January 21–28, 1999

movies

Raimi Reins In

by Sam Adams

When people are used to seeing you in a red nose and clown makeup," says Sam Raimi, "it's hard to walk on stage wearing jeans and a T-shirt." Raimi's eye-popping, throat-grabbing direction of movies like The Evil Dead and Darkman has built him a devoted cult following over the past two decades, but he takes a radically different tack with A Simple Plan. An intense and morally bleak tale of two brothers (Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton) who turn to murder to protect a $4 million stash they've discovered in a downed airplane, it's an artistic about-face on the level of the Coens' Fargo, only more dramatically so. There's nothing in Raimi's back catalog to even suggest an interest in visually low-key, character-based storytelling; it's like a champion roller skater suddenly taking up the violin.

Raimi says he was forced to rethink his style in response to Scott B. Smith's script: "It's about these really weighty moral issues, a very character-driven story, and I knew reading it that the camera would have to be almost invisible. In the past, a lot of people came to see my movies just for the camera moves, so I knew I'd really be testing that audience, but I guess it was worth taking the chance." Asked what scene was most difficult to shoot, Raimi skips over visual moments entirely and heads straight for high drama: the final confrontation between the two brothers. "Living that moment over and over again with [the actors] was incredibly difficult," he recalls, "not something I was entirely prepared for until it happened."

Fans of Raimi's older work—the "vine-rape" scene in Evil Dead has always been a personal favorite—need not lose all hope, however. Though it may be sad to see Raimi shed his distinctively hyperkinetic style for classical Hollywood craftsmanship, Raimi promises that A Simple Plan is not his bid for mainstream respectability (even though that's exactly what it looks like), but a singular response to a different kind of script. "I love that comic-book style [of Evil Dead, et al.], and I'd absolutely use that style again if I found a script I really liked that called for it." His favorite film of the last year is The Big Lebowski, the Coens' antic follow-up to their snowy, sedate critical hit, so perhaps a similar turnaround is in store for Raimi. C'mon Sam: You hold the camera, I'll work the vines.

A Simple Plan opens Fri., Jan. 22, at Ritz 12 and Ritz 5. For Sam Adams' review, see this week's Movie Shorts.