Nell

Starring: Jodie Foster, Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Richard Libertini, Nick Searcy, Jeremy Davies
Directed by: Michael Apted
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama
1994

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A doctor (Liam Neeson) stumbles across a wild woman named Nell(Jodie Foster) living alone in the woods. He contacts a psychologist (Natasha Richardson) for help, but she wants to move Nell into a hospital. As the pair seek the best way to help Nell, they soon discover she is helping them, as well.

Review:

Tim: You would expect a movie about a wild woman in the woods who knows nothing about civilization and has her own language to be a pretty powerful movie. There's so many thematic elements to explore here. Civilization v. the wild, past v. present, and more. However, I was surprised by how unaffected I was by everything in this film. I shrugged it off all too easily. I still don't get exactly what the film was trying to achieve, because it simply doesn't work. This is a movie with good intentions that didn't exactly work as planned. I was interested in the film, but I didn't care very much.

The biggest conversation piece with this film is the performance of Jodie Foster. I still can't believe what I saw. Foster basically gives either one of the all time great performances, or one of the all time ridiculous ones. I tend to lean toward the latter. I understand she's a wild woman with her own language, but this translated to watching Foster sway around like a tree and babble incessant, incomprehensible nonsense for two hours. I bought this all at first, but as the movie went on, I became less and less a fan. I am still shocked that Foster committed so fully to this role. You can tell she's a firm believer that what she is doing is brilliant. It comes across as just plain crazy, though. Watching her performance in this film is like watching a car wreck- you don't want to watch because it's so unpleasant, but you can't really look away, either. In some ways, it is deserving that she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. I can't imagine anyone knew what to make of her performance, so giving her an Oscar nomination only made sense. It's like they just shrugged and voted for her because they didn't know what else to do.

I would imagine that viewers of this film fall into two camps. If you bought Foster's performance, I believe you would have watched a powerful, beautiful film about the little things in life (and how they really are the big things). I bet you would believe that this movie taught us a valuable less, that for all our innovation and ingenuity and civilization and modern society, we've lost an important part of what makes us human. I am totally with you if that's what you took away from this movie. I certainly saw all those lessons here, and I could ALMOST buy into them.

But, in the end, I fell into the second camp and couldn't bring myself to like this movie. Jodie Foster is certainly good in one aspect, but I still couldn't tear my eyes away from her as I continually asked myself, "What the hell does she think she's doing?" I wish I could understand. I think for many viewers, her performance is so off-putting that you almost can't make sense of the rest of the movie.

The rest of the cast does give good performances. Liam Neeson was very likable as the doctor who befriends Nell. Natasha Richardson also worked well with Neeson, and made a good third character in this triangle. Both actors were believable and entertaining to watch on screen.

I certainly appreciate the effort made by Nell. This isn't a conventional movie, and I like that about it. However, I felt like the movie tried too hard and ultimately did not achieve what it desired. This movie was decent, but not very good overall. I think this movie gave Foster a chance to give a memorable performance, but didn't work on many levels besides that.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Panic Room, The Silence of the Lambs, Anna and the King, The Wild Child