SKELETONS IN MY CLOSET: CAPE FEAR, THE FISHER KING
Two films starring Best Actor nominees involved people having their pasts come back to haunt them. In the case of Martin Scorsese's remake of CAPE FEAR, it's a lawyer terrorized by an ex-client (Robert De Niro). A far different outcome occurs in Terry Gilliam's THE FISHER KING, where the ex-radio talk show host is saved, in many ways, by a crazy ex-professor (Robin Williams) whose craziness was caused by one of the host's broadcasts.
While obsession and revenge, two of the primary themes of this movie, aren't alien territory for Scorsese, many people thought this movie was. After all, his previous films had been highly ambitious themetically, whether dealing with gangsters (GOODFELLAS), an artist ("Life Lessons," his segment of NEW YORK STORIES), and religion (THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST). CAPE FEAR, on the other hand, was a remake of a 1962 movie whose plot couldn't be more simple. Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is a defense lawyer whose life is threatened by an ex-con named Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) who resents that Bowden testified against him. Steven Spielberg had originally planned to direct this, until deciding to trade this to Scorsese for SCHINDLER'S LIST, and De Niro was the one who was really enthusiastic about it. But Scorsese manages to keep the original's thrills while adding a morality play to it.
Supposedly, Spielberg had told Scorsese that he thought Bowden's family in the original was too nice. Scorsese and writer Wesley Strick certainly don't make that mistake. Sam is still a defense lawyer, but his marriage to Leigh (Jessica Lange) is currently at a truce over his past infidelities. And their daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) is at the age where she's both naturally rebellious and is resentful of her parents' troubles. That's the family Max Cady (De Niro) comes to. In this version, Max was Sam's client when Max was charged with rape. He spent 14 years in prison, but found out Sam had witheld crucial information that could have helped his case. So Max wants revenge. Except in this version, Max also represents all the tensions Sam and his family are trying to bury.
Max may announce himself with a bang (Bowden and his family first see him at a movie theater, where Cady's laughing obnoxiously loud and smoking a cigar), and as in the original, knows how to throw his weight around (also as in the original, when hired thugs set upon him, he beats them up), but otherwise zeroes in for the kill by being charming. De Niro takes Mitchum's natural drawl and accentuates it to make it seem courtly, even when he's spouting Biblical phrases. He charms Lori (Illeana Douglas), a colleague of Sam's who has illicit feelings for him, before brutally raping her, and in the most chilling scene, poses as Danielle's drama teacher and tries to seduce her. And just as in the original, despite the best attempts by Sam to get at Cady, either through the law or outside the law (Joe Don Baker plays the private eye played by Telly Savalas in the original, who hired those thugs), Cady always stays one step ahead.
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