Every so often I pick up a movie I haven’t heard of before when I’m looking for something to rent. I ended up with Method this way. The description of the movie sounded interesting so I decided to get it.
Rebecca Fairbanks was an actress making her first movie in a while. She was playing Belle Gunness, a woman that had murdered several men in her home in the early 1900's. Jake Fields, a man that Rebecca had dated, was playing Ray, a man that worked for Belle and got pulled into her crimes. Rebecca traveled with her mother Mona to Romania to make the move. Jake’s wife Bethany also made the trip. Rebecca insisted on living on the set, a farm house that was built in the middle of nowhere, so she could better connect with the character. Mona said that Rebecca was method acting. It was very important to Rebecca that she do a good job with this part. As work on the movie continued, Rebecca and Jake rekindled their relationship. Rebecca got more into the character of Belle and acted strangely at times and people were murdered.
When I read the back of the case for Method, it seemed like the plot would be pretty straightforward. An actress was playing killer and got to into the role. It became clear quickly after I started watching the movie that it wasn’t going to be as straightforward as I had originally thought. The movie wasn’t just about Rebecca. Time was devoted to Belle and the movie that was being made about her. The movie within the movie did make things a little confusing at times. It did make the movie more complex. I did expect for some filming to be featured since Rebecca was making a movie, but there really wasn’t that much of the actual filming shown in the movie. Instead, several finished scenes from the movie about Belle were shown. Since Rebecca decided to live in the house where they were filming, there were some scenes when it wasn’t clear at first if what was happening was a part of the movie about Belle or if was happening to Rebecca. I think that more was shown of the movie about Belle than was shown about Rebecca.
The basic idea for the plot of Method was interesting and had a lot of potential. The execution of the plot didn’t cash in on the potential. With this plot set up, the movie could have gone in several directions like there being a ghost on the set to cause trouble or Rebecca being possessed. The movie could have also chosen to go in a different direction and have Rebecca either have some kind of mental problem and be hallucinating things or just decide that to really become her character she needed to kill. I’m still not sure which way the movie ultimately decided to go. Things happened that could support every situation I mentioned, but I didn’t feel like it was ever clearly shown which it was. Certain things that happened could have been some kind of flashback, part of the movie, or maybe even a hallucination. The movie didn’t commit to any one explanation for what was going on. I saw things that hinted that Rebecca did have some kind of mental problem, but that was never addressed in the movie. Mona was giving her daughter some sort of medication that was never identified or really explained. In one early scene, Rebecca willing took the medication, but later Mona was being sneaky to get her daughter to take it. The movie raised too many possibilities and questions. I felt like there was no resolution to any of the questions. This movie would have been a lot better if the story had been handled better and not left so many things unresolved.
When Method started, a date was shown on the screen of either 1907 or 1908. The scene progressed and then it was shown that it was part of a movie that was being filmed. Until the director yelled cut, the scene looked finished and polished like it was in the movie to share information about Belle. After that, the movie seemed to jump backwards to when Rebecca arrived in Romania to work on the movie. She was shown at some kind of party with her mother and then Jake and Bethany arrived. That was the first time Rebecca met Bethany. Shortly after that, Rebecca and Mona were shown arriving at the house where the movie was filming and Mona told the director about the plan for Rebecca to live there. With the movie jumping back and forth from Rebecca’s life to the movie about Belle that made it hard enough to keep track of what was going on at times. The movie didn’t need to jump back and forth in time as well. That just made things even more confusing.
It was established within the first few minutes of Method that Rebecca and Jake had been involved in the past. It was never stated why they broke up, though there was a hint about one or two things that may have contributed to the break up. That was just tossed out into the mix of the plot, which was complicated enough, and then never really followed up on. There were some sexual situations and a few sex scenes in the movie, but they weren’t that explicit. There really wasn’t any nudity. During one sex scene, the couple was under a sheet and in the other one, clothing was just rearranged. Elizabeth Hurley did show off a little skin in a few scenes.
At the end of Method, a few sentences about Belle popped up on the screen like happens at the end of movies about real people. Just for the heck of it, I got on the internet and did a search on Belle Gunness. I found all kinds of information and learned that she was a real woman that lived in Indiana. In 1908, it was discovered that she had murdered several men when bodies were discovered buried on her land. The part of Method that showed the movie about Belle was well done. A movie devoted just to telling the story of Belle would have been interesting and may have ultimately worked better. In the movie about Belle, some of the murders that she committed were shown. That did add most of the violence for the movie. In the part of the movie that was focusing on Rebecca a few things happened that added a little more violence to the movie. It really wasn’t a violent movie overall.
Rebecca Fairbanks was a well known actress making her return to movies. She had some trouble in her personal life that had contributed to her being away from her career for so long. Rebecca was playing Belle in a movie. I thought that Elizabeth Hurley did well as Rebecca and Belle. Rebecca was from England like Hurley, so she had an accent. As Belle, she didn’t have any trace of the accent and even the tone of her voice sounded different. She was very consistent with the voice as Belle. This part was more serious than any other I’ve seen Hurley play. Jeremy Sisto was fine as Jake. He had moved on after the end of the relationship with Rebecca and was married, but he still had feelings for Rebecca. Bethany didn’t have much to do and there wasn’t anything about Hannah Yelland’s performance that stood out. Mona was very controlling with her daughter and the two did have a bit of a strained relationship. Carmen du Sautoy did a good job with the part.
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