The Sheila Variations

Under-rated movies #16: The Rapture

The Rapture, written and directed by Michael Tolkin, and starring Mimi Rogers in a stunning (and unprecedented, for her) performance, is a must-see film. It's low-budget, there is much of it that is "fudged" - but that adds to its gritty brutal atmosphere. There isn't money to spare here. If there were more money, perhaps the special effects would be more elaborate, but you don't need it. It would take away, perhaps, from the raw relentless fearless performance at the center of it. It's one of the best pieces of acting I have ever seen, and it's astonishing to me that her career didn't "take off", in the aftermath of it. She ripped her own heart out in this film (metaphorically, of course) and showed us her humanity - in all its frailty and stubbornness and beauty and madness ... She holds nothing back. It is excruciating to watch. Beautiful beautiful work.

The Rapture is Tolkin's first directing job. He was finding his way. Rogers has said that she and Tolkin did a two month "emotional intensive" before shooting. They would meet in a big warehouse space, and Tolkin would give her acting exercises - playing snippets of music and having her react, with her body - no forethought, no planning - just go. He wanted her stripped down to her essentials. He also sensed in her, the person, a kind and caretaking impulse - and he wanted her to get past that in order to play the character. Mimi Rogers, in real life, is a person with good manners, who is always consumed with making the other person feel comfortable. Tolkin and she would go out to breakfast together and he would say to her, "I want you to see what it feels like to not say 'please' or 'thank you' when you are talking to the waiter." Rogers found it so painful. But she gave it a try. The private work they did before filming pays off, and tenfold.

Sharon, the character, is a woman who negotiates her empty life with an almost agonizing buzz of pain at the heart of every moment. Her life is about narcotizing that pain - through random sex, cigarettes, booze, pushing herself further and further into experiences - orgies, swinging ... because she is unable to feel anything. Something in her has been cauterized. From the beginning. Knowing that Mimi Rogers is not actually like that, in real life, makes her performance even more astonishing. There are hard edges to Sharon, a coldness, a detached amusement at the foibles and follies of her fellow man. She has no compassion. Mimi Rogers said a very interesting thing, "You know how it is when you're in great pain. People who are in great pain are very selfish - it's so difficult to look around and see other people and realize what they might be going through when you're in so much pain ..." So that was how she approached Sharon, in the first half of the film.

I don't want to say too much about the film, because watching it unfold is part of its horror and power. Sharon is a telephone operator, who spends her nights cruising the streets of Los Angeles with her corrupt "boyfriend", looking for couples to seduce. In this way she meets an aimless yet kind of sweet guy named Randy (played by David Duchovny, in one of his first major roles). The sex is graphic in the beginning of this film. Graphic and yet totally un-erotic. Sharon barely enjoys herself. She can't get "lost" in sex, because there's nothing really in her that COULD get lost. She is a shell of a person. So the orgy goes on, and at the heart of it is Sharons' barely-hidden contempt for everyone and everything. Interspersed with these lush disturbing sex scenes, are scenes of the cold clinical bank of cubicles, where Sharon sits, redirecting calls, monotonously. The juxtaposition fills you, the audience member, with emptiness. Sharon's apartment is all beige, with really nothing in it. No pictures on the wall, the kitchen looks unused, it's not a lived-in space. All of the spaces in this film have an eerie unearthly look to them - and perhaps that was partly due to the lack of money for big-time set decoration and production design - but it ends up working. Sharon is not IN this world. She is lost.

Randy (Duchovny) is lost, too. He confesses to her one night that he once killed a man for a thousand dollars. This is a key scene.

Sharon is incapable of connection - not just with her fellow man, but with herself. Randy wonders if we would think that murder was wrong if we were not taught that murder was wrong. It's a level of conversation Sharon finds irritating. It demands too much. Watching Mimi Rogers deal with Duchovny in this scene is to watch an actress who is not "acting". She IS Sharon, reacting as Sharon would react - and therefore it is unpredictable, without cliches, and brutal.

