Mark Day
A Hole In One Review
OK
Quirky to the point of irritation, Richard Ledes' A Hole in One trades in inventive oddities at the expense of dealing with human emotion. A surrealistic period piece about humanity's hunger for quick-fix solutions to its complex problems, this romantic fable about insanity and brain incisions knows a thing or two about mood. From its title sequence of disembodied skulls, penetrating lances, and scraggly tree silhouettes to its non-linear narrative and ethereal dream imagery, Ledes creates an atmosphere of contemplative, quixotic fantasy. The problem, however, is one of forced weirdness. Its deliberate artificiality a cold and remote pose, and its characters archetypal cardboard cut-outs rather than fully fleshed-out people, the film is a strained attempt at eccentricity that ultimately reveals itself to be a dramatic non-starter.
Anna (Michelle Williams) is the vacuous, borderline-underage girlfriend of mobster Billy (Meat Loaf), and the deleterious effect of watching her criminal lover murder a restaurateur (Louis Zorich) - coupled with the recent death of her G.I. brother Dan (Wendell Pierce), who perished after post-WWII electro-shock treatments administered at the request of their nasty parents - has left the girl a psychological mess. Fortunately, frightening Dr. Harold Ashton (Bill Raymond) has just arrived in town promoting a newfangled cure-all that strikes Anna's easily swayed fancy: the transorbital lobotomy, which the neurologist claims will eradicate everything from anxiety and insomnia to alcoholism. The "ice-pick lobotomy" - a popular procedure apparently based on historical fact, and so nicknamed because of the primary instrument used - is immediately appealing to Anna, who sees it as the easiest method of coping with her traumatic life. Will she go through with the dangerous operation, thus choosing to forget, rather than confront, her painful memories? Will the town's new resident Tom (Tim Guinee), an honest Korean War vet being blackmailed by Billy, succeed in convincing Anna that lobotomies are a less-than-reasonable therapeutic solution to one's problems? Will Ledes create something coherent out of his symbolism-saturated story?
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