The Myth of Fingerprints (1997)

Very boring and unfulfilling
I watched this movie a couple of years ago, because of the cast mainly.
I don't remember if I liked it or not, must have not hated it or loved it because I would have remembered. The only thing I remembered was the bitchy funny scene in the bookshop with Julianne Moore.
I watched the movie again today and I was utterly bored to death by it.
I am used to movies leaving matters unanswered and having to figure out stuff, some mysteries left unsolved, like most non-hollywood movies.
But to defend the movie by using just THAT excuse is not enough. There is not enough dysfuncionality, quirkyness, funny stuff, acting-outs or fights or great acting jobs to keep one's interest in the movie for more than one viewing, just because you want to know how the heck this movie is going to end. If you want a home for the winter holidays movie get "Home for the Holidays" or "The Family Stone" (the latter is weird and sometimes boring, but not as much as this one).
One thing is for sure, I will probably never watch it again.

D.D.
Is the family both the centerpoint of our adult strength and the source of our weakness?
The question lingers upon coming to the end of Myth of Fingerprint, and one is left with the age-old family conundrum of love as both an unspoken bond and a lonely device.

This movie about a family gathering at Thanksgiving - always the best time of the year to resurrect demons and compare scars - deals with familial relationships from the aspects of four adult children home for the holiday. The isolated setting of the large New England house amidst the backdrop of the cold and bare landscape is perfect for a film about the difficulties of family communication rendered more glaring when thrust together in an enclosed social setting. Noah Wylie as the son Warren, and Julianne Moore as daughter Mia are the most powerful of the sibling characters, with different and yet similar personalities. Mia is all anger, Warren all emptiness and regret. Both are uncomfortable in their own skin and seem confused about what makes them this way. The mother is the glue of the house, warm and caring, and yet gently and firmly willing to hold up a mirror for each family member to see their reflection.
But it is the father who is central to the story. Emotionally constipated and rigid, he seems almost fearful of his children when he isn't cultivating a detached, yet powerful presence over them. Though he speaks rarely the actions and expressions of the father expose the quiet source of his childrens reciprocated fear. By not saying much verbally he seems to say a lot emotionally.
The beauty and complexity of the movie are the lack of background as to why exactly the children have such a strained relationship with their father, though by his aforementioned actions one hardly needs to guess. Each persons relationship with their family and their significant other (or lack thereof) is examined without intense or excessive social history allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions - perhaps based on their own personal experiences (another powerful aspect of the movie). And at the end a lingering memory, an emotional scar, will explode shattering the tension percolating below the surface of the family living room on Thanksgiving night. The closing two scenes of the father lend a quiet, powerful, and yet tragic beauty that best exemplify the crushing inner weight some carry preventing them from expressing themselves even to those they love.

Unavoidably opinions will differ on particular aspects and the overall enjoyment of the movie, but those differences will say more about the viewer themself and their relationship with their own family than it does upon the film. At its core the capacity to make us examine ourselves and our own relationships is its very power.

Big Shrug (spoilers)
Some pretty pictures, some good acting on the parts of some of the actors as they portray a bunch of dysfunctional people home for Thanksgiving.

However, a plot seems to be missing. We meet the parents and grown kids, as well as dragged-along boyfriend/girlfriend of two of the grown kids as they gather at the parents' home for the holiday. All of them seem to have deep seated weirdnesses and problems, ranging from the oldest daughter, Mia (Julianne Moore) who seems to be stricken with a near-terminal case of the redass to the youngest daughter who seems to think it is hysterically funny to leap out from behind doors at people, screaming at the top of her lungs. The father, played by Roy Scheider, is distant and boorish and seems to be obsessed with the time and adhering to a schedule. The mother (Blythe Danner) acts as if nothing is going on at all, even though her children and their assorted guests are acting like twerps and her husband acts like he needs a lobotomy.

