Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [25]
Because my wife suffered three miscarriages before giving birth to our daughter, and we both went through the emotional wringer each time, I’m sure I’m more sensitive to the content of Everything Put Together than someone else might be (even though the mother in this film suffers an even worse fate than Alice did). But I can’t imagine not finding this film to be provocative and interesting under any circumstances.
Everything Put Together is an unusual chamber piece set in American suburbia that treats an intimate human drama as if it were gothic horror. For its main character, a happily married woman played by the talented (and underappreciated) Australian actress Radha Mitchell, it is a horror film come to life.
Mitchell and her two best friends are sharing the joy of pregnancy together, a felicitous example of good timing that enables them to shop, decorate, attend classes, and prepare themselves for the great adventure that lies ahead. But Mitchell is prone to anxiety, and in a cruel twist, her worst fears are realized when one day after giving birth her baby dies of sudden infant death syndrome.
The rest of the film deals with both a reality and an unreality. In the real world, Mitchell is shocked when her friends seem to shun her, as if her terrible misfortune will rub off on them. In her mind, she undergoes a much worse ordeal, torturing herself with grief and obsessing about her baby. As others withdraw from interaction with her—or counsel her to get on with her life—she becomes increasingly isolated, which only fuels her sense of going through a living nightmare.
This early effort by Swiss-born director Marc Forster (who has gone on to make such films as Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland, and Stranger Than Fiction) reveals both his ambitions and his nascent skills, showing us this story from the young mother’s point of view and making sure we feel every chilling moment, both real and imagined, as she slides toward madness.
Fortunately, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it is this that distinguishes Everything Put Together, with its realistic trappings and sharp observations about middle-class rituals, from a sadistic horror movie. Because Mitchell’s character undergoes a catharsis, we do, too.
Forster coscripted the film with Catherine Lloyd Burns (who plays Judith, one of the pregnant women) and Adam Forgash. He found his collaboration with cinematographer Roberto Schaefer (who also shot his first feature back in 1995) and editor Matt Chesse so fruitful that he has made them part of his permanent team. It’s amusing to think that the same people responsible for this micromovie also made the James Bond extravaganza Quantum of Solace.
34. FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL
(1997)
Directed by Errol Morris
Actors:
DAVE HOOVER
GEORGE MENDONÇA
RAY MENDEZ
RODNEY BROOKS
Errol Morris has carved out a unique career in the field of documentaries, or as some people prefer to call it, nonfiction filmmaking. He made news in the world of cinema when the celebrated director Werner Herzog “dared” him to make a movie. When Morris’s first documentary feature, Gates of Heaven, was not only finished but well received, Herzog paid off on his bet in Les Blank’s self-explanatory film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.
Since that time Morris has made a wide variety of films that have stirred controversy (The Thin Blue Line), tackled unthinkable subjects (Mr. Death), and earned him widespread acclaim, including an Academy Award for The Fog of War, his hard-hitting interview feature about former U.S. secretary of defense Robert A. McNamara.
But I have a special place in my heart for one of Morris’s most unusual and endearing films, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. It’s almost impossible to capture in words. Morris profiles four disparate individuals: