First five minutes—striding a forty-year distance across a marriage—may be the most disturbing of the year in cinema
A disturbing character study and a morality play that actually entertains discussions of what constitutes right and wrong, justice, God, sin
“Why do you get to walk around free and I don’t?...You never did anything bad?”
“I’m different than when I come in here…reborn.” The notion of being born-again strikes a chord with Jack
“The Power of Zukangor” (“the sound and the light of God”)
Flourishes of black humor
Skillful duets
We’re all capable of doing terrible things
As a parole case worker, he sits in judgment—playing God, if you will
His mild-mannered mask hides wellsprings of repressed lust and rage
school ring/championship ring
Built-up resentment
“No one changes for the better.”
The suggestion that explosive self-destruction is a good thing, the way to be born again
Episcopalian churchgoer but the God stuff doesn’t come easily to him; what does is the Christian guilt
Despite that guilt, as a white bourgeois male, he has a sense of entitlement: sin first, ask questions later
His one condition: “Nobody can know about this.” (see above)
both express borderline-suicidal despair
disconnect and unhappiness
“answering for the things that you’ve done”
Isolated home
a hard drinker and a couch potato
Short with his wife
Cacophonous chorus of Christian talk radio like voices in his head (the show to which he devotedly listens is called "All Voices Under God")
Stone: "Sometimes I think the best thing is to just listen."
The ambiguous perception of buzzing: clarity, evil, madness?
Domestic noir
She’s an atheist who does what she pleases (and teaches kids to do good for the sake of doing good)
Sly
They have to prostrate themselves, confession-style
Sporting fresh cornrows, the raspy “Stone” has done eight years of a ten-to-fifteen sentence for arson and accessory to manslaughter
"I got a mouth, I know."
nine years married
Cast the first one?
Achieves a kind of enlightenment
Free will
“He lived right. What more could you want people to say about you?”
subtle, unsettling sound design and score
subtlety with co-worker
Frances Conroy
cleaning (holy?) fire