Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 28, 2002, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The best thing in Hal Hartley’s monster movie No Such Thing is the Monster makeup. Mark Rappaport and his team have come up with a visage for actor Robert John Burke that both looks fearsome and appears as ancient as the character is supposed to be, and Burke, who never totally convinced as a fat man in Thinner, works well here with the prosthetics. Just as the Monster’s horns appear worn down with age, Burke creates a beast who has been soured by time and the encroachment of humankind into a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered drinker, holing up in an Icelandic cave and tearing apart anyone who disturbs him.
The idea of a Monster who becomes society’s victim is a venerable one dating back to Frankenstein, and Hartley has attempted to update it to today’s media-saturated age, structuring it as a variation on Beauty and the Beast. The Beauty here is Beatrice (Sarah Polley), a mousy gofer at a TV news station whose cameraman fiancé has disappeared while investigating the Monster. Beatrice volunteers to track both him and the creature down, but her trip is interrupted when her plane crashes, and she is the only survivor. She winds up in hospital and subject to extremely painful surgeries to allow her to walk again, and while one’s heart goes out to her, one also has to wonder—what does this have to do with the Monster story?
This is just one place where Hartley’s thematic reach exceeds his grasp, no more so than when he deals with the media itself. Beatrice’s unnamed Boss (Helen Mirren) is a rapacious pursuer of “bad news,” and the attending satire of TV’s exploitative side is thoroughly one-dimensional. (This 2000-shot film also contains jokes trivializing domestic terrorism that stick in the craw today.) Beatrice eventually finds her way to the Monster’s lair, and the pure-of-heart girl winds up forgiving the beast (who, it turns out, killed her fiancé) and convincing him to return to Manhattan with her. She thinks she can help him track down Dr. Artaud, a scientist who can destroy his otherwise invulnerable self and put an end to his suffering—but of course, he instead becomes the Boss’ latest ratings-grabbing spectacle, while Beatrice quickly succumbs to her newfound fame.
Too quickly, as it turns out—after the long, languorous (and not ineffective) buildup and scenes between Beatrice and the Monster, Hartley rushes through the scenes back in civilization as if making up for lost time. Polley’s natural charm shines through, but the actress is no match for the whipsaw changes in attitude the film saddles her with, while Mirren exudes a haughty energy that gives a bit of snap to her clichéd dialogue. As Dr. Artaud, Baltasar Kormakur is at the mercy of a thoroughly functional character whose most annoying function is to spell out the movie’s main theme—society needs monsters to believe in—in a clunky final monologue.
No Such Thing is one of those movies that should be either longer or shorter—either give all its ideas room to breathe or, more preferably, narrow its focus instead of being thematically all over the map. The Monster complains that he suffers because his head receives information like a satellite dish, and as a result is bombarded with confusing, conflicting signals; by the end of the movie, one knows how he feels.
