Anamorph

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Peter Stormare, Clea DuVall, James Rebhorn, Amy Carlson, Yul Vazquez, Don Harvey, Paul Lazar and Edward Hibbert

Written by: Henry Miller and Tom Phelan

Directed by: Henry Miller

Distributor: Kamala Films

Rated: R

On Friday, September 21st, the Milwaukee International Film Festival presents the world premiere of a new film starring Academy Award-Winning Wisconsin-native Willem Dafoe. Yes, Dafoe will be at the screening. Yes, it will be crowded. Is it worth the long wait in line to sit in a capacity theatre for a film that starts relatively late in the evening? I think so. While it falls far short of a masterpiece, Anamorph is a solidly entertaining crime thriller with some excellent acting and impressively slick visuals for a tiny indie film.

Dafoe (Spider-Man, The Last Temptation of Christ) stars as Stan, a reclusive New York police detective and no stranger to the world of art crime. When a killer with grizzly aesthetic strikes, Stan is thrust into the discomfiting world of art crime. Stan is joined in the investigation by a freshly promoted detective named Carl (Scott Speedman, Underworld, Dark Blue) and Blair, his burnt-out art dealer (Peter Stormare, The Minority Report, Constantine).

Director Henry Miller – whose only other feature is 2004’s Late Watch – pieces together the story in muted tones. Nothing is glorified here — washed-out colors in casually framed shots play over a sparsely scored soundscape. Miller cleverly lets the gruesomely fantastic elements of the story stand alone – against the drab reality of the film, the crime scenes are vividly disturbing. This is exquisitely dark stuff: a camera obscura in a hotel room, the gestalt image of bird formed from hanging dismembered body parts, a human being turned into an inkwell.

Dafoe’s Stan is breathtakingly drab — even in some very passionate moments – although there’s an eerie kind of magnetism that keeps him in the center of everything. Peter Stormare’s ingeniously sloppy perspicacity as the exhausted art historian adds color to a film that is almost too underplayed to be suspensful.

Anamorph blurs the line between crime and criminal investigation, and though it may not feel particularly compelling as mysteries go, the shadowy mood carries most of the film. The pacing feels uneven, but the filmmaker is counting on the intellect of the audience to fill in the vacant moments. To expect the breathless pace of a Hollywood thriller in a this indie film would be misguided; Anamorph is captivating in its own subtle way.