The Woodsman

The Woodsman

Bradley P

Registrant
I don't know if this film has been discussed here, but I'm curious...what did everyone who's seen it think of it??

For those who haven't, it stars Kevin Bacon as a man leaving 12 years of prison for child molestation, and trying to have a normal life. It is from his point of view, and so it offers sympathy to him as a pedophile.

I personally was touched by the movie, it has many moments of redemption and I was wondering what others thought of it...
 
I am replying almost eight years later - so at this rate, perhaps you'll get a third response in 2027. :) This is my own very personal review (written as a review to the general readership - and when I say "you," it is directed universally and not to the poster or anyone in particular):

Imagine that. A sympathetic molester. And I don't think I would have appreciated the premise had it not been for my experience with my own molester. It is worth talking about that past a little bit first, because it informs how I relate to this movie. My abuser was mixed up. And for so many years after, the story about him just grew in my head. He was a sociopath. He was evil. He was unfeeling. He had no heart. He was worthless to humanity. He wasn't even human. We tend to fill in the blanks of our past and they quickly become our facts. And - as I was to soon learn - nobody argues harder than than someone who has built his life upon presumptions that are challenged - for they are literally arguing for everything they know of themselves - for their very identities. For their lives.

So it is many years later. My past was packed away for so long - until precipitous events transpired that forced me to look at it again. I have questions I need to ask him. I'm searching for answers to forgotten memories, and he alone holds the key to those answers. I figure that meeting him is like a trade. I don't need to like him. It need not be an anger venting session for me - nor kiss-and-make-up. I need answers. He needs forgiveness. We can give each other what we need and walk away forever.

He's in a psychiatric lock-up facility. Guards. Concertina wire. The works. I show up. Although I am not a family member, nobody presses the issue and I get my pass. I go to his block, the guard buzzes me in, and he asks who I am looking for. I tell him. And he says, "Oh - you must be his son."

My abuser is three years older than me.

So there's the first hint about why I identified with The Woodsman. Like the main character in that film, my own abuser was weighted down by his sins, tortured by his demons. Every line etched in his face told me that. He looked really old - at least twenty years older than his real age.

We had many conversations there - I visited a number of times. I admit that a part of me did not want to acknowledge his humanity. It was too easy to accept the lies I told myself about him. But the truth told me a different story. He was tortured by the very demons that he was wrestling when he tortured me. I could see them in that spartan windowed visitors room when we talked. And I recognized those demons when I thought of him at 15 - and me at 12. They were the same ones. Eventually I escaped and got my life back. But he could not. And his demons hounded him right to the end. I sat across from him and saw a lost soul. And ultimately his demons killed him. He died almost two years ago.

I was once told that one of the reasons we feel uncomfortable in a mentally unstable person's presence - a reason we are reluctant to engage - may be that we fear getting lost in their world. We are insecure about our footing in our own worlds, and dare not slip on the banana peel of another's. And I will admit that talking with him was a challenge in that respect. My world was built in part upon an assumption of his world. Could I stand to see him redefined as someone vulnerable - as a victim of his own disease. Do I dare even contemplate him as someone who truly wanted to be good but had no idea how? As someone who never got the help he needed when he was first caught molesting kids? Can I look into his eyes and see the tragic humanity hiding behind the monster - and at the same time retain my own integrity?

That's why I like The Woodsman. It is real. It suggests we look at the very thing we care not to, and see that which we may not wish to acknowledge. Could I - as a survivor - find healing by standing up to my own lies? Am I that strong? Yes. The question is - are you?
 
Top