Joshua
Director: George Ratliff. Screenplay: David Gilbert, George Ratliff. Cinematography: Benoît Debie. Film editing: Jacob Craycroft. Production design: Roshelle Berliner. Music: Nico Muhly. Producer: Johnathan Dorfman. With: Jacob Kogan, Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, Dallas Roberts, Celia Weston, Michael McKean, Nancy Giles, Ezra Barnes, Jodie Markell, Linda Larkin, Alex Draper, Tom Bloom Stephanie Roth Haberle, Rufus Collins, Haviland Morris. USA. 105 min. 2007.
Joshua is the nine-year-old most parents dream of: academically smart, artistically gifted, impeccably polite, and as handsome as a boy can be. His parents are privileged as well, living the good life in a spacious Manhattan apartment and boasting a newborn daughter to round out the family. But strange things are starting to happen, and while some of them seem insignificant at first—the baby cries too much, weird noises filter in from the flat upstairs, Joshua turns a piano-recital piece into an avant-garde soundscape of meticulously misplaced notes—others are psychologically and even physically menacing. Is it all just bad luck, or could dad be right to suspect that Joshua is somehow linked to the bizarre phenomena?
The film’s storyline isn’t all that clever—the ingenious Birth and the classic Rosemary’s Baby explore similar territory in moodier, spookier ways—but the filmmakers hook the viewer by unveiling information one small increment at a time, with occasional climactic scenes that turn the plot in surprising new directions. This narrative strategy is fleshed out by superb performances from an ideally chosen cast including Jacob Kogan as the title character, Vera Farmiga as his distraught mom, Sam Rockwell as his distracted dad, Dallas Roberts and Celia Weston as a well-meaning uncle and clueless grandma, Michael McKean as the father’s bewildered boss, and Nancy Giles as a child psychologist called in to investigate the case.
Best of all is director Ratliff’s visual style, subtly guiding the eye to telling details while following the action so smoothly and unobtrusively that its intensity sneaks up on you when least expected. Ratliff’s previous picture was Hell House, a stunningly good documentary about a morality pageant staged every Halloween by a conservative Christian church in Texas, where Ratliff hails from. Fundamentalism has a memorable cameo in Joshua, but this film’s real interest lies in deeper, darker areas of today’s soul-killing American culture. It’s an excellent movie from a hugely talented filmmaker.
–David Sterritt
