The Weight of Water

Year 15, Day 78 - 3/19/23 - Movie #4,379

BEFORE: Ciaran Hinds carries over again from "The Wonder", and OK, I got some sleep last night. It turns out if I follow a 14-hour shift with a sandwich, a pint and a half of stout and a couple squares of weed chocolate, I might feel a little sleepy.  Got about 9 hours of sleeps last night, and I sure needed it.   

It's Day 19 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and today's theme - all-day - is "Mystery and Suspense" - so it finally seems that TCM and I are on the same topic, even if it's just for one day. Here's today's line-up:

7:00 am "The Window" (1949)

8:30 am "The Maltese Falcon (1941)

10:15 am "The Thin Man" (1934)

12:00 pm "The Third Man" (1949)

2:00 pm "Charade" (1963)

4:00 pm "Laura" (1944)

5:45 pm "Vertigo" (1958)

8:00 pm "Rear Window" (1954)

10:00 pm "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974)

12:15 am "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)

2:15 am "Klute" (1971)

4:15 am "Blow-Up" (1966)

OK, this seems to be my topic - I've watched all of these except for "The Window", "Laura" and "Blow-Up". That gives me 9 out of 12 today, and brings me to 100 seen overall out of 215, so up a bit to 46.5%.  

Now, on to "The Weight of Water" - only the film's not where I left it, I know it left Hulu but I was pretty sure I could still find it on Tubi.  BUT, suddenly it's not there either, and it's not on Amazon or Roko or Pluto or Peacock or even Vudu or Plex.  It's not rentable on YouTube, but there's another film with the same title that's rentable from two years later, that's not going to help.  Well, there's always iTunes - only it's not there either?  What the hell?  How am I supposed to watch this, I double-checked using the Oracle of Bacon, there's no other film that could get me to where I want to be tomorrow, and I don't want the whole chain to collapse, I specifically dropped this film in January and moved it to HERE because I thought it would be helpful, and now I can't watch it?  How bad must this film be if it's not streaming anywhere?

Well, I don't do this often and I certainly don't recommend it, but I started a deep search for an MP4 of the film, and that took me to a sketchy site where I could watch the film - so I guess everything IS available if you look hard enough.  But I'm risking getting malware on my computer just to keep the chain alive.  Is that worth it? 

THE PLOT: A newspaper photographer researches an 1873 double homicide and finds her own life paralleling that of a witness who survived the tragic ordeal.  

AFTER: I guess I can kind of see where somebody (Kathryn Bigelow) was going with this one - by telling two stories set in different years at the same time, there's the hope that the audience is going to see similarities in the two narratives, or that the events of one are going to be somewhat reflected in the other, or we'll all learn some big differences between the years 1873 and today, as highlighted by the differences in the events.  

But this technique just doesn't WORK here, it's hard at times to see what the two stories have in common, except that characters in the present are researching and discussing the events that took place in the 19th century, offering perhaps a new take on the commonly held beliefs about this murder case.  Which is real, by the way, the Smuttynose murders represent a genuine case from back then, the film is based on a novel that perhaps took some liberties with the facts, including the identity of the killer - but there was another book written later, in 2019, which presented more proof that the correct person, Louis Wagner, had been executed for committing double murder. I wonder if the 1997 model specifically set out to stir up the pot, or to make comparisons to the more famous Lizzie Borden murder trial. 

In the present day storyline, a news photographer travels with her poet husband, Thomas, to Smuttynose Island to get a look at the crime scene.  They get there by boat with Thomas' brother, Rich, and Rich's girlfriend Adeline, who openly flirts with Thomas - and it's kind of implied that maybe they dated in the past?  With four people sharing space on a small boat, there's a chance for people to get in each other's way, annoy each other, but also maybe feel attracted to each other.  

"Meanwhile" in 1837, we're shown that Maren travels from Norway to Maine to be with her husband, who she has no passion for. She takes in a boarder, Louis Wagner, who requires some medical care, and then learns that her brother is also moving to the island with his young wife, Anethe, and then later Maren's sister, Karen, also moves into the house.  In a similar fashion, with so many people sharing the same house, it's a chance for them to get in each other's way, annoy each other, but also maybe feel attracted to each other.  

But that's about it for the similarities in the stories, except for the fact that the photographer is also studying a bunch of historical papers about the Smuttynose murders, which she got from... umm, where, exactly?  She's got ORIGINALs of letters from the 1800's, not copies, and I don't the film explained how she got a hold of these.  And then a gust of wind blows all the papers around on the boat, and it's only the fact that they get caught on Elizabeth Hurley's naked body that the papers don't fall into the ocean - which is a weird plot point, to be sure.  

Things get rough back in 1837, as boarder Louis seems to be attracted to Maren's sister, but also Maren seems to be attracted to her brother's free-spirit wife.  Yeah, you just know this isn't going to end well, because a lot of people back in 1837 didn't think it was right for two women to sleep together.  Not-so-meanwhile, in the present-day storyline, photographer Jean announces to her husband that she doesn't think Louis killed the two women, based on....well, something in the historical papers, or perhaps just a gut feeling.  But there's no time to really explain her reasoning, because the boat gets caught in a terrible storm, and several people go overboard at various times.

Somehow, even though the people in the present-day are all busy trying to keep the boat from sinking or their boatmates from drowning, the story from 1837 continues, and we see that Maren's sister catches her in bed with her own sister-in-law, and well, things kind of spiral out of control from there.  But still it's Louis Wagner who goes on trial, and even a last-minute confession from someone else can't keep him from being hanged - makes sense, the prosecution got their conviction, why would they re-open the case at that point just to charge someone else, who might be lying, for all they know?  Naturally, they just take the win.  

But the resulting uncertainty of the conviction supposedly is the reason why there's no death penalty in Maine.  And the confusion caused by jumping between the two time periods is supposedly the reason why most movies only tell one story at a time.  Some movies, like "The French Lieutenant's Woman" can get away with using this technique, but not many.  And we never really learn with the title means, do we?  We only learn, once again, that lesbians simply can't be trusted. JK. 

Also starring Elizabeth Hurley (last seen in "EdTV"), Catherine McCormack (last seen in "28 Weeks Later"), Sean Penn (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Sarah Polley (last seen in "The Sweet Hereafter"), Rita Kvist, Josh Lucas (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Ulrich Thomsen (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Anders W. Berthelsen, Jan Tore Kristoffersen, Katrin Cartlidge, Vinessa Shaw (last seen in "Melinda and Melinda"), Richard Donat (last seen in "Amelia"), Adam Curry, Karl Juliusson, Michele Maillet, Joseph Rutten, John Maclaren (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 pick-up sticks