernus). This
decision lingers over the entire evening, even discussed by his group of
friends during the party, and questions of Tom’s future resonate even deeper
when his past intrudes on the evening.
Clyde brings a date with him to the
birthday party, unaware that Alice (Weisz) used to go by the name Jenny. The
revelation about Alice’s
true identity may be exosed a tad too soon, though answers as to why she is at
the party are withheld for a bit longer. The first half of Complete Unknown is something of a balancing act, building suspense
upon the secrets that the other members of the party aren’t privy to, as well
as those also kept from the audience. The problem is that the question of when
the party will find out the truth quickly becomes irrelevant and the narrative
instead switches directions completely, focusing on the larger ideas by
sacrificing the intriguing set-up without permitting proper resolution. It is
the narrative equivalent of showing a gun in the first act without ever
allowing it to go off, but this unconventional and occasionally unsatisfying
approach stays dedicated to the larger themes at play.
Complete
Unknown is far from a perfect film. There are tonal inconsistencies which
are hard to ignore and the complete dismissal of half the characters from the
narrative feels somewhat like a cop-out. On the other hand, it features some
spectacularly un-flashy performances from its cast and offers ideas without the
typical narrative clichés to undermine them. It is a thoughtful film, which
makes any shortcomings easy to forgive. The DVD includes a commentary track
with Marston, who explains the thematic ideas within the film in greater
detail.
Entertainment Value:
7.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 8.5/10
Historical
Significance: 6/10
Special Features: 5/10
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