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July 20th, 2008
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Games people play

Michael Caine and Jude Law sparkle in Sleuth
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April 9th, 2008 issue

By Rachel Shimp

COURTESY PHOTO
Elevator to the gallows. A vicious new take on an award-winning play.
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Sleuth


Directed by Kenneth Branagh
With Michael Caine and Jude Law

For the Post
A famous optical illusion shows a black vase, or two white faces, depending on what color the eye is focused on. This “figure and ground” illusion can manifest itself without conscious effort, and sometimes the brain organizes the information in such a way that it’s impossible to see the other image, even after being told it’s there.
In this latest adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s 1970 Tony award-winning play, perceptual organization has everything to do with the way Andrew Wyke (Michael Caine) and Milo Tindle (Jude Law) communicate. And also with the games played on the audience by director Kenneth Branagh. The very first shot is through a surveillance camera from above, as Tindle’s humble car parks itself alongside Wyke’s fancier one in a circular drive.
The younger man is Wyke’s wife’s lover, and he’s come to ask Wyke for a divorce. But the dapper Wyke, living the high life off his success as a crime novelist, has other plans. What follows is an absorbing 86 minutes of verbal and visual trickery, during which you’re never quite sure who’s on top. The cat-and-mouse games the two men play over their common interest become even more fascinating than we suspect the woman is herself.
In the 1972 film version of the play, for which Shaffer wrote the script, Caine played Tindle to Laurence Olivier’s Wyke. Here he flips his role with brute efficiency. Caine, Law, Branagh, and Harold Pinter share equal billing as this Sleuth’s collaborators. The esteemed British playwright and Nobel Laureate who adapted Kafka’s The Trial in 1993, Pinter hadn’t seen the earlier film version before writing his screenplay, which gives Shaffer’s characters refreshing new life.
Wyke’s house is as sophisticated as his demeanor. The renovated country manor is cold as ice, with one of those interiors that barely betrays a life lived there. Still, Branagh gives it as much personality as his two characters, showing their movements through it with ingenious camera techniques. The camerawork mimics Wyke’s control of the house, as he opens doors or casts dramatic mood lighting with the punch of an Ipod button. Nearly every shot is from a different angle or viewpoint, which perfectly underscores the shifting power dynamics between the two men. Two images in particular are dazzling: Wyke in front of a “fireplace” of tealight candles, the only warm tone in a blue brick of a room, and the men negotiating a deal against an infinity mirror-image of themselves.
“Trust me, and all will be well,” Wyke tells Tindle. It’s never entirely clear what he aims to be — enemy, teacher or sympathizer. He makes light of Tindle’s vocation — his wife has relayed that he’s a hairdresser — but Tindle insists that he’s an out-of-work actor who specializes in playing murderers, sex maniacs and perverts.
Law imbues lines like this with innuendoes that vary from tossed-off to brazen. He seems to be trying to prove his virility to Wyke, who has advantages over him as a provider but perhaps not as a lover. Not anymore. The men mimic each other with body language, like anyone does when having an intense conversation. We often see them side-by-side, hands folded, one looking at what the other might become if he’s lucky.
But that’s a figure of speech more than a fact. Pinter’s screenplay is deliciously verbose, giving both men impressive, scathing vocabularies and lightning-quick wits. Tindle may in truth be a lowly hairdresser, but he’s Wyke’s mental match.
Composer Patrick Doyle’s score is as enjoyable as the manipulations. He’s worked with Caine and Branagh before, and his classical, piano-driven soundtrack adds playful antagonism to the atmosphere. As deadly serious as the men are with each other, they’re also huge jokers. At times, a threat of grevious bodily harm never sounded so appealing. But that’s only when safely inside the limits of a game. Are they still playing? What are they playing for?
England has changed since Sleuth the play surfaced almost 40 years ago, and the generation gap is evident in what the men value and how they think life should be lived. Tindle doesn’t necessarily want high-tech gadgetry and a renovated county manor. He simply wants the girl.
One of Branagh’s surveillance screen shots is particularly telling. “No motion detected,” reads the green text on a still of the master bedroom. And that’s the whole problem.
Rachel Shimp can be reached at rshimp@praguepost.com


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