
Affliction
- R
- Year:
- 1997
- 114 min
- 567 Views
(5.00 / 1 vote)CREDITS:
Still-life tableaus. Lawford, N.H., a town of fifty buildings
on a glacial ridge, neither mountain nor plateau. Developed
as 1880's forestland, discarded in the Depression. Winter
has set in. Halloween day. Snowy fields yield to overcast
skies:
oppressive, horizonless, flourescent.-- Wickham's Restaurant. Where Route 29 bends. 24-hour diner.
Margie Fogg works here.
-- Trailer park in shadow of Parker Mountain. Home of Wade
Whitehouse.
-- Toby's Inn. Roadhouse three miles from town on the river
side of Route 29. Everything not tied down ends up here.
-- Glen Whitehouse farm. White clapboard.
-- First Congregational Church. North on the Common from
City Hall.
-- LaRiviere Co. Ramshackle well-digging firm embarrassingly
near the town center. Wade works here.
-- Merritt's Shell Station. Cinder-block.
-- Alma Pittman's house. Like so many others.
-- Town Hall.
ROLFE WHITEHOUSE'S VOICE, thirtiesh, articulate, speaks over
credit tableaus:
ROLFE (V.O.)
This is the story of my older
brother's strange criminal behavior
and disappearance. We who loved him
no longer speak of Wade. It's as if
he never existed. By telling his
story like this, as his brother, I
separate myself from his family and
those who loved him. Everything of
importance -- that is, everything
that gives rise to the telling of
this story -- occurred during a single
deer-hunting season in a small town
in upstate New Hampshire where Wade
was raised and so was I. One night
something changed and my relation to
Wade's story was different from what
it had been since childhood. I mark
this change by Wade's tone of voice
during a phone call two nights after
Halloween. Something I had not heard
before. Let us imagine that around
eight o'clock on Halloween Eve,
speeding past Toby's, Route 29, comes
a pale green eight-year-old Ford
Fairlane with a police bubble on
top. A square-faced man wearing a
trooper's cap is driving the vehicle.
Beside him sits a child, a little
girl with a plastic tiger mask
covering her face. The man is driving
fast --
-- Route 29 tableau dissolves to night. A pale green police
END CREDITS:
WADE WHITEHOUSE, driving, sits beside JILL, his daughter,
ten years-old, wearing a black-and-yellow tiger plastic mask.
WADE:
I'm sorry for the screw-up. But I
couldn't help it it's too late to go
trick-or-treating now. I couldn't
help it I had to stop at Penny's for
the costume. And you were hungry,
remember.
JILL:
Who's fault is it then if it's not
yours? You're the one in charge,
Daddy.
WADE:
(shakes cigarette
from pack)
Yeah.
JILL:
Look. Those kids are still trick-or-
treating. They're still out.
Wade watches boys in the headlights, lights cigarette.
WADE:
Those are the Hoyts.
JILL:
I don't care. They're out.
WADE:
Can't you see... look out there.
Nobody's got their porch lights on
anymore. It's too late. Those Hoyt
kids are just out to get in trouble.
See, they put shaving cream all over
that mailbox there. They chopped
down Herb Crane's new bushes. Little
bastards. Jesus H. Christ.
Wade grimaces, holds his jaw. The Fairlane swerves around
broken pumpkins under a caution light.
JILL:
Why do they do that?
WADE:
Do what?
JILL:
You know.
WADE:
Break stuff?
JILL:
Yeah. It's stupid.
WADE:
I guess they're stupid.
JILL:
Did you do that when you were a kid?
WADE:
Well, yeah. Sort of. Nothing really
mean. Me and my pals, me and my
brothers. It was kind of funny then.
Stealing pumpkins, soaping windows.
Stuff like that.
JILL:
Was it funny?
WADE:
To us it was.
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