Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Affliction Blu-ray Movie Review

It runs in the family.

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson April 22, 2024

Observers of Paul Schrader's work have often stated that in the films he has written and/or directed, male characters border on the edge of sanity and madness. Travis Bickle and Jake La Motta are two famous examples. In Affliction (1997), Schrader's eleventh feature film as director, the central character Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte) teeters between these two poles. Wade is sheriff of the town of Lawford in upstate New Hampshire. He also works as a crossing guard and plowman for local businessman Gordon LaRiviere (Holmes Osborne). Wade has been married and divorced twice to Lillian Horner (Mary Beth Hurt). As the film opens, Wade is driving their nine-year-old daughter Jill (Brigid Tierney) to a Halloween costume pageant. While Wade tries to make jovial small talk, Jill inquires if he had a bad childhood, which he attempts to sidestep. Jill may have unconditional love for her father, but she also fears him. She keeps her tiger mask on in the car, possibly to conceal her facial expressions. The pageant is held a half hour away from her home and Jill grows uncomfortable. She phones her mother to pick her up. While Jill waits in the building, Wade goes on a drive with his younger colleague and friend, Jack Hewitt (Jim True-Frost), along with another friend. They smoke weed together. Wade is clearly not a good sheriff and an irresponsible one at that. When Lillian arrives to get Jill, Wade's temper gets the best of him when he literally gets in a brush with respectable-looking Mr. Horner (Paul Stewart), Lillian's second husband. Wade is frustrated with the custody arrangement for Jill, which he fights legally and in other ways over the course of the film.

Wade's paranoia will ratchet when it is learned that a hunting accident has occurred in the woods not too far from town. LaRiviere set up a hunting trip between Jack and Evan Twombley (Sean McCann), a prominent union official visiting from out of town. LaRiviere and Mel Gordon (Steve Adams), Twombley's son-in-law, are in negotiations for a major development deal together. A seemingly accidental gunshot leaves Twombley dead during the hunt. But was it really an accident? Wade doesn't think so. He suspects it could have been a mob hit. Wade's younger brother Rolfe (Willem Dafoe), a Boston University professor visiting New Hampshire for a family affair, reasons that it could have been a conspiracy plotted by local businessmen.

Father and son in dissent!

Wade becomes distracted from Twombley's death and his jobs when harrowing memories of his childhood creep into his mind. He overhears some of the locals spout stories about his estranged father, Glen (James Coburn). Young Wade (played by Brawley Nolte, Nick's son) and Wade's mother endured verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Glen, an alcoholic. The adult Wade has definitely inherited this addiction and other vices from his father. (It probably runs even deeper to Wade's grandfather, who Glen reminisces about to Margie.) These comprise Wade's "affliction." When he visits his parents' farm along with his girlfriend, Margie Fogg (Sissy Spacek), Wade picks up bottles of booze and begins drinking. It seems that Rolfe was able to avoid this affliction by somehow avoiding becoming a victim and wisely moving away from New Hampshire.

Schrader deploys Wade's persistent toothache as an allegory for deeper psychological, emotional, and physiological pains he's been suffering for much of his life. Wade uses the toothache as his main excuse for physical pain, but it's the deeper scars from his traumatic childhood that keep gnawing at him as an adult. For example, he cannot control the anger he feels towards a bartender, who has criticized his daughter, and lashes out at this man in front of others. Wade thus re-experiences the verbal abuse he endured as as child and has difficulty controlling his temper. The emotionally stable Margie has been a steadying force for Wade, but even she can't pacify him. This turns into a downward spiral. Affliction is a masterful study of familial addiction and violence.

Affliction Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout Select's Blu-ray of Affliction is a budget release that comes with a flimsy Elite case with the wheelish design and recycle symbol on the front cover's reverse side. According to a printed press release I received, this transfer is based on a recent 2K scan. The picture appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio of 1.85:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (disc size: 34.82 GB). Because Universal's R1 DVD from 1999 was non-anamorphic, I picked up the Artificial Eye UK PAL DVD, which was released two years later. I have included a handful of frame grabs from the SD to compare to Shout's 1080p transfer. The latter has more natural skin tones compared to those on the AE, which are yellow/orange. But as you can see, the Shout has damage marks not present on the AE transfer except for the shared yellow artifact in Screenshot #s 29-30. I watched the BD of Affliction twice in motion and could also spot periodic blips and reel-change marks (aka cigarette burns). It has not been fully restored.

The image has a texture over it pretty much all the way through. There's grain but it's hard to see at times because the film is dominated by whites and grays. Cinematographer Paul Sarossy shot the picture in Québec during the winter months and you can see falling snow in screen capture #s 3 and 27-28. For the flashback scenes to Wade and Rolf's childhood years, Sarossy and Schrader have purposely given the image a home movie aesthetic with a coarse and very thick grain structure (see Screenshot #s 17-20). DP and director also switch to black and white for Wade's speculations about the hunting incident (#16). Shout has encoded the feature at a mean video bitrate of 34000 kbps.

Screenshot #s 1-20, 22, 24, 26, 28, & 30 = Shout Select 2024 BD-50
Screenshot #s 21, 23, 25, 27, & 29 = Artificial Eye 2001 DVD

Eleven chapter breaks accompany the 114-minute movie. Please note that these are only accessible via remote access since there's no scene selection option on the menu.

Affliction Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround track (2138 kbps, 24-bit) and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo mix (1575 kbps, 24-bit). Affliction played in US cinemas with a Dolby Stereo mix. It may also have had a Dolby Digital track in certain theaters. I played both the 5.1 and 2.0 tracks on the Shout disc. While very similar, the 5.1 has unsurprisingly more ambience going for it in the rear channels, but no discrete f/x or separation. Dialogue is generally discernible. Nolte's murmurings and grumblings can sometime be difficult to make out. Canadian composer Michael Brook's score has some nice reverb on the surrounds when I listened to the 2.0 mix. The music is often dissonant. It captures the atmosphere of the dreary New Hampshire town well as well as the inner tumult of Nolte's character.

Watching Affliction with the optional English SDH turned on actually helped clarify details of the plot as described by the characters. Transcription of spoken words is accurate and complete.

Affliction Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The AE DVD still has the best selection of extras, although they're quite short. It has brief interview snippets with Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Sissy Spacek, Willem Dafoe, and Paul Schrader. There's also five minutes of behind-the-scenes footage. Unfortunately, none of this material has been brought over to the Shout disc.

• Trailer (2:05, upscaled to 1080i) - this is not the original theatrical trailer for Affliction, but rather, the film's video trailer for Lions Gate's VHS release. It's displayed in 1.33:1.

Affliction Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The deep psychological conflicts that the principal characters in Affliction find themselves engaged in remind me of the films of Ingmar Bergman and John Cassavetes. Nick Nolte and James Coburn put on a masterclass. Shout Select's new release purports to be from a recent scan, but it could really use a brand-new scan altogether, with careful restoration work done on the image. While it's a moderate upgrade over the DVDs, it sometimes appears like a recycled theatrical print. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 mixes sound and fare better. There are no extras. The release currently comes with a hefty price tag considering it's plainly a standard edition. Those who consider it an excellent ensemble drama and character study like I do will want to own it but perhaps should wait for a sale. RECOMMENDED WITH QUALIFIERS.