"Where could we better stoke the fires of our masochism than at rotten movies in gaudy seedy picture palaces in cities that run together, movies and anonymity a common denominator. Movies — a tawdry corrupt art for a tawdry corrupt world — fit the way we feel. The world doesn’t work the way the schoolbooks said it did and we are different from what our parents and teachers expected us to be. Movies are our cheap and easy expression, the sullen art of displaced persons."-Pauline Kael
Voyeurism, observing someone's private life without their knowledge, is an idea that goes back to the beginning of filmmaking. Watching someone through a hole in the wall is not different from recording someone with a video camera. The character who has recorded another and is watching his film stock on a projector projects a double meaning, as we are watching their reactions with our own unique omniscient viewpoint. It is a philosophical debate we have been subconsciously pushed to explore in everything from Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera in the late 1920's Soviet Union to Hitchcock's Rear Window in the late 1950's. By the early 1990's, a writer named Joe Esterhaus was clearly still enamored by the subject. He made two big statements with Sliver in 1993 and Jade 1995, and though they were widely mocked as juvenile and nonsensical, they nevertheless take a fascinating look at voyeurism taken to its modern extremes.
Sliver follows a book editor (Sharon Stone) who moves into a fancy New York apartment building on the relative cheap. She got the apartment cheap because there was a murder in the building, though it doesn't frighten her that she is a dead ringer for the woman who was killed. At a housewarming party, she meets a couple of her fellow apartment tenants: one (Tom Berenger) is an author, the other is a video game designer who owns the building (William Baldwin). Baldwin, like Nastassja Kinski with cheekbones like unto a panther, similarly has a face like unto a douchebag. The long, greasy haircut does all the work, though it deflates the mystery of who is killing these women in the complex. And this where the sleezeball mentality pokes its head out under Esterhaus. Unlike in Jade, the villain here isn't as extreme as possible (i.e. he's not a rapist), but the exploitative feel, both literally (he is violating the protagonist's privacy) and figuratively (he is playing abusive mind games) can make one feel uncomfortable. The massive bank of CCTV stations for Baldwin to watch every room in the apartment might have seemed ludicrous back in 1993, but is reasonable now in a post-Epstein world. Never wanting to ease the tension, Berenger starts stalking Stone; though he is in the right to warn her, he goes about it completely wrong. And the last scene of the film, Stone shooting the CCTVs and telling Baldwin to "get a life" before cutting to black is funny in its abruptness. It may not be frightening, but it is an interesting psychological thriller and time capsule.
Jade does not fare much better on the tomatometer, clocking in at a dead-on-arrival 16 percent fresh. David Caruso quit NYPD Blue, thinking that this film would be the stepping stone to a bigger career as an A-list star. But once you start reading the plot, you have to wonder what Caruso was thinking. Roger Ebert summarized it perfectly: "I think I could just about pass a test on what happens in "Jade," but that's only because I've seen it twice, and they tidied up the final reel in the meantime to make it a little clearer." That's right: Friedkin released a director's cut of this film soon after its original release, changing the ending while the film was still in theaters. Though it is ludicrous, the plot is about a District Attorney in San Francisco (David Caruso) investigating the death of a prominent business man. When he hears the voice of a clinical psychologist (Linda Fiorentino) on a sex tape, it begins a long cat and mouse game between the DA, and a woman named Jade who is killing rich men during sex. The specifics are not important (not to mention confusing) because what we are here for are incredible car chases and elaborate, over-the-top Oriental styled murders. And as it is directed by William Friedkin; he executed very well for what many consider to be his worst film. He stands by his claim that he did some of his best work on this film, and that is undeniable after the car chase on Nob Hill where cars fly over sharp angular tilts. The chase is certainly up there with other car chases Friedkin has filmed in The French Connection and To Live and Die in LA. I, like Ebert had seen this film twice, and have already forgot the plot twice over. But the wallpaper that Friedkin puts up is nonetheless beautiful.
If you want a more nuanced look at voyeurism, I'd recommend Sex, Lies, and VideoTape, not to mention Hitchcock cornerstones Rear Window and Psycho. Steven Soderbergh and Alfred Hitchcock have a touch more nuance to bring to their tales of voyeurism.
Ratings:
Sliver ** 1/2 stars out of 4
Jade (Director's Cut): *** stars out of 4
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