Keane

I saw Keane at the 42nd annual New York Film Festival and was quite pleasantly surprised. I'm really not an indy film buff, well, I wasn't until this trip into the city. I was absolutely captivated and completely engrossed in this film. This is one of those films that keeps you on the edge of your seat and easily wraps you into the story. You really feel like your are with William Keane, you can feel what he's thinking. Then the story will take an unexpected turn...see, I told you it keeps you on the edge of your seat. This film is definitely thought provoking and sensitive to all facets of the human being. It's one of those films that you can see repeatedly and get something new from it each time. I think the only thing I don't like about it is that I can't see it again easily or purchase it on DVD. I would LOVE to have this film in my personal movie collection.

This is a deeply moving film with an excellent lead performance by Damien Lewis as the mentally disturbed and grief stricken Keane who wanders around the city searching for his missing daughter. From the start it is clear that his daughter went missing sometime ago and the film gathers a feeling of a man who was once sane being tortured by the abduction of his young daughter whilst in his care. The film follows his journey over several days to what appears to be the peak of his grief and pain to possibly the point at which his can begin to get his life back...

I was lucky enough to see this film at the London Film Festival where Lodge Kerrigan and Damien Lewis where present and did a question and answer session after the film ended. The mental disorder issue and the issue of the truth of William Keane's lost daughter were eluded too. Lewis said he believed that the daughter did exist as it gives purpose and integrity to the character allowing a greater feeling for his situation. As writer and director Kerrigan made some comments about the film and why he wrote it saying that there is a lot of miss-understanding of mental disorders especially in the states and not enough sympathy or as much as there could be.

The film feels very real and this is due to the live sets that are used and the whole film being shot with a hand-held camera and all but a couple of scenes using natural lighting. It is real and it touches you, as the credits began to role the cinema remained very quiet as I believe that the vast majority of the audience required sometime to take in what they had just seen. I challenge you to watch this film and feel nothing whether it be for the character of Keane or for the everyman on the street.

Only quite rarely does a film have the quality of an event really taking place. You get that feeling when you are watching 'Keane.' Most filmmakers, even the most gifted, don't seem to have the uncompromising devotion to create a realistic world in their films. Inevitably, the temptation to show their stylistic talent is what dooms well-intentioned 'verite' directors to water down their works with artifice. The only other film, in recent years, that also succeeded in recreating the real world, was 'Rosetta,' a French film that won the Palme D'Or a few years back.

And the reality that Lodge Kerrigan and the actor, Damian Lewis, create in 'Keane' is one that is particularly difficult to create - it is a reality of a person on the edge of sanity, a reality that few people who are sane enough (if anyone can be considered sane in this business)to get a film made would ever have experienced. Unfortunately, I can understand the isolation, paranoia and desperation that William Keane expresses in this movie. And it expressed with an alarming verisimilitude.

Despite my first comment that 'Keane' is a film without artifice, there are elements to the structure and editing that show the director/writer had made extremely subtle uses of film technique to compress, heighten and intensify William Keane's psychological character.

Finally, I must add that this film is an emotionally rewarding experience, providing a denouement that is cleansing and healing - a 'happy ending' that smacks of real life, not the strange and manipulative world of formula film making. When I left the theater, I felt stronger, purged, for a while at least, of the private terrors that always lurk beneath the surface.

I finally got to see this film last night at LFF in London, and it has been more than worth the wait.

The moments between relative lucidity and mental anguish of William Keane are forcefully explored and successfully displayed by the joint work of Lodge Kerrigan's in-yer-face directing coupled with Damian Lewis' profoundly poignant interpretation of a man clinging precariously on the edge of some kind of sanity and not always succeeding as he knows he should.

I have never encountered such a long period of total and absolute quiet at the end of the film as I did at the end of Keane: the collective breath-holding was incredible.

Chilling, yet strangely warm, this film left me with more questions than answers and an empathy towards the character and the subject of mental illness as a whole than I have ever experienced. It simply has never been something I have concerned myself with. If this is what Lodge Kerrigan set out to achieve, he has more than accomplished it to my mind.

An important film that is a tour-de-force for both Lodge Kerrigan's tight direction and Damian Lewis' craft as an actor.

Go see it if you can. Lobby your local cinema to show it if necessary, but see it.

Disturbed William Keane (Damian Lewis) is frantically searching the bus terminal in NYC. He's broke and barely able to pay for his room. He befriends neighbor Lynn Bedik (Amy Ryan) and her daughter Kira (Abigail Breslin). He does drugs with Michelle (Tina Holmes). He's looking for his daughter but it's questionable whether it's real or all in his mind.

Damian Lewis does a brilliant job as a mentally disturbed man. I love the scene in the bar as he tries to listen to the music. More visual cinematic moves can be done to create his mental illness. He needs to have hallucinations of his daughter and she needs to be on screen. It's also a bit slow at times. Otherwise, this is a great character movie.