Hell Hath No Fury Like ...
Written: Sep 21 '09 (Updated Sep 24 '09)
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Pros: Sympathetic portrayal of dysfunctional family, physical handicap, and adoption.
Cons: Scary portrayal of mental handicap, blind bureaucracy, and adoption.
The Bottom Line: Portrays one twisted sister you're unlikely to forget any time soon. Not the kind of movie to watch alone. Not for the faint of heart.
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| topreviewerman's Full Review: Orphan |
This is one twisted movie. I could end my review here and not leave anything out. My reader will know twisted when he sees it. What I'd like to do, though, is rehabilitate Orphan for the sake of the international adoption community who were upset about its negative stereotypes. It is my considered opinion that the producers of "Orphan" went out of their way to be sensitive to both the institution of adoption and the adopted herself while still producing (successfully) a scary film centered on a nine year old "orphan."
In a two hour film, they included a beginning dream sequence where Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) had a nightmare concerning an earlier stillbirth—that came out wrapped in a cloth. Her (female) psychiatrist Dr. Browning tells her, "Your dreams can be a manifestation of your emotions." So can movies manifest mass emotions where society's elemental fears are played out in an otherwise non-threatening milieu: here, the adoption of a well mannered child. Kate and her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) adopt in order to make up for their earlier disappointment. Looking at the movie's debut, July, 2009, let's give the producers the benefit of the doubt and note that they timed it to come out right about the time the honeymoon with a new president would be over, a president we would have elected to make up for a disappointing previous one (W). If this new one frightens a number of people now, then "Orphan" is timed to help us deal with it.
The couple is portrayed as imperfect people—he had a past of infidelity which he overcame (maybe), and she of alcoholism which she overcame (maybe)—but who love each other. Two imperfect people can hopefully adopt as long as there is plenty of love to go around. They have two children already, the older a boy Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) who can be taught to respect his adopted sister, and the younger a girl Maxine (Aryana Engineer) who takes to her sister right away. Max is so cute she's adorable. That she is a deaf-mute only increases our empathy for that condition. Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is the one adopted. She's from Russia—"I guess I'm different"—, but we are told it's okay to be different. Within the framework of an adoption movie, scary for its own reasons, I can't imagine a more empathetic treatment of adoption in general. We as a people might have our own reasons for wanting to explore fear in this mix, but adults going to this R rated film should be able to sort out fact from fiction.
That being said, I was so shook up by it, that I had to make a conscious effort to regain my equilibrium walking back from the theater. Fortunately, I passed my church on my way, a place of stability. I just pictured my mundane activity on the way to the theater, when I stopped by the church to help out with their clothing drive. I had sorted clothes from large trash bags onto tables set up by category. What's the difference between men's pants and women's? Some were labeled but a lot weren't. One woman explained it's the way the zipper zips. I didn't want to bother with that, so I used either the label or what I called classification by association figuring like articles would be more or less together, and if I noticed some obvious proportional difference, then I would sex it accordingly. You know the saying: caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. The recipients of our orphaned clothing had a responsibility to check out what they were getting. I wasn't going to worry about it.
Then it struck me that was what happened in the movie. Caveat emptor. The happy couple had a responsibility to verify what they were getting from the orphanage. Just because they picked up an older child from an orphanage didn't mean she was classified right as belonging there. My effort at regaining my equilibrium was more difficult than I imagined. If the movie problems are the same ones in real life, then we might all be in big trouble.
Kate eventually became what is so maligned today: a "birther." She wanted some actual history on this Esther from Russia. Lo and behold, the orphanage in Russia didn't have any record of her. How can that be? And Esther really didn't like her looking into it. I mean, she REALLY didn't like it to the extent of putting out a hit on a nun. And for all Kate's trouble, it only made her look like the bad guy, to her shrink and to her husband. I mean, to the point of stocking up on the booze.
So here's our dilemma, if we want to learn anything. Once a drunk, always a drunk? Well, maybe. It's true she once had a drinking problem, and maybe she doesn't have it entirely licked, but if today she manages to stay on the wagon, can't we concede to her that she might have a valid concern about Esther's history? I mean, our country had a history a racism, granted, and we might still have some residual racism left to overcome, but if today we have a concern over the provenance of our president, can't we chalk that up to due diligence, especially since it's so important to him that we not find out, important enough to seal all his records?
