When the truth hurts enough to draw blood
BY MARLI GUZZETTA INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
When a man's psyche is infested by the tangled thickets and heat-weary beasts of heartache, frustration and disappointment, he doesn't have to travel to the jungles of the Congo for his heart of darkness to be released. So goes David Mamet's "Edmond," playing at the Nantucket Film Festival this week.

Written in the wake of Mamet's own difficult divorce, it is the story of a man who takes leave of his wife and machetes his way through years of repressed emotions on the streets of New York's concrete jungle.

According to director Stuart Gordon, Edmond is on a quest for truth.

"The idea is that we all are like this," said Gordon. "It scares the hell out of people. The main character decides that he is just going to stop following the rules and obeying social boundaries, and he lets all this stuff out that has been bottled up inside of him, including a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of racism."

Once a student of Mamet's at Vermont's Goddard College, William H. Macy stars as Edmond, whose words and actions could have made it far harder for a director to elicit audience sympathy. But Gordon credits Macy with creating a sensitive duplicity to the character.

"I think that's one of the things that's so wonderful about Bill Macy; he has an innately human and compassionate persona. Audiences are drawn to him and like him - even though Edmond does some terrible things."

When the film opens, we meet Edmond on the eve of his moral absconding, in a setting that Gordon kept monochromatic to contrast with his worldly awakening. "When he goes off into the street, I wanted it to be a jungle, full of bright color and sound. The city is really a character in the movie," said Gordon of the film's "pre-Giuliani New York" setting.

Some critics have described Edmond's night as a kind of insanity.

"I don't think he's in insane," Gordon said. "What he wants ultimately are good things. He wants to live in a world where people are honest with each other. He wants people to be kind with each other and care about each other, and ultimately what he's looking for is love."

But what Edmond finds on his erotic and thanatotic odyssey are the barnacles on the city's underbelly, played by Joe Mantegna, Bai Ling, Mena Suvari, Denise Richards, Debi Mazar and George Wendt.

Edmond's most brutal moment is an encounter with a waitress, played by Julia Stiles.

"It's unlike any character she's ever played," said Gordon, who added that Stiles was one of the first actors to join the project. A "big fan" of Mamet's (she worked on a London production of his play "Oleanna"), "she had some great insights into the piece as well," Gordon said. "She compared it to 'Bowling for Columbine,' which, according to Michael Moore, is based on racial fear, which runs through 'Edmond' in a big way. It really is a movie about fear."

Which makes it perfectly conceivable that Gordon, a horror director who achieved cult-status with "ReAnimator," would have chosen this piece to be the first of Mamet's scripts to present since directing Mamet's first professional stage production, "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," over 30 years ago.

"I had seen the original production of the play 'Edmond' 20 years ago, and it was absolutely riveting," Gordon said. "One of those things you never forget."

Gordon discussed adapting the story for the screen 15 years ago. Delays ensued over the subject matter of the would-be film, which now has a list of production companies so long that the credits have allegedly caused giggles at previous festivals.

"I think that goes back to the adage that rich people are the worst tippers," Gordon said. "And I think it's also that, in this case, the people who have

the least to lose are the bravest and are willing to take chances on something they believe in."

Gordon also maintained

that this is not a

story written in the coded language of frustrated masculinity, a la "Fight Club."

"I think a woman could understand it as well," Gordon said. "Women are much more open about their emotions, but I think what Bill Macy said is true, that men keep it all stoppered up and then just sort of explode."

The density of the dialogue towards the film's end date the script as early Mamet, but the story is still pertinent in our era of neo-con revivalism.

"The reaction of the audience is very strong; they love it or hate it," Gordon said. "I think people who get tired of seeing the same movie over and over again are going to like this film because it's not like anything else they've ever seen."

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