(Watch the trailer for Michael below).)
Markus Schleinzer‚Äôs deeply disturbing portrait of a child molester is one of several films at Cannes this year that depict children being treated cruelly. Polisse is another, but Ma√Øwenn’s film draws a distinct moral line though the graphic nature of the crimes — the constant verbal pummeling threatens to make us sick and we may even begin to look differently at people we pass on the street. Schleinzer‚Äôs film doesn’t define the line so sharply because it clearly doesn‚Äôt have to.
Critics of the film will say it’s never really explained why Michael decides to capture a young boy, build a cellar where he’ll live, provide the child with nothing but the bare necessities to survive while regularly molesting him. But there’s no single turning point when the film needs to shift our sympathies against Michael. He’s the protagonist we’ve got, for better or worse (or, rather, from bad to worst). We‚Äôre to put Hitchcock‚Äôs theory to the test — to choose for ourselves whether or not we’re able to identify with the villain as the film goes along. Hopefully most of us won’t feel for the criminal. All we ultimately want to see is for the boy to somehow get away.
Here in America, our nightly cop dramas cannot tear themselves away from grim tales of child sexual torture. It seems as if our greatest fear has become our latest obsession as well. Do we simply like to sit and bear witness when the cops bring these creeps down? Or is there something more lurid lurking as we watch?
Michael is the kind of film that you will not be able to shake for a good, long while. It authentically portrays the kind of mind that’s capable of conceiving schemes like these like this and carrying them out. Michael’s methodical attention to detail keeps his plans so coldly efficient, his life so fastidiously ordered, that there’s never a chance that something will go awry to cause his house of cards to come tumbling down. No friends or neighbors know there is a boy living in his basement. No one would ever suspect such a thing. We all like to think we‚Äôd be able to recognize a child predator like this man. But could we? Schleinzer‚Äôs film proves, beyond any shred of doubt, when a facade is this carefully constructed we might never see what’s behind it. Men like Michael drift in and out of our work, schools, parks, movie theaters and we never even know they‚Äôre there.
Michael isn‚Äôt necessarily a great movie because it‚Äôs concrete veracity feels accurate. Pick any Oprah show on the topic and you‚Äôll find plenty of hardcore accuracy. What elevates the film to near greatness is Schleinzer‚Äôs lean, austere storytelling. He doesn’t reveal everything in the dimness – he merely suggests the edges and lets us fill in the blanks with our own assumptions. Even the film‚Äôs ending leaves us conundrums to ponder. Some of us will feel it reaches a satisfying conclusion, others will see a more tragic and unsettling outcome.
Michael is played with unnerving rigidity by Michael Fuith, who manages to remain repulsive throughout; we never feel any pity for him whatsoever. He does seem to have a single moment of remorse, when his victim draws a stark picture of himself with his kidnapper. This candid gesture brings Michael to tears. But is he crying for his victim or is he only crying for himself? Refusing once again to spell out easy answers, Schleinzer leaves this question for us to sort through too.
While the film is nearly flawless in terms of making deft editorial and directorial choices to cut clean to the bare bone at all costs, there’s only one real problem with Michael. No matter how great a film it may be, in the end, the filmmakers are asking us to spend two hours watching a child molester. As commonplace as such invitations have become, for many of us that’s asking too much.
