The Messenger
How has this not managed to secure distribution in the UK? When the likes of ‘All About Steve’ can be all over the local billboards, bus stops and out of town shopping centres, not to mention filtering it’s very own particular kind of crap into our cinemas, why can’t someone with a half a brain get this picture shown in the UK. Is this not the modern world? Why do I have to watch this from the magic of the internet? I could always go and watch it in Italy, I guess, but I will have to wait until May to do it.
This must be a cruel joke.
Starring Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson, The Messenger is not exactly a laugh a minute, but what it lacks in laughs, it truly makes up for everywhere else. With three months to go until the completion of his enlistment, Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Foster) is unwillingly recruited into a group of decorated soldiers that are used as messengers to break the news of the deaths of the loved one to their next of kin.
“It could be worse. It could be Christmas.” The line comes from the lips of Captain Tony Stone (Harrelson) as they make the third visit that we witness to bring the awful, earth shattering news to yet another relative of yet another soldier who has died in the line of their duty to their country.
And the statement is true enough, this has to be the worst job on the planet. Some people may have to clean toilets or pick up the rubbish we drop, perhaps some of us slaughter animals for a living, but can there really be anything worse than telling someone the worst possible news they are ever going to get, over and over again, every day?
This third visit is to young mother Olivia Pitterson, played very deftly by Samantha Morton, who out of all the people we witness being told the news, handles it a most calm and subdued way. Each visit of the many we see on their travels bears the same scripted news, but the reactions are often different, regardless of race, relation or social standing.
When Montgomery accidentally bumps into Olivia and her son in the shopping arcade days later, he offers them a lift home and a relationship that started as regrettable begins to become something more, and a good deal of the crux of the film centres around how Montgomery and Olivia or Montgomery and Stone deal with the situation they find themselves in, with the sage advice of Stone thrown in for good measure.
Regularly, the film asks questions of itself at almost the same time as you are asking them and the sometimes apparently unlikely events that take place are carefully considered before being played out and subtly addressed later on. The film handles the subject of war with no more than a passing nod as the film refuses to take sides or opinions on the subject, only the aftermath and consequences of these bloody events.
The acting we see is absolutely outstanding throughout. These are horrible, blood-chilling scenes that we are often forced to sit through, portrayed so eloquently as to be as harrowing as real. Not only do the bearers of the bad news shine in their very real, heartfelt regret for the people whose worlds they are about to tear to pieces with just a few words, but the reactions to this news from those on the receiving end are also first class.
The pacing of the film is quite elegantly handled, interspersing short but highly charged, emotionally challenging scenes with quiet and contemplative philosophical asides, drifting back and forth between the relationships between two soldiers, turned colleagues, turned friends and their external past and present relationships.
Excellently handled and expertly delivered, this is an intriguing and captivating couple of hours in the company of some difficult but sometimes frighteningly honest characters that are never very pretty. It is regularly uncomfortable to watch, as with most cinema that makes you think and feel about things we would all rather avoid.
This currently does not have a scheduled release date in the UK. Let’s hope some more intelligent distributor picks this up so more people can see it.
