The Clearing
dir. Brugge
Opens Fri July 9
Various Theaters

At the opening of The Clearing, two men are shown to be living very different lives. Arnold Mack (Willem Dafoe) eats cereal for breakfast and is obviously just scraping by, while Wayne Hayes (Robert Redford) eats a fancy breakfast by the pool. Because Redford is the bigger star, the focus shifts to him and his family, even if Dafoe's character is more interesting--but we'll get to that in a bit. Wayne has breakfast with his wife, Eileen (Helen Mirren), but the spark has obviously gone from their marriage. Meanwhile, Arnold has taken the subway to get to his car, which he drops off at the airport before taking a bus to Wayne's house. As Wayne pulls out of the driveway, Arnold talks his way into Wayne's fancy car and kidnaps him. The story then splits into two timelines, one following Wayne as he is taken to the titular clearing and the other following Eileen in the days after her husband's disappearance.

When it comes right down to it, Arnold's crime is very impressive. It's quite complex, very well thought-out, and goes off without a hitch. If the movie were about the crime, then Arnold would have been the main character. Instead, this is an art-house film where the kidnapping triggers different ruminations on how hard it is to keep a marriage fresh, making Wayne the central character. It's revealed that his marriage went through some serious rough patches; their children don't think he would have had the balls to leave her, but by saying that, they also know how unhappy they sense the marriage to be. Then the FBI agent moves into the house, and he admits to Eileen that an investigation into his own marriage "wouldn't be pretty." It's all very depressing. What a waste of a slick, well-executed kidnapping.