Film review: 8MM (1999)

Written by Andrew Kevin Walker (after Se7en), directed by the hit or miss Joel Schumacher (Falling Down, A Time To Kill, Batman & Robin), starring Nicholas Cage, featuring Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stomare (Spun, Dancer In The Dark, The Big Lebowski) and Anthony Heald (Manhunter, The Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal).

Tom Welles (Cage) is a private investigator, a quiet homebound man when not working, is hired by a Mrs. Christian to determine if an 8mm film found after her husband died is real or faked. The film is the by-now urban legendary snuff film. Off goes Welles, deeper and deeper into the pits of a most human based Hell. On his way down, he meets Max California (Phoenix), a porn shop employee who reads Truman Capote's In Cold Blood hidden behind a porn magazine. California leads Welles deeper and deeper into the under-underground porn industry, until he meets up with those who know the truth about the film, its making and its star. By the end of his journey, most of the people involved are dead, and his life is torn apart.

Schumacher's career is largely uneven, capable of creating fine bits of entertainment, but just as capable of creating the cinematic equivalent of fecal matter. 8MM is a dark, brutal examination into the notions of evil and morality. Possibly his best film (if not this, then Falling Down), it is unrelenting, allowing us as viewers to follow Welles' descent up close and personal.

Cage, also guilty of an uneven career, gives a performance that is perfect for the part. Cold, remote from his clients and his tasks at hand, a private detective that makes a name for himself delivering the goods and walking away silently. His home life is his true life (everyone leads a double life in this film), and at home he is an adoring husband and a loving father. He is also self-delusional at home, pretending to himself that his wife doesn't know when he has been smoking inside their home. This point is repeated, and to good, subtle effect: a man whose career is based on rooting out those things others want to stay hidden cannot see how his attempts to hide things away are just as meager and failing.

The script, the first film produced on a script written by Walker after his deeply disturbing Se7en, suggests that he had more dark territory to examine. One can only hope that there is something equally dark aborning in his twisted mind... or not. Where Se7en approaches the notion of the serial killer as renegade genius, 8MM gives the idea that we are all capable of levels of evil that we prefer to pretend are not possible. The idea that a snuff film (true torture porn, a pornographic depiction of an actual murder) is an urban legend is in and of itself a type of societal self-delusion.

If someone can actually make kiddie porn, is the notion of murdering someone on film for twisted sexual pleasure really be impossible? Has it actually happened? Most likely.

What really drives the script, again and again, is that notion that everyone has something they want to keep hidden, an addiction, a sexual preference, whatever... and that, for lack of a better term: Be ye sure, your sins shall find you out. The true difference between those who wish to live a life of (if only public) morality and those who are truly evil is that those who are evil simply do not care, and only keep things hidden to protect their income and keep themselves out of jail.

In fact, the film goes where few films ever go, and horror films occasionally approach but rarely examine deeply: the very nature of evil itself.

The question throughout the film begs to be asked, and Welles does, several times: why do people do these terrible, horrible things?

The answer, which only becomes more disturbing on repeated viewings, is pretty much the same: because we can. Nothing more, just that: we kill, rape and torment the flesh of our fellow humans for no other reason than... we can.

One character even goes so far to ask Welles "What did you expect? A monster?" That moment underscores everything that has gone before. Hannibal Lector is a true monster, a genius so far removed from any conception of morality that he is all but super-human (or should that be supra-human?) and we can dismiss that character as too far-fetched. In 8MM that monster is, as Walt Kelley said it best via his comic strip Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

There are differing levels of darkness throughout the film, what light comes in seems to become corrupt, dirty and dust filled.

Each supporting character drives the plot, causing Welles to continue, not only for the client at the beginning of the film but for the romantic notion of the Private Eye As Avenging Knight when he meets the mother of the girl for whom he is searching.