Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Naomi Watts, Jennifer Ehle, Brennan Brown, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Emory Cohen, Jeremy Bobb, Justin Clarke, Maritza Veer, Angel Christian Roman, Pedro Hollywood, Ohene Cornelius, Richard Bird, Heinley Gaspard, John Palacio, Sean Pilz.
The room of one’s own, where you can think, surrender to the words and meanings in your head without any disturbance, where life is about serenity and peace, can also become the chamber where the demons lay in wait, where they conceive moments where the writer has no choice but to surrender, to withdraw and retreat to a place where they have no room, all they have is memories, all they have is fear and regret.
Fortunate are the writers who never face the prospect of a period of confinement, who have either had isolation thrust upon them, or chosen to embrace separation from the world, those that perhaps that have had enough of the pain that they created and inflicted upon society. However, as Naomi Watts splendidly portrays in The Wolf Hour, such conflict is brought on by the mind, and it could be argued that a writer who has never spent a period of time alone and only accessible to a few others that help keep them alive, has not really lived at all.
Naomi Watts’ June Leigh has hidden away from society, burying herself in desperation in the relic-like apartment where once her Grandmother lived, and with the backdrop of 1977’s teetering New York economy and social breakdown for company. It is in this recognition to the pain of solitude, the fear of what lays beyond your own front door, that encapsulates The Wolf Hour right down to its very core. With all but a few short scenes taking place outside of the writer’s small, disordered and cluttered rooms, the sense of self-contained oppression is heavy in the air, the feel of internal chaos is rampant, and such complex emotions and turmoil play off brilliantly in the hands of Ms. Watts.
Whilst the film overall does not have the complete command it certainly deserves, it still has the ability to unnerve, to insist that the viewer looks in on themselves as to how they would react if placed in such a position; the self-imposed remoteness, not caused by a quarantine, but through the mind dealing with trauma, the separation between mind and soul.
A thought-provoking and curiously stimulating film, one that possibly delved further, but which retained the presence of mind to keep it as simple as possible lest it lose potential viewers turned off by what they would see as self-pitying drama. The Wolf Hour is far from that naive assessment, it is instead insight into how the mind reacts when confronted by demons of its own making; and one that delicately delivered by Naomi Watts with absolution in her heart.
Ian D. Hall