 "Photo: Courtesy Photo")
Something strange happened while I was watching "Sisters" During one scene, a murder scene, I was struck by a very visceral and disturbing sense of fear in a way I have never felt before. I could feel my stomach secrete acid, my neck muscles tighten. I know that sounds pretty standard for suspenseful movie moments, but then came a peculiar tingling in my ribs, an electricity permeating my torso and my head. I even experienced something akin to nausea -- not induced by gore, but by disorientation in the presence of something beyond all reason, something terrifyingly insane. Maybe it was the murderer's distorted, twisted, twitching face. Maybe it was the camera slowly creeping in as it beheld the victim, or the haunting shadows on the wall during the act itself. Maybe it was the gripping, bombastic score that punctuated the violence. It was only a for a few moments that I felt this way, a maximum of ten seconds, but they were moments that left an indelible mark. After watching the film, I wanted to watch the scene again. I didn't. Part of me didn't want to demystify the magic, to bring order to the delirious chaos of the scene. The other part of me thought it was just too disturbing to see a second time.
Though I suggest some possible reasons for the scene's effect on me, one could argue that my reaction was personal and irrational -- that an obscure alignment of emotions and events yielded a response that would not have been the same had I seen the film in a different time or a different place. I understand you may not feel the way I do about the murder scene if you watch the film. In fact, I expect that most people won't experience the sensations I described to the degree that I felt them. I can confidently say, however, that "Sisters" is a suspenseful, skillfully-made thriller by one of the greatest visual stylists of our time, director Brian De Palma.
De Palma made "Sisters" independently and on a low budget in 1973. Margot Kidder (Lois Lane of the first "Superman" movies) stars as Danielle, a model and aspiring actress from Quebec who is one of the titular sisters. There is a murder at some point, but I'm not saying anything else about it. I know I'm being frustratingly vague, but I hope to titillate and tantalize you with as little information as possible, since half the fun is trying figure out where the film is going. The film is De Palma's first true thriller, and he would become known for his films in that genre, among which are "Obsession," "Body Double," "Dressed to Kill" and "Blow Out." He's also responsible for quite a few blockbusters, most notably "Carrie," "Mission: Impossible," "The Untouchables," and "Scarface." The cinematography and action sequences are brilliant in De Palma's films, which prominently feature elaborate set-pieces. A great example of what he's capable of would be the shoot-out on the train station stairwell in "The Untouchables" (I suggest watching the hilarious spoof of this scene that appears in one of "The Naked Gun" movies). Like the great Alfred Hitchcock, De Palma prefers making "pure cinema," a form of storytelling that relies primarily on images and not on dialogue. It's no coincidence that there are glaringly obvious allusions to Hitchcock's "Psycho," "Rear Window," and "Rope" in "Sisters."
This is a movie filled with experimental techniques and strange, almost hallucinatory sequences, but it is nevertheless grounded in reality and structured by a taut storyline. One of those strange sequences appears at the very beginning of the film, where pictures of twins in the embryonic stages of development displayed during the opening credits. Composer Bernard Herrmann's score here is otherworldly and audacious, using the theremin techniques he pioneered while scoring the science fiction classic, "The Day the Earth Stood Still." The theremin produces that high-pitched reverberating noise we have come to associate with UFOs, and all the while I couldn't help thinking about the alien-like appearance of embryos. Did I mention Bernard Herrmann was Hitchcock's long-time collaborator?
Cut to a blind woman who walks into a men's locker room and starts to take off her clothes, much to the surprise of the man who's dressing there.
He begins to watch and the ominous music swells. Then there's an abrupt, playful jingle on the soundtrack and the scene turns out to be a segment from a "Candid Camera" type of game show in New York City. The "blind" woman is Danielle, and apparently this is the best acting role she can get. The man watching her is Philip, played by a man named Lisle Wilson, and he's gracious enough to leave the room before the important articles of clothing start coming off. They meet afterwards on the set of the game show and Philip asks her out on a date. Sounds a bit sketchy, no? During the date, Danielle's bug-eyed, bespectacled ex-husband shows up and shadows them around town. Sketchiness times two. At one point Danielle mentions that she misses her sister. Events unfold, someone kills someone, and then someone else tires to figure it all out. I mentioned earlier that I wasn't nauseous because of any goriness in the murder sequence. That's because I don't tend to have such reactions to gore. I have to admit, however, that the murder is tremendously bloody, uniquely gruesome, and completely unsettling.
Although there's an intriguing murder mystery at the core of the film, the real draw for me is De Palma's style. He does some especially great work with split screen techniques. During a few sequences, we are suddenly able to see things in real time and from multiple perspectives simultaneously. Simple crosscutting between two points of action would give the viewer less information, and the work we do trying to keep up with both screens lends the film momentous energy. The split screen certainly heightens suspense as well -- there is something disconcerting about being able to see absolutely everything. In one sequence, someone is on their way to discover some very implicating evidence about the murder on the left side of screen and another person is hiding that evidence on the
right. We wait, studying each side carefully, until the two characters and the cameras following them inevitably collide. De Palma also had his crew construct a set that allows the camera to flow from room to room, which allows for one carefully choreographed, longer take, like in "Rope." I remarked in my "Cloverfield" review that the home video camera in the film effectively traps the audience in the terrible predicament of the characters. A long, fluid take, I would argue, does something very similar. After a certain point we become subconsciously aware that the camera is determined not to look away, that we are trapped. This is a technique that suspense films do not take proper advantage of, I think.
The strangeness returns in a hallucinatory finale. This third act may be one of the films weaknesses, as its tone shifts a little jarringly and it takes a long time to tell us quite a few things we already know or have figured out. However, I did appreciate its execution, I have to say I once again felt tinges of my initial, startling experience during the murder. I think that feeling stems from the fact that there is a heedless, unpredictable zeal to this film. Much of the time it's had to tell where it's going and how it will get there -- via one screen, or maybe two? Also consider a moment where one character asks another, out of nowhere, "Have you been taking diet pills again?" It's a throwaway line that endows what could be a hastily sketched character with untold depths and a secret weakness. What could come next?
"The Black Dahlia," one of De Palma's most recent films, suffers from a more serious third act collapse, and though I have not seen his latest movie, "Redacted," I believe the critical consensus was quite negative. See "Sisters" instead. It is a wild, entertaining mystery-thriller that demonstrates the skills of a great director who, at the time of the film's making, was just in the midst of realizing his full potential. I keep thinking about how he captured something inimitable in that one shot, with the camera slowly creeping in, where the murderer's twitching, twisted face is the stuff of nightmares.
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