VIDEO Sling Blade Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed and starred in this examination of compassion, madness and bigotry in the heartland of America and came up with a movie that is touching without being sentimental, disturbing without ever being sensationalist.
The film opens in an insane asylum where an undercurrent of tension accompanies the actions of a group of inmates. One of them, Carl (Thornton), is to be released that day and he has agreed to be interviewed by a journalism student. He recounts to her his loveless upbringing and the day he killed his mother and her lover with a sling blade, a sort of hoe.
With this opening Thornton sows the seeds of distrust for Carl that stay with us throughout the film. When he meets and befriends a young boy upon his release we wonder if he will repeat his act of murder, and this tension remains.
All of Carl's relationships are laced with the threat of violence, but gradually, we are convinced he may just have escaped the vicious circle of emotional and physical violence that has been his lot since birth.
Sling Blade features a number of stand-out performances but Thornton as the troubled Carl is remarkable. The plot is tight and credible, and the photography superbly executed.
BOOKS Three Dollars Elliot Perlman (Faber & Faber) This is the story of my generation. Eddie, a thirty-something professional, finds himself with just three dollars to his name, although he has done everything society has recommended as the surest means of avoiding poverty.
