Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I didn’t like this movie. Yes, I did. No, I didn’t. Wait, yes I did. Sigh. It seems I’m in something of a quandary, doesn’t it? That’s quite unusual, but this is quite an unusual film. The Woodsman is the type of film that forces quandary by its very nature.

Walter (Kevin Bacon) is newly out of prison. He’s somber, quiet, but with a perceptible edge of hostility that makes his silences uneasy. Returning to his home town, he finds himself a job, an apartment and starts a new life. Well, sort of. He exists, he goes to work, he eats, sleeps, carries on day to day, but he’s a shell. There isn’t anything to Walter, at least not anything he shows to the rest of the world. But there are people who know Walter, know his past, know why he spent twelve years in prison.

Walter is a pedophile.

That’s right; our “protagonist” is a pedophile. He’s trying to make a new life for himself, but he struggles. His ability to form a normal relationship is severely lacking. He doesn’t really know how to make this “normal” life work. He’s not cured. He’s got a skewed perception of molestation and his own crimes. He wants to be normal, but those years in prison did little to help him understand what it is about him that isn’t. He’s a seriously messed up individual. Yet here we are, focusing on this man that under most circumstances would be portrayed as evil incarnate. We’re getting to know him, maybe even understand him a little bit.

And that – that understanding, seeing how his mind works – is terrifying. Not in a hack-n-slash, thriller type of way, but in a visceral way. This man should make us sick, and he does. Yet he doesn’t. Not always. We watch him struggle with his past, with his present, with the unyielding, bleak emptiness that is his future. And we, just for a moment, start to feel for him. Then he strays, follows a young girl, and we hate and fear him. Walter is the embodiment of our fears. He’s a predator; he stalks children. He seems like the poster boy for the idea that no pedophile can ever be anything but a destructive monster. Even as he tentatively enters a relationship with a tough woman at work (Kyra Sedgewick), we know what lies just beneath the surface and it’s murky and foul. Walter knows it too, and once again, maybe we feel just a little bit of pity for him. It’s a back and forth pull throughout the film – pity, hatred, hope, resignation, good, bad, ugly.

The Woodsman is truly haunting. The biggest reason for this is the incredible performance of Kevin Bacon in the lead role. It isn’t every actor who’s willing to put it all on the line and play a pedophile in something other than a horror film, where the character is nothing more than a caricature of our fear. Walter is no caricature and Bacon plays him with an intensity that makes me think I might cross the street if I ever see the man in person. He’s stiff, awkward and uncomfortable nearly all the time, even when he’s alone with his tortured thoughts and desires. The only time Bacon lets Walter seem remotely happy or at ease is when he’s talking with, and hunting, a little girl. We can see how charming Walter can be, how he feels at home in that setting, how he finds vulnerabilities and plays them expertly. This is gut-level horrifying to watch. Riveting and nauseating. Bacon is as good as an actor gets in this role – perfect to the point that we start to forget he’s acting. Is that good or bad? Normally it would garner him an Oscar nomination, here it makes us squirm. There’s nothing to dilute this character, no shining through of the actor beneath. It’s a bravura portrayal of one of the most difficult characters I’ve ever seen. The rest of the actors pale in his shadow, but acquit themselves well enough.

Cinematographer Xavier Pérez Grobet takes us through the looking glass a little bit with some shots that juxtapose scenes, or meld fantasy and reality using glass or a mirror. The effect is a little disorienting, as it is certainly meant to be. The whole perspective of the film is disorienting – Walter is not at all the type of main character we’re accustomed to seeing. The rest of the film looks grim - washed out colors, sparse, uncomfortable interiors - all nicely echoing the tenor of the piece.

As the film closes, we wonder, “Why would someone make this movie?” Are we supposed to sympathize with this vile human being? Are we supposed to think he will become cured? Are we supposed to believe he will never be cured? That no pedophile can ever be allowed to walk free? Are we supposed to pity him? Are we supposed to hate him? The answer to those questions is, I think, “Yes”. This isn’t an easy film to watch. I suspect it wasn’t an easy film to make. No one wants to feel for a pedophile. No one wants to be put in the position of having sympathy for a man who abuses children. Nicole Kassell adapted and directed this film from a stage play by Steven Fechter. I can only guess at the motives of anyone involved in the production. All I can do is pass on my own thoughts on the experience.

I do not believe that The Woodsman is an attempt to make us feel sorry for pedophiles. It doesn’t portray Walter as all cured; it shows his skewed thinking about his crimes. He is also unlikable and hostile; he is not a downtrodden sympathetic character in any way. However…..the film also does not artificially demonize the character by making him a serial killer or mass murderer. It’s a rare example of a film just trying to show us. Not preach to us, not manipulate us, not tell us what to think - just show us. Show us what a pedophile might actually be like. Someone to be loathed and feared and perhaps pitied. A deeply, deeply flawed human being and one we must as a society find some way with which to deal. Unfortunately, the filmmakers do choose to include a rather brief but too easy minor epiphany near the end that muddies those waters, but that can easily be considered as something of a safety net for all involved. Without it, the film would be nearly intolerable to watch, too real to be bearable.

I honestly don’t know whether to recommend that you watch The Woodsman. More than almost any movie I have ever seen, I believe your reaction is going to be intensely personal. Certainly no one with a history of having been abused should put themselves through this film. The stunning performance of Kevin Bacon is enough to recommend it to those without painful personal connections to the topic, but be assured that it will test you. You will not like this man. You will not want to understand him. But you will. For better or worse, you will come to understand a little bit about this character. Maybe that’s the point. Fear and loathing only go so far – in the end we cannot combat that which we do not try to understand.


Recommended: Yes