The concern with Esther was that trouble managed to follow her around, even though she wasn't found technically to blame. That made them want to look into her past. Here we have a president whose pastor Jeremiah Wright was vehemently anti-American from the pulpit. His mentor William Ayers had been a terrorist in the Weathermen Underground. His Illinois Governor Blagojovich tried to sell his vacated Senate seat. His Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had a record of overturned judgment against white firemen and a speech lauding Latino wisdom over, what, English common law on which much of our laws are based. His HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius shielded late-term abortion doctor George Tiller from Kansas's Attorney General. His science "Czar" John Holdren commended compulsory population control saying if we had to do it, it would be constitutional. His health policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel wrote that he prefers a "complete lives system" under health rationing which "discriminates against older people." His (former) green jobs czar Van Jones signed a petition to investigate 9-11 for American involvement. There's just all this stuff associated with the president, and there were a lot of bad things happening around the orphan. Just because the mother had a history of drunkenness, and Americans a history of racism, doesn't mean we should ignore all that bad stuff and not worry about Esther's source and Obama's birth. Not when the movie puts a fright into you, although all the birthers are looked down on at present.
But wait a second! Didn't Obama produce a Hawaiian birth certificate? Yes, a "certificate of live birth," the short form which any newborn to an American mother could have got. I'm just comparing this stuff to the movie. Here's part of the script:
Kate Coleman: "Everything about her could be a lie. Everything."
John Coleman: "But we have her passport, her birth certificate, school records, medical records."
Kate: "These are papers. Honey, they're papers from halfway around the world."
Barack Obama had a globetrotting mother whose plan was to fly back to Hawaii from Kenya to have her baby, but she found a nine month pregnant woman was not allowed on the plane, so she had the baby (Barack) there in Kenya—whose paternal grandmother remembers it born in the hospital there—and then flew with him to Hawaii where she got the certificate of live birth, but the long form which shows the delivering physician and hospital has been sealed. We don't get to see that. And, of course, they had their planned announcement in the paper.
My purpose here is to show a parallel between the movie "Orphan" and current events that have us in their grip, or should. The significance has to do with our Constitution, ARTICLE II, Section 1: "No Person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President." That's in the Constitution the President swears to uphold. This constitutional issue gets reflected in Kate in "Orphan," her issues, and another constitutional issue with her husband John.
W. Cleon Skousen's excellent book The 5000 Year Leap: The 28 Great Ideas That Changed the World (www.nccs.net : National Center for Constitutional Studies, 2006) says—pp. 167-170—"The Founders said we should especially concentrate on one particular right because all other rights are related to it. … ¶"Under English common law, a most unique significance was attached to the unalienable right of possessing, developing, and disposing of property. Land and the products of the earth were considered a gift of God which were to be cultivated, beautified, and brought under dominion. As the psalmist had written:
The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD's:
but the earth hath he given to the children of men. Psalm 115:16
Mankind Given the Earth 'in Common'
Development of it Mostly by Private Endeavor
"John Locke … pointed out that man received the commandment from his Creator to 'subdue' the earth and 'have dominion over it' (Genesis 1:28). ¶"But because dominion means control, and control requires exclusiveness, private rights in property became an inescapable necessity or an inherent aspect of subduing the earth and bringing it under dominion. ¶"It is obvious that if there were no such thing as 'ownership' in property, which means legally protected exclusiveness, there would be no subduing or extensive development of the resources of the earth. Without private 'rights' in developed or improved property, it would be perfectly lawful for a lazy, covetous neighbor to move in as soon as the improvements were completed and take possession of the fruits of his industrious neighbor. And even the covetous neighbor would not be secure, because someone stronger than he could take it away from him."
Obama is of the opinion that the wealthy is "lucky" and should be required to spread his wealth around to someone less fortunate. The movie parallel in "Orphan" has Kate explaining to Esther—"There's nothing to talk about"—that when two (married) adults love each other, they express that love in a physical way—"I know; they f___"—, and John tells her he's reserved it for Kate. Esther seems to resent Kate having all the luck; "I like it when it's just the two of us. You don't know how long I've waited for a dad like you." Many forms of socialism/ communism/ Marxism have been tried throughout history and have failed, running counter to the ideas about private property expressed in the pages of the Bible. The movie shows it as pictures of failed "dads" marking the pages of Esther's old Bible.
These two constitutional issues form the backbone of the plot, and from there it's only a matter of filling in the details. Kate is seen looking up antisocial personality disorder in a search engine to find "superficially charming; difficulty in making & keeping friends; manipulating" which could almost describe Obama the way the American people are having second thoughts after having elected him. Let's look at some of them.
First of all, the new addition to the family brings out her own Health Care program for nursing an injured pigeon back to health: "Put it out of its misery." It makes sense once she explains how it's lived a full life already, and its remaining days will have a reduced quality of life.
