I had the day off, and today was the final day William Friedkin's new film Bug would be playing in Des Moines theaters. I hadn't seen it because, frankly, going to the movie is a pain in the ass these days. Also, I hadn't had time. And, let's be honest, Friedkin's recent track record didn't inspire much confidence.
Commercial hackery like Jade, Rules Of Engagement and The Hunted seemed like a big comedown for the director of The French Connection and The Exorcist, as the career he might have had dwindled away. Some critics dismissed Friedkin all along as a commercial hack, and his hopscotching through early projects--a Sonny And Cher vehicle (Good Times), several stage adaptations (including a fine version of The Boys In The Band) and a blatantly audience-friendly comedy (The Night They Raided Minsky's) prevented him from receiving full auteurist cred.
Yet purely as a technician, Friedkin was as good as any of the New Hollywood directors of the late sixties and seventies. His let-the-camera-follow-the-actor approach in The French Connection is still the preferred method for most cop shows, on the big screen or small, and The Exorcist is simply a masterpiece, possibly the finest horror film ever made. He made several underrated pictures while his name still had some cachet in Hollywood (Sorcerer, The Brinks Job, Cruising), and while he never allowed himself to get pigeonholed, his recent work (and by "recent" I mean from the early eighties on) has seemed desperate, forced, the work of an aging superstar nobody cares about anymore, like a Crosby, Stills And Nash reunion tour.
But now comes Bug, a commercial also-ran thrown away by its distributor--and also some kind of crazy work of genius. Much of the credit can go to writer Tracy Letts, adapting his own play. Still, it's Friedkin who takes a premise that might seem foolish when blown up on the big screen--two characters whose descent into madness is presented in literal, potentially over-the-top fashion--and makes it terrifyingly real, and astonishingly poignant.
Not that he does it alone. Ashley Judd is absolutely heartbreaking as an aimless, slightly past her prime woman in the middle of nowhere, haunted by a child gone missing and a husband just out of prison, and so desperate for some sort of human connection she falls helplessly in love with a withdrawn stranger she barely even knows. He's played by Michael Shannon, who starred in Letts' original play, but nothing in his performance feels stagy. He and Judd give abolutely fearless performances, that could almost go over the top, if not for the conviction they bring them, and for Friedkin's sympathy to them and the world they create. We understand how these people got this way, and we hope, helplessly, that they will pull back from their delusions--but we understand, too, that they will find fullfillment in the very thing that will destroy them.