Through a couple of haunting encounters and overheard conversations, Sharon begins to feel like something is coming. Some event. She hears things. Something about "the pearl", something about "the boy". What is it? What does it mean? She wonders if maybe she is missing out. She wants to be a part of the group, the group that whispers together in the lunch room. Two men in ties show up at her door to tell her about the final days, and that she needs to be prepared.

The film goes into a realm that few films go into (at least effectively, or noncondecendingly) and it is astonishing to watch. It takes the Book of Revelations literally, and because of that - the characters do not come off (as they usually do in movies) as caricatures. No, because we see them from Sharon's point of view. She scoffs at their message (which is not, let's remember - a message of love - it is a message of "repent or else ...") and yet she keeps engaging them in conversation. Something in her wants to know. These scenes are amazing - you keep waiting for the judgmental caricatures to arise, you keep waiting for the filmmaker to start making fun of these people ... but nope. Tolkin is up to something else here. It's disorienting at first, and I remember my first reaction to the film - it so upended convention that I wasn't sure where I was for the first hour of it. I'm not a literal Biblical fundamentalist by any means, but it was riveting to see a film that took them at their word. The film is not outside. And so the proselytizers who show up at her door are not fire-breathing dragons. They are quite gentle, and understanding ... One of them looks at Sharon and says (without condescension), "I used to be like you." Sharon snorts with contempt. "I doubt it." It is the lack of snotty condescension that moves this film into another realm - a realm of actual exploration and examination, rather than judging or condemning.

Sharon experiences a conversion. It is total and complete.

I hesitate to say more.

For me, the film is, when you get right down to it, about Mimi Rogers' face. Its transformations, its naked pain, its fearless openness. At times it is hard to look at her.

She experiences the love of God for the first time, and her entire life transforms. She turns a corner. Nothing fits anymore. And you can see the change in her face. You see softness there, joy. She sits at her telephone operator cubicle - and tries to spread the good news to the poor folks looking for the number of the ASPCA in Oakland. She is supposed to spend a maximum amount of 15 seconds on each call. Her calls are now averaging 7 minutes. Her boss calls her into his office to reprimand her. Now. For me, this was the most important scene in the film, or one that is so deftly handled - so delicately set up - that its power is so subtle you might miss it. Like Rogers says about this scene, "Your vulnerability blossoms when someone shows you kindness." We all know what the cliche is. Gruff boss man who has no understanding tells his employee to knock the shit off. And to some degree, yes, that is how the scene begins. But The Rapture coudn't be less interested in cliches. Mimi Rogers does not play Sharon simply. She isn't suddenly on her high horse, shouting, "I'm saved and you're not!" She does not judge her fellow man. No. Just like the gentle man who showed up at her door and said, "I used to be like you ..." she now knows that she holds a precious gift that needs to be shared. It is quite urgent. Not just the message of God's love but the message of the final days. These are difficult things to play, man. Mimi Rogers does not take the easy way out. There is not one moment of "attitude" (which is what a college acting professor used to call cliched acting. "Get rid of the 'attitude'," he'd say to an actor who was taking the easy way out - by going with a caricature rather than something real). Rogers is almost pleading with her boss. Watch how he responds. And watch how she responds in turn. THAT is why this film is difficult and awesome. THAT scene.

The religion depicted in the film is literal. The Book of Revelations reads as a set of instructions. Never once does Tolkin condescend or step outside saying, "Heh heh, look at these nutbags ..." He takes them at their word. He follows events to their most logical conclusion. And it's not pretty. This is not an easy film. For anyone. It's infuriating. I found it nearly unwatchable at times, it made me so mad and edgy. It's confrontational. Good. Films SHOULD be confrontational. If you're the type of person who snickers at people who are religious, who sees all religions as a kind of cult, who writes people off who believe in such things - then this film will be totally confrontational, because you will never get a break. Tolkin never winks at you, saying, "Don't worry ... I'm with you ..." I have no idea what Tolkin believes, and I couldn't be less interested. In this story, in this movie, the Book of Revelations is literal, and so he follows that path. If you're the type of person who believes wholly in a God of love and compassion, who doesn't think too much about the final days, and who believes that good works are just as important as faith - then this film will drive you up the fucking wall. Because it's relentless. It has no interest in your hippie-dippie concerns. We're in an Old Testament world here, and Tolkin decides to believe that they mean what they say. Whether or not he believes it is irrelevant. His film examines what it would be like if you believed it. I suppose too if you're one of those "I'm saved and you're not" people, you would also find the film deeply confrontational - because Sharon's journey has nothing to do with snotty pride or putting herself above others. None of the believers in the film have that snottiness, or any Jesus Camp kind of craziness. They are quiet, firm, and gentle. If you believe, they know. It is an "elect" club, no question about it - Tolkin doesn't pull his punches - but again, we are inside that world, not outside looking in.

