Recovered Classic: Limbo


Director John Sayles’ film will split audiences into two camps. There will be those who think that the infuriatingly inconclusive ending is a stroke of genius, while others will hold their head in their hands and curse through sheer frustration.
Because the title, Limbo, applies as much to the audience as it does to the three main characters, and therein lies the challenge of watching Sayles’ 12th movie.

Set in the challenging wilderness that is Alaska, a vast state which apparently acts like a magnet to those who want to start their lives over, the first half of the film is typical Sales, all slow burn character introduction and detailed storytelling.

The idea is not only to establish the main trio, odd job man and former fisherman Joe (David Strathairn), singer Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), and her disaffected daughter Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), but also to give a sense of place. This is an Alaska which is being threatened by developers, where people are trying to reinvent America’s last frontier, as well as themselves.

Sticking rigidly to in-depth character studies, such as Strathairn’s haunted past (he’s still traumatized by a fishing accident in which two people died), Mastrantonio’s ongoing search for a decent man and Martinez’s almost suicidal loathing of her nomadic existence, Sayles’ film undergoes a remarkable transformation come the second act.
With Joe and Donna having struck up a promising relationship, he agrees to help out his half-brother Bobby on a seemingly innocuous sailing trip and brings the two women along for the ride. But things go horribly wrong, Bobby is murdered and Joe, Donna and Noelle flee for their lives, ending up on a remote island in the Alaskan wilderness where they have to fight for their survival, praying that they will be rescued before the killers also track them down.

This progression into life or death psycho-drama takes Sayles’ multi-layered movie to a completely different level, Martinez assuming greater significance (finding an old diary in an abandoned hut through which she reveals her pain) and Strathairn seizing the opportunity to make up for losing those two people at sea years earlier.
Being so strongly character driven the performances are everything and Sayles draws excellent portrayals from the main trio, their histories and backgrounds gradually intertwining as the story strands slowly begin to knit together.

And while it may be a movie about personal reinvention, Sayles’ approach is to look at it from a different perspective, examining how someone starts from scratch when they are over 30, when they have more emotional baggage to bring with them.

The pace is slow at best and surprisingly little is made of the Alaskan locations, perhaps a deliberate attempt not to make the region look too spectacular and welcoming, a point driven home by the movie’s unsettling second half. But as events slowly unfold it all becomes curiously watchable and deeply intriguing, refreshingly relying on the script and the performances as opposed to throwing in unnecessary action sequences and needlessly pandering to the masses.

Sayles is renowned as being a skilful independent filmmaker with a passion for developing his characters and Limbo takes its three main protagonists on an incredible journey which veers off on unexpected paths just when you think you know where it’s heading.

But while some may see the film as a drab exercise in bonding under extreme circumstances, you always get the sense that Sayles knows exactly what he’s doing and that the ending is a deliberate device to stimulate an extreme reaction, be it good or bad, and for that he should be applauded. Stimulating stuff.

David Lichtneker

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