Fine, a good portrait of dysfunctional family dynamics - but it doesn't go anywhere from there. We never find out just why the kids are estranged from their father. The most shattering thing we see that he's done is that he gets bombed at some previous gathering and makes a pretty strong pass at his son, Warren's (Noah Wylie) then-girlfriend, kissing her in the hallway of the family home. In another scene, we see the father watching an old home movie of a birthday party for Warren, where he breaks a couple of eggs over the kid's head. Some confusing references are made to some kind of "game" the father has played through the years, which seems to consist of asking people who don't have watches what time it is.

Okay, so the father doesn't come off as Dad Of The Year by any means - but what we hear and see of him simply doesn't explain the obvious deep-seated problems of his adult children, ranging from the ongoing rage and viciousness of his oldest daughter, Mia, to his son, Warren's, obvious fear and distaste for him. Physical or sexual abuse isn't even hinted at. At most it seems as if the father character is obsessed by schedules and time and is rigid and emotionally distant from everyone.

So it is hard to accept the characters of the adult children or why they act like such putzes. From what we're told by the sketchy plot, they don't really seem to have much reason to indulge in continual rages or depression. Two of them have relationships with other people that seem to involve a lot of sex, but not much else. Mia's relationship with her boyfriend, Elliot, is simply painful, as she continually cuts him down, verbally abuses him and then tries to use him as a sex object - but then, for some reason unknown to us, Mia verbally abuses everyone without mercy. She's always angry and cruel - but we don't know why.

Warren, on the other hand, seems to excel at whiny depression. We see him in what appears to be a therapy session, mentioning a hometown girl, Daphne, who apparently dumped him in the past. This has been the catalyst for him being estranged from his family for three years. When we finally see what happened - his drunken father tried groping and kissing the girlfriend in a hallway, and apparently Warren saw the incident - we're left wondering "is that it?" All that trauma because someone got drunk and acted like a jerk? She dumped Warren, who did nothing wrong, because of something his father, an acknowledged jerk, did? Warren just comes off as oversensitive and self-absorbed, greatly enjoying his angst, and his girlfriend comes off as a little jerk who treated him badly becaue of something he didn't do (and who also, for some reason, makes him sit on the ice of a frozen lake for a long talk). Considering the buildup to the "shattering" moment, I had at least expected that his father had raped his girlfriend, or that Warren had discovered that she'd been having an affair with this father. Only something of that intensity could have explained Warren's ongoing grief.

Another brother, Jake, is involved with a pea-brained girlfriend that he can't seem to say "I love you" to. After seeing her behavior through the movie, we can understand why. She's quite rude, vacuous, insensitive to the discomfort and feelings of others, and manipulative. In other words, Jake is involved with a carbon copy of his father. Okay, fine - is that it? This is worth a two hour movie?

Youngest daughter, Lee, is just a little jerk. She's busy being the cute and funny mascot, always acting like a ten year old, making a rather pitiful pitch for the attentions of Mia's boyfriend. Insults and cruelties seem to just roll off her hide, particularly when they're aimed at her by Mia. At one point she's having a conversation with her mother, who is telling her that she still loves the kids' father in spite of everything - but we never hear what "everything" consists of.

A slice of life movie is fine, and this film comes off as a peek into a holiday weekend with a dysfunctional family, but empathy for any of the characters is almost impossible because we never see just what it is that has led to such a range of unhealthy behaviors in this family. More exposition would have helped - otherwise, everyone comes off as whiny, self-pitying, obnoxious and tiresome.

Some people who gave this film positive reviews mention that this is a true slice of life - that the ends aren't neatly tied up, that much remains unsaid and unrevealed, just as is the case in dysfunctional families. There is no Hollywood ending. That's fine - but for a film to really work, a little more than several days' worth of Big Brother is needed. If we're to see these people as anything other than a bunch of immature cretins, we need to know why they ended up that way, even if it's not entirely revealed.

All the angst doesn't add up to the supposed cause of the angst - and I was glad the film was finally over as a result.

Before purchase, rent it and be sure you want to own it before buying.