If you are less than satisfied with Representative Joe Wilson's apology for shouting, "You lie!" to the president addressing the assembly about illegal aliens not covered by his health care, "Orphan" offers its own take on that exchange. Kate accuses Esther of having lied to her about not knowing how to play the piano. Esther rejoins that she didn't tell her that, only that she wanted her new mom to teach her. John sides with Esther saying she just wanted some way to be close to her new mom, and having her give her piano lessons fit the bill. There was no lying involved.
Same with Obama. His bill specifically stated that illegal aliens would not be covered, and if it said elsewhere that their immigration status was not to be questioned for fear of violating their rights, that may have been changed once objections were raised. If Obama's next plan is to grant them all amnesty in one guise or another, so they will no longer be illegal, and thus will be covered, that was disingenuous of him, but it wasn't lying. It's like Esther on that piano being instructed by Kate: plunkity, plunkity, plunk plunk, like the trickle of illegals one expects to get free service in the emergency room for bona fide emergencies. We'd expect that from Esther's saying and from Obama's speech. When Kate discovers Esther belting out Tchaikovsky: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOMITY BOOM! that's like the flood of erstwhile illegals who will show up at the door once they are legalized.
Then there is the matter of taxpayer funded abortions not being in the health care package. Nowhere is abortion mentioned in it. In order for Obama to keep his promises to Planned Parenthood, there is a great deal said about "reproductive rights," a central feature of his plan. Then it's the agencies and the courts who decide how it is to be implemented, the courts giving weight to the agencies, and Obama's appointees being the kind approved of by PP. For someone whose conscience takes issue with supporting abortions, that's a whole lot like playing Russian roulette—"Do you want to play?"—, only with less favorable odds. A lot of conservatives are not going to want to play that game, about as little as Max wanted to play Esther's new game.
Esther used Max's ability to lip read as a means to spy on Kate. According to statute the president is not allowed to keep (watch) lists except where otherwise required by law, so Obama was developing a (snitch) list by having people e-mail the White House with addresses of anyone disapproving of his health care plan. Since all e-mail to the White House is required by law to be saved, he had his legal snitch list, but he may have stopped once he was called on it. (See the article "W.H. collects Web users' data without notice" in The Washington Times, Sept. 16, 2009 at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/sep/16/obama-wh-collects-web-users-data )
Esther is the namesake of a Jewish heroine who for a time didn't reveal her heritage and origins to the people she lived with. Orphan Esther, it turned out, is actually named Leena from Estonia come via St. Mariana orphanage. Being a poet and seeing the similar name endings, I decided to play with them some. I stacked the names on top of each other and added the shrink's name for good measure, then I cancelled the letters with immediate vertical correspondence, thus:
LeE n a
estO nia
st MAr ianA
BrOWn
There are at least two different ways to get OBAMA out of what is left. Probably doesn't mean anything, but then she'd escaped from the Saarne Institute, and Saarne spelled backwards is Kenya, sort of. It would have been enough to clue me in, had I needed it, but the health plan was a dead giveaway. Ouch! I shouldn't joke about such matters. At my age I'm a sitting duck. How did my cousin put it? "Death panels" that can come down on you like a ton of bricks.
I want to offer my personal assurance that if you seek to adopt a child, it is very unlikely that any of the bad things in this movie will happen to you. I have no such assurance to give if you elect a president.
"Orphan" is shot at odd angles, with surprises the order of the day. And just because there are frights in a scene doesn't mean there won't be more frights in the next scene. For that matter just because you can survive the whole two hour movie and walk out into the sunshine doesn't mean you'll feel safe, not under this administration.
Paradoxically, though, it could work as a date movie, especially if your date likes to cleave to you during the scary parts. Jimmy Durante crooning a love ballad at the end could even lead to a romantic moment.
It may not work, though, if you like to drink to the point of intoxication while watching movies. This one promotes too much sobriety. If you must, though, I recommend stocking an extra bottle.
The acting is solid throughout, even the one challenging part of the nun Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder) who, of course, is not practiced at lying, and whose delight at someone wanting to take Esther is tempered by her misgivings that they might not know what they are getting into. These emotions play out on her face which required real acting.
"Orphan" has played havoc with my sleep for days afterwards. It really is a scary movie, not just pretend scary. View it at your own risk.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Scary Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
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topreviewerman
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Member: Earl Gosnell
Location: Eugene, OR
Reviews written: 85
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
BSEE, U. of Cincinnati. Ordained minister, United Congregation of Friends. Poet Laureate, Longfellow, Colorado.
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