Scanners (1981)

[miscellanium]

(he's too tall for his chair again lmao)

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: a qualified 4/5
imo the mid-1970s through the early 1980s has dane in his absolute prime. (no judgement towards his later work - i'm just not as familiar with it yet, and imo he's at his most attractive during this time period lmao.) he does wonderfully with the material he's given and is arguably one of the strongest actors of the film after michael ironside. top three would probably be ironside, dane, and mcgoohan. o'neill is fine but it feels a little as though she's trying to match the lead actor's presence and her performance suffers as a result.

why the "qualified" 4? because the lead actor is...not great. he was probably chosen for his looks, which are indeed very striking, but his acting is so wooden it's painful to sit through at times. that said, it's certainly an aesthetically interesting movie to watch and dane is fantastic when he's on camera.

the plot: honestly? i watched this via the criterion channel and my initial reaction was to be unsure why it was on there. after doing some reading about how it was innovative for its time with the mixing of genres (among other things) and watching the second half again i'm able to understand its inclusion better. it was just difficult for me to see past the stiffness of the lead actor, and the ending being so abrupt didn't help either. i'm all for open-ended stories, no need to spoon-feed me anything, but imo it would've worked better if they'd given themselves a little more time to breathe in the last stretch of the story. apparently the movie went into production without a finished script and was written on the fly, and it really shows in places. i agree with the conclusion of that av club essay i just linked - it feels like a transitional rather than essential film. but i've definitely seen way worse, lol.

with regards to lawrence dane - his role isn't the meatiest of the secondary characters but there's still plenty there to chew on. while i wish we'd learned just a little more about braedon keller's motives, he communicates so much with his eyes alone during that absolute chef-kiss of an interrogation scene and then the follow-up with mcgoohan's character. (i'll dig into this a little more under the relevant screenshots below.) and he's very fun in general - quite good at being menacing in a banal way, which serves to make his character feel even more dangerous and helps him hold his own against ironside in their scene(s) together. undoubtedly a presence refined by all his years of playing tv villains. bonus for me: while this isn't the role that made me fixate on him and also see him as an embodiment of my oc maurice (that would be mitzi in rituals) the apparent ease with which he flips the switch between polite and violent is big maurice energy. a delight to watch :3



highlight:
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD



selected screencaps and some actual film commentary below. none of these images have been altered.




he's so tall that finger/hand has to be huge compared to mine.... pls...............


aaaaaa he's so cute when he's pouting aaaaa and there's a nice little visual joke here with him seeming to be backed into the corner of the room to parallel how he's being out-argued




he smirks a lot in this role which is as it should be. what's the point of casting him if you won't have him smirk at least once with those "wiggly gummi worm lips", as an acquaintance put it






such a NICE nose


the composition of this particular scene is fun because he's off-center nearly the entire time, which the next couple screenshots reflect as well. it's a nice subtle way of reinforcing any unease we might be feeling about keller after we see him monitoring others without their knowledge and then making that ~mysterious~ phone call.






DUN DUN DUN big reveal but what i care more about here is that belt across his tummy. i want to squish him like a cat




he's so CUTE, FUCK


imagine being 6'2 and getting to look him directly in the eyes. it isn't fair
(but having him towering over me would be great too. pros and cons.)



okay now we get into the meat of things. the framing of the first part of this scene is interesting but first i want to make a quick comment about how keller goes from buttoned-up in the interaction immediately preceding this one, with dr. ruth, and then is unbuttoned by the time he fully faces kim obrist. this sets the viewer up to subconsciously expect keller to be throwing his metaphorical weight around, though that doesn't necessarily fully prepare the viewer for it to become literal.

so, as you can see in the next two screenshots the framing is more or less what you'd expect from someone trying to convey the physical intimidation element of an interrogation scene, especially when there's a significant height difference. emphasizing how tall keller is, how he's looking down at her in more ways than one, etc. however, there's an unexpected choice made before the visual direction briefly returns to this tactic then puts them on the same level/reverses the roles for the remainder of the scene....







and here is what i was talking about with the unexpected choice. instead of switching from obrist's upward angle to a top-down angle from keller's perspective, which seems like obvious thing to do, we get this. it's a view we get for a good few lines of dialogue, so this isn't a blink-and-you-miss-it shot. obviously my interpretation here is subjective and barring a shot-by-shot commentary by the director there's no way of knowing how much of this was consciously intended, but i don't feel as though it's a stretch to argue that this framing is meant to draw the viewer's attention to keller's body and how its bulk is threatening to obrist - there's undertones of a sexual assault threat, not by eroticizing either of them but by juxtaposing her conventional beauty with his exceedingly average (or even unattractive, depending on your opinion) body and visually placing her mouth in relative proximity to his crotch. are we meant to find this repulsive? presumably, since he's a villain and we're meant to find him morally repugnant. 

part of why this stands out to me is because when i first saw dane, in rituals (1977), i was struck by his apparently comfortable physicality despite not being "fit" or hollywood-style handsome. i don't want to talk about it too much here--best saved for an actual post about that movie--but i found him attractive not despite his body but because of it. you know, something along the lines of "if this average-looking middle-aged man can be attractive to me then surely others can find me attractive", etc etc. so to see it weaponized against him/keller caught my attention. of course, this isn't a new approach to villainous vs heroic bodies and many before me have already talked about this in more insightful ways.

all that said, joke's on you cronenberg because i find this sexy and wish i were her!!! especially when he slaps her around and slams her against the door uwu 
 


the relish with which he delivered this line was sooooo satisfying


"goodbye... kim." pls mr dane say my name with the same dripping condescension, pls sir


i have a totally legitimate reason for including this one and that reason is "the eroticism of this old man laid out and exposed, also gun harness sexy"


(chanting) tits tits tits


(chanting louder) TITS TITS TITS



all right, a return to serious commentary: this is the other scene that fascinated me and made me wish we'd learned more about keller. all the characters are pulpy in their simplicity--which isn't a criticism, just an observation--and it works for the tone of the movie, but keller's range of expressions in this moment is hard to convey via just a few stills. the way his face changes as he's listening in on dr. ruth's aggrieved ramblings and then during/after making up his mind to kill the man suggests some kind of pity, or even sympathy. why? where would he be coming from to care at all about what he does to dr. ruth when he seemingly had no compunction about trying to kill kim obrist?



this expression, coming on the heels of his murder of dr. ruth, reads closer to regret than dispassionate determination. was it something about the way dr. ruth was addressing the absent cameron vale? was it dr. ruth's line about a mysterious something "sucking out my joy and rotting my  successes"? could keller relate to that somehow? if this is a moment in which he's questioning his association with revok it's short-lived. but we'll never know what was going through his head at this moment because we are not scanners, and the story does not deem his interior thoughts relevant to the narrative. a shame, really. this brings us back to how this movie could have only been better if cronenberg et al had given themselves more time to develop things, since it could have added some interesting complexity if we knew a little more about how and why keller ended up where he did.




do you remember how, during the heyday of tumblr circa 2010 or so, there was a certain contingent of people who would rhapsodize about veiny hands? no? was that just the people who'd fawn over deforest kelley in star trek, myself included? well my point stands, whatever it is. licks his hand




his line delivery here was an absolute delight. g-d bless u



and then he died a minute later.............. i wonder what the ratio of "dies vs doesn't die" is for his roles lmao.


bonus: sir you stand like a slut


 


 thanks for reading!