And there comes a moment, late in the film, when Sharon realizes that God doesn't pull his punches either. That He meant what He said. He's not fucking around. The Bible is literal. Can she do it? Can she do what He asks?

It's shattering. A shattering film.

Tolkin wrote the novel The Player - and he also wrote the screenplay for the Robert Altman film of the same name - another cold clinical excavation of a world, and an insular mindset, that might seem foreign to those not a part of it. You're either in that world, or you're out of it. If you live in Los Angeles you know that there is only one business. When people say "the business", they are not talking about construction or plumbing or education. It's "THE business". It is an exclusive world, and only the elect get to join. Some odd similarities, if you think about it, even though the people in The Rapture are part of a very different club. And Tolkin, in The Player doesn't chicken out at the end - although you think he might. Griffin Mill is a product of Hollywood. He behaves accordingly. He is hollow, like that world is hollow, and any question of art has been long forgotten. He commits a murder. But in Griffin Mill's world, he could get away with it. He could "spin" it.

It's one of the most cynical movies ever made.

Tolkin wrote The Rapture too, and while I would not call it cynical - I would call it brutal. There is no rest. There is no peace. There is just a price that must be paid. And can she pay it? Can any of us?

Mimi Rogers is something else in this film. It's one of the all-time great performances, as far as I'm concerned. I'd put her on a level with Gena Rowlands here - and I don't put anyone on the level with Gena Rowlands. No director has come along and made Mimi Rogers his muse - in the way John Cassavetes made Gena Rowlands his muse ... and so Rogers' career has stagnated (although it was wonderful to see her in the nearly wordless and totally nude scene in Door in the Floor ... I watched her stand there, full frontal nudity - she's older than I am - maybe 10 years older than I am - and she stands there, nude, with Jeff Bridges staring at her critically ... and there's no soft light, it's an unforgiving shot - not sexual, but objectifying, and awful ... and when I saw her there, and realized it was her, I thought again of The Rapture, and her boundless courage, and thought: "Damn. That woman is fearless. Why isn't she, to coin a phrase, more of a 'player'? She's not on the list of 'great actresses' when people talk about the greats of today ... but damn, she fucking should be.")

It's not a perfect film, by any means - and on some level, it might not even be a very good film. The little girl playing Mimi Rogers' daughter is pretty awful (and it's a crucial part, terribly important ... so it might seem mean to criticize a little girl, but her performance threatened to pull me out of it ... which, in a film like this, just can't happen). There are some special effects that make you wince, it's like we're going almost into Ed Wood-land here.

But it'll get you talking, that's for sure.

The reason to see it is Mimi Rogers. Her acting in The Rapture is as good as it gets. Not many actresses (or people, for that matter) are that honest with themselves, that fearless in showing us their ugliness and pettiness and fear ... and perhaps fame is its own jail ... making actresses more cautious in their choices, more protective. You see it time and time again. At the time of The Rapture, Mimi Rogers had nothing to lose. And she tosses herself ferociously into that part with an abandon that puts other actresses to shame.

More in my Under-rated Movies Series:

This post covers 5: Ball of Fire, Only Angels Have Wings, Dogfight, Zero Effect and Manhattan Murder Mystery

Four Daughters

In a Lonely Place

Searching For Bobby Fischer

Joe vs. the Volcano

Something's Gotta Give

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Mr. Lucky

Eye of God

Love and Basketball

Kwik Stop

(And thanks to Joe Valdez of the wonderful This Distracted Globe for the gentle push to write more of these reviews.)

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