A Hole in One
AMG AllMovie Guide:
Top
A Hole in One
Plot
A Hole in One is set in 1950s America. Anna (Michelle Williams), a passive young woman living in a small town, where she is betrothed to a powerful local hoodlum, Billy (Meat Loaf Aday), is searching for a key to her unhappiness. Her younger brother came home from the World War II a different man, and was subjected to shock treatments in a mental hospital before his untimely death. Dr. Harold Ashton (Bill Raymond) has been selling his new book, intended to advance the cause of a new scientific "advancement" in psychiatric care, the transorbital lobotomy. Ashton promotes this procedure, done with an ice pick that he keeps tucked in his vest, as a cure for all kinds of mental illness, major and minor. After witnessing Billy commit a brutal murder, Anna reads a Life Magazine article on lobotomies, and soon decides that the procedure is right for her. She asks Billy for his permission. Billy, concerned about Anna's ability to function, convinces Tom (Tim Guinee), one of his employees, to pose as a doctor so he can tell Anna that she doesn't need a lobotomy. But when the two meet, they quickly find that they have a connection that will put their lives in imminent danger. A Hole in One marks the feature debut of writer/director Richard Ledes. The film had its world premiere at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, RoviReview
Richard Ledes' A Hole in One is a profoundly odd, intriguingly quirky little slice of Americana. The film is strangely mellow, thanks in part to its passive, numbly depressive heroine, Anna, played by Michelle Williams. Williams is an engaging and underappreciated performer, and Anna's off-putting lack of affect is somewhat ameliorated, in terms of maintaining audience sympathy, by the star's subtle appeal. Her graceful performance and excellent work from most of the supporting cast (particularly Tim Guinee, Bill Raymond, and Wendell Pierce), lend emotional grounding to the film, which occasionally borders on weirdness for its own sake. With its quirky, darkly satirical exposure of the dark underbelly of a seemingly wholesome American suburb, the film evokes Blue Velvet, so perhaps Meat Loaf Aday's egregiously over-the-top performance as the film's hot-tempered villain is some kind of misguided homage to Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth. Aday's Billy, the local gangster who holds Anna in some kind of unexplained sway, is the one off note in the film's otherwise remarkably consistent, creepily comic tone. Ledes' assurance, as both screenwriter and director, is justified by the film's pungent thematic concerns, as it examines a distinctly American penchant for quick fixes (in the film's example, for mental illness) that often cause more damage than the ailments they purport to cure. Perhaps Ledes tries to do too much, and, in part due to Aday's jarring performance, the film doesn't quite cohere. But from the opening titles, with their jangling ice-pick imagery, the film builds an appropriate sense of needling uneasiness that sporadically rises to the surface in horrific imagery. While Williams and Guinee provide an eleventh-hour romantic interest, Ledes' sardonic wit delivers a welcome jolt straight to the brain. ~ Josh Ralske, RoviCast
- Michelle Williams - Anna
- Meat Loaf - Billy
- Tim Guinee - Dr. Tom Franklin
- Louis Zorich - Sammy
- Bill Raymond - Dr. Harold Ashton
Credit
Graham Caswell - Art Director, Alexa L. Fogel - Casting, Mercedes Kelso - Casting, Jane Lew - Casting, Jeanie Kimber - Costume Designer, John Board - First Assistant Director, Richard Ledes - Director, Susan Graef - Editor, Stephen Trask - Composer (Music Score), Bill Fleming - Production Designer, Stephen Kazmierski - Cinematographer, Alexa L. Fogel - Producer, Joseph Infantolino - Producer, Doug Johnston - Sound/Sound Designer, Richard Ledes - Screenwriter| A Hole in My Heart (2004 Film), A Hold-up in the Calabria (1908 Film) | |
| A Hole in a Fence (2008 Film), A Hole in the Head (1959 Film) |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Top
A Hole in One
 |
This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (May 2011) |
This article is about the 2004 film. For the 2010 film with the same name without the indefinite article "A", see Hole in One (2010 film).
| A Hole in One | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Richard Ledes |
| Written by | Richard Ledes |
| Starring | Michelle Williams Meat Loaf Aday |
| Release date(s) | 2004 |
| Running time | 97 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
A Hole in One is a 2004 film co-starring Michelle Williams and Meat Loaf. The film marked the feature debut of writer/director Richard Ledes. It received its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2003.[1]
|
Contents
|
Plot
Anna (Michelle Williams) is a young woman in an American suburb in the early 1950s. She is disturbed by her family’s rejection of her brother, a World War II veteran who comes home shell shocked. The impressionable girl is lured into a relationship with Billy, a local mob boss When Anna’s brother dies and she witnesses Billy murder a local nightclub owner, she is driven to the edge of sanity. She develops a fixation with mental health that drives her to seek out a transorbital lobotomy. Anna learns about the procedure through sensational newspapers and Life magazine, which advertises the operation as the new vogue in American medicine. Also, her small town is buzzing about it when Dr. Harold Ashton, the foremost practitioner of this brand of lobotomy, comes to town. He starts performing the “icepick lobotomy” on alcoholics, veterans, and other troubled outsiders.
Billy is concerned with his wife’s obsession. He directs his wife to a fake clinic fronted by Tom, a Korean War veteran on Billy’s payroll who masquerades as a neurologist. Tom convinces Anna to delay the procedure and visit him that night. Tom and Anna share their traumas with one another and grow closer. Billy finds them together and sets off a final conflict that draws the film to a close.
Development
The idea for A Hole in One was born out of a performance piece Ledes had staged at the American Fine Arts Gallery in SoHo in the early 1990s. The performance was based on the records of a WWII veteran who had experienced a psychotic break and for whom it had been recommended that he receive a lobotomy. Ledes conducted extensive research for the film over many years, including volunteering at an outpatient center for severely mentally ill. Additionally, he visited George Washington University, which holds the archives of Dr. Walter Freeman.[2]
Rather than doing a documentary on Freeman or case studies on mental illness, Ledes opted for fiction:
-
- “I never considered doing a documentary. For me it was always important to tell the story in this way. That there were truths about the subject of mental illness and the use of transorbital lobotomy that were inseparable from the truths that one finds in storytelling rather than the true and false of science.”[3]
Ledes’ screenplay draws heavily on documents such as the New York Departmental of Mental Hygiene Annual Report of 1953.[4] In his DVD commentary for A Hole in One, Ledes mentions other insightful sources: Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness and Last Resort: Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness by Jack David Pressman. He also cites The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness by Jack El-Hai, which came out after A Hole in One, as a reliable reference point. [3]
Ledes has compared the character of Dr. Ashton to Dr. Strangelove. While he isn’t modeled on one historical person, he is derived from real-life figures.[3]
References
- ^ http://www.screamstress.com/2009/11/richard-ledes-foreclosure/
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/movies/29LOBO.html
- ^ a b c Richard Ledes. Audio commentary. A Hole in One. Dir. Ledes. Perf.Michelle Williams. Meat Loaf Aday. 2003. DVD.Fox Lorber. 2004.
- ^ ” http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/29/movies/a-filmmaker-inspired-by-lobotomy.html
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
TV listings
Copyright © 2012 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Movie Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.
Read more
