Good on paper, not good on screen
"The Woman in the Window"... Joe Wright loses control and sticks to the safety zone
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The Woman in the Window was the worst movie on Netflix in the first half of the year.
This is a movie he wants to say is a classic of Hollywood's golden era, and ends like any other lousy detective movie.
Or as a charlatan who tells you that a secret will be revealed and will shock you and make you not sleep at night from thinking about it a lot, then the story ends as any spectator guesses it while he is sleeping.
The film is adapted from the AJ Finn novel and directed by Englishman Joe Wright, and looks like a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window".
Then it turns into George Coker's famous Gaslight (1944), and from there to Laurie Rowland's 1954 Witness to Murder, before changing course and reaching a cliched climax unrelated to what we saw.
Tracy Letts' quote sticks to the events of the novel, but this is an example of a good story on paper rather than screen.
Leading the story is Anna Fox (Amy Adams), a child psychiatrist who has a phobia of leaving the house and locks herself up in her Manhattan home in New York.
Anna takes medicines that, mixed with alcoholic drinks, make the patient hallucinate and see things that are not there.
Anna spends her time watching classic black and white films, talking to her husband (Anthony Mackie) and daughter (Maria Bozeman) on the phone, and spying on her neighbors through the window.
Of course, Grace Kelly does not visit her, as happens with James Stewart in "Rear Window", but her visitor is her psychiatrist, David (Wyatt Russell), who lives in the basement.
The events begin when the Russell family moves into the apartment in the opposite building.
Russell's tense family consists of a dominant husband named Alistair (Gary Oldman), and his outspoken wife Jane (Julianne Moore), who visits Anna in solidarity when she is attacked by neighborhood kids.
and their eccentric teenage son, Ethan (Fred Hechinger).
Anna's relationship with Jane solidifies, and shortly afterwards the first witnesses the second murder through the window.
Anna calls the police, but neither Inspector Little (Brian Tyree Henry) nor Inspector Noreli (Jeanine Serrales) believe her story, especially when Jane (her second appearance as Jennifer Jason Lee) appears alive and giving birth.
Do we see the truth or Anna's hallucinations locked in her home on their own, who is probably delusional because of her long stay at home as a result of the fear of going out.
Joe Wright previously directed Atonement and Pride Prejudice, both starring Keira Knightley. Wright doesn't dominate the film, especially in the slow-mo, and doesn't hesitate to refer to noir films - the black and white first wave crime films of the 1940s and 1950s - famous first being Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 "Rear Window" whose shot appears on TV. Anna is clearly visible, followed by a shot from "Laura" 1944, then a shot from Hitchcock's Spellbound in 1945, and then the famous shot when a doctor unties Vincent (Humphrey Bogart) from the 1947 movie Dark Passage.
When Wright doesn't hide his influence on the "noir" films of the forties and fifties, we think that Anna's mind is hallucinating because of the impact of the stories of those films she watches on her life. We think Anna is hallucinating because of her influence on Ingrid Bergman's character in Gaslight when her husband pretends she's crazy to cover up his criminal activities, and so on.
If this was Wright's approach we might have a masterpiece, but the guy quickly lets go of that and sticks to the traditional, uninteresting rules of detective film, in other words, Wright sticks to the safety zone.
And when we see the end, it is the last nail in the coffin of this weak movie, because it comes out of the police range and turns into a movie Scream!
Oldman underperformed and for his pay, Julianne Moore wasted a deserved trial, and Jennifer Jason Lee wasted the worse of the two.
For the record, the first and second Oscar winners and the third nominee.
At this time, The Woman in the Window is no longer even acceptable on “Netflix.” This is a movie from a time past, perhaps in the eighties and nineties, this kind of ending was acceptable.
Today, audiences expect a stronger ending, surprise, shock, or something to turn the film on its head, rather than a traditional ending that reflects the director's fear of breaking the rules.
Commitment to novels or the original source of the artwork is not sacred, and the director with an artistic vision does not pay any attention to the course of the story in the novel if he is confident in his vision.
Stephen King is a giant in literature and when the legend Stanley Kubrick was not convinced by The Shining, the latter took the character and completely changed the course of the story and wrote that terrifying ending, which has been instilled in the minds of successive generations since 1980.
A final word, there is a famous movie “Noir” with the same title as this movie, released in 1944 and directed by German Fritz Lang, adapted from a different novel, and it is better than this movie in an unimaginable way, and we recommend watching it instead of wasting time on this unfortunate movie.
• There is a famous movie with the same title. This movie was released in 1944. We recommend watching it instead of wasting time on this unfortunate movie.
• The worst on "Netflix" in the first half of the year... He wants to say that it is in the ranks of a Hollywood classic, and ends like any bad police movie.
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