First among them we find Kelly MacDonald in the lead role. Before anyone utters the film’s first line of dialogue, we learn that her husband beat her, that she ran, and that she set up a new life in a new town far away. This matters as more than a reason to isolate her and give her character some texture, for her experience as both a victim of abuse and a woman with the courage to escape informs nearly every word she says, every thing she does. Watch her in this film. Watch her eyes and her body language. Watch the choices she makes and the way she makes them. Keaton the director was surely watching, and he showed the wisdom to follow her with his camera, to observe her as she thought and spoke and acted.
Next, we have Tom Bastounes, with whom I’m unfamiliar, as a detective who investigates a crime to which MacDonald has borne witness. He’s a large man, gone to seed and following a bottle on an inexorable down slope. But he has a ways to go, and his professional policeman’s demeanor hides a vulnerability that makes him all the more surprising when it’s time to play hardball.
And then there’s Keaton himself, playing the supporting role without which nothing else in the film would be possible. This is the best I’ve seen him, contained and mature, seeing everything and revealing nothing. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have believed it if you’d told me that Michael Keaton could be scary. But he can, particularly when he’s trying not to be.
THE MERRY GENTLEMAN won’t change your life. It isn’t big, it isn’t flashy, it isn’t groundbreaking. But it is a carefully told story, well performed and realized. I’m impressed.
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