Sam Raimi isn’t known for his subtlety. The Evil Dead series, Drag Me to Hell, and even his entries into the Spider-Man universe are fast-paced films that lean into melodrama. But he has a slow-burn whodunit steeped in ambiance in The Gift. Co-written by Billy Bob Thornton, The Gift tells the story of a small town murder deep in Georgia. Annie (Cate Blanchett), newly widowed and struggling to make ends meet, uses her psychic abilities to read Tarot cards for the women in town. When school principal Wayne’s (Greg Kinnear) young fiancée, Jessica (Katie Holmes), turns up dead, she’s pulled into the mystery in equal parts by her visions and being the unofficial, default therapist to most of the impoverished community.
Sam Raimi’s Visual Language Sets a Perfect Scene for Southern Tragedy in ‘The Gift’
While the truth slowly unfolds, wind, water, and Spanish moss pick up the drama, along with Blanchett’s visions. Raimi’s signature flair presents Annie’s visions as something eerily mundane – seeing puddles and bloated, pale feet on an otherwise normal and alive Jessica early in the film, or frightening, prophetic, and inescapable – dreams of the swamp presenting her with people she’s failed, sharp strings, and whispers of various men threatening her. The pond where Jessica’s body is found fills these more imaginative moments, and the location feels mystical and cursed in turns in the waking world. These punctuate the sleepy, humid Georgia town that remains picturesque despite the struggles its people face.
The ambiance is a perfect chessboard for archetypal players, including Annie herself. The town’s quaint, rural living makes neighbors more enmeshed with each other, for starters. With few resources, battered wives, child abuse survivors, and more are really asking for Annie’s divination because healing isn’t an option for them. But Annie doesn’t sit above it all. Struggling to raise three children on a Social Security check after the loss of her husband, she relies on the tips and favors her neighbors offer in exchange for readings. In the film’s first scene, it’s established that she isn’t stingy about her gift. “Have you been sick?” she asks before someone agrees to a reading. If she senses something in someone in particular, she tells them free of charge.
Where too many southern-fried thrillers start at an offensive 11, Raimi establishes the mundane lives of the characters, how the town shapes them, and allows the actors to fill them with truth before the supernatural plot takes off.
A Stellar Cast Makes Archetypes Compelling in ‘The Gift’
Raimi displays an intrinsic understanding of the archetypes that fill out the southern drama. With another filmmaker, these representations: the battered wife, the folksy widower, the violent, Christian grunt, and the promiscuous women at the center of it all, would feel like a joke. Yet, where characters are almost allegorical in The Gift feels more like a Brechtian take on Tennessee Williams than a dig at the rural south. Giovanni Ribisi is Buddy, a shy mechanic who struggles with social skills with anyone but Annie. He’s as tortured as he is endearing. His violence echoes the violence of the men more adept at displays of masculinity around him, but it’s heartbreaking to see him try to wield it for good. Hilary Swank captures a worn-in meekness that is instantly recognizable as a coping mechanism, not inherent weakness, as Valerie. Keanu Reeves’ turn as her abusive husband, Donnie, oozes with insecurity and insincerity, as he quotes the Bible between threatening women and children, and circles a self-awareness about it all. It’s arguably a career-best performance from Holmes, who captures the reckless sadness of young adulthood, in a town where your beauty and family seem to have pre-determined you for a traditionally good marriage and not much else. Kinnear balances the facade of upstanding citizen and town educator with a sort of wistful dissatisfaction that’s hard to pin down until the story requires a more honest response in the wake of Jessica’s death.
Throughout the film, men and women are paired together to demonstrate the differences in their socialization. Themes of religion complicate this. Donnie only brings up religion as a weapon, first to call Annie a witch who is leading his wife astray, despite his battery and adultery against Valerie. He mentions it later, as an example of soul-searching remorse when Jessica’s murder finally calls his violent history with women into question. Smaller roles fill out the tapestry of a male-dominated, but female-run culture in a different way. J. K. Simmons is verbally abusive to Annie as Sheriff Johnson, and Gary Cole adds to his long list of southern authenticity as Attorney David Duncan, revealed to also be sleeping with Jessica during her pre-marriage crisis.
The Gift positions the justice system itself as fallibly masculine with these roles. Where the eventual trial for Jessica’s murder is performative, Annie’s divination is always presented as genuine. Mothers and wives – and would-be mothers and wives like Jessica – are powerless against the systemic realities of film, but are also crucial to everyone else surviving it. Just as the investigation and trial would be lost without Annie’s visions, vulnerability, and earnest desire to help, the entire community would similarly be lost if these women found a way out.
‘The Gift’ Explores How Women Are Crucial to the Very Communities That Harm Them
Released the same weekend as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Gift is an under-seen and underrated performance from Blanchett. As the sole supernaturally gifted figure, she ironically grounds the film in reality. Where other stories are so often tempted to add a supernatural explanation for violence against women, and the ways poverty impacts women to a more dangerous degree, Raimi keeps it true to life. The greatest threat to women who stray from expectations, or simply to women who imagine a life for themselves that others don’t approve of, isn’t a sinister, otherworldly curse or creature — it’s men.
The Gift
- Release Date
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December 22, 2000
- Runtime
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111 Minutes
