Homeland : a horrible tale by Alexandre Aja
Alexander Aja continues to conduct his career effectively with modestly budgeted American productions. More than twenty years later High voltage (2003), and after having realized, among other things, The hill has eyes (2006) or even Oxygen (2021 on Netflix), the director has not changed his way of approaching horror. As in his previous films, Homeland presents itself as a sort of closed and prolonged session. The protagonists are, for the director, constantly subjected to a form of confinement, whether at home or lost in a suffocating nature. Although he says he works by instinct, it was by looking at his previous works that Alexandre Aja realized his attraction to “closed doors whose walls are pushed back“, as he explained to us during a meeting to promote his latest film.
Whether it’s High Voltage where we are at home, but especially at night. The hill has eyes we are in the caravan and in the middle of the hills. It crawls with obviously the base and the rest of the neighborhood. There is always a universe that is a little closed, but at the same time very extensive, very vast, but not too vast. I like this happy medium, because it allows me to create a visual universe in the artistic direction, in the scenography and in the costumes. Sometimes it passes in time, with shorter periods. It allows me to exploit this side of survival.
Here, it is in a post-apocalyptic world that we discover a family who has taken refuge in a house in the middle of a forest. The mother, played by Halle Berryraised his two sons, Samuel and Nolan, ensuring that theydanger lurks outside and that their home is the only place where they can be safe. If they want to move they can use a huge rope. But Evil is cunning and will more than once subject them to the temptation to detach themselves. Therefore, they would be vulnerable. One of the two boys will then begin to doubt. What if this danger, which only the mother can see, does not really exist?
Director Agrees With Halle Berry
If he has not signed the script for HomelandAlexandre Aja quickly made this story his own by focusing on elements that are personal to him. Reason why the director did not not so interested in the post-apocalyptic aspect of the feature film, but rather to the “psychological knot” with, on the one hand, “a child who asks questions, and on the other who believes everything his mother tells him”.
There are many seeds in a screenplay, especially in a first screenplay. And in the end it will be some of these seeds that I will be more interested in, that I will want to develop. This is where I appropriate the story, and then in the rewriting of the scenario, in a direction that will ultimately be slightly different, while maintaining the essence of the initial scenario.
To strengthen his approach, the director was able to count on the support of Halle Berry, who joined the project first as a producer before playing the role of the mother. Like him, the actress fell in love with this story and wanted to make sure that she and Alexandre Aja had the same vision. The original screenplay of Homeland can be interpreted from different points of view. But both agreed on the desire to “don’t water down the complexity of the mother’s characterso as not to crush him under a Hollywood machine”.
Violence present in the scenario
Indeed, this mother is intriguing in the film. Alexandre Aja’s strength is to be able to make the audience doubt. Is she crazy and subject to her past demons? Isn’t she, ultimately, the only danger to her children, whom she subjects to horrible living conditions (their malnutrition is visible on their faces)? Unless her fear is legitimate in the face of a demon waiting for the slightest mistake to plunge them into darkness. It is therefore a nice surprise to see Halle Berry in a role like this, generally accustomed to playing pure heroines, with rare exceptions.
If you look at her relationship with her son in In the Shadow of Hate (2001), for which she won an Oscar, there is this ambiguity. On the one hand she loves her son more than anything else and on the other hand she treats him horribly. There is this complexity that makes him very human, that creates a kind of empathy despite being toxic. That is what Halle Berry was looking for in Mother Earth. To be both antagonist and protagonist at the same time.
With this complex character, Homeland allows Alexandre Aja to address various themes, in particular the concerns that one may have as a parent. The rope of being cinematic a metaphor for the difficulty of letting go of one’s children. And by wanting to protect them too much, it is your own anxieties that can be transmitted. Added to this is the question of faithwhich adds real intensity to the film. The mother represents a form of extremism in the eyes of one of her sons, and probably the viewer. A sequence in the middle Homelandparticularly shocking and which moves the feature film towards another form of horror, reflects the danger of belief.
It was one of the very strong elements of the script. It surprised me when I read it. Obviously we don’t expect it. It’s something we wanted to keep because it was important to keep this intensity. But it’s true that it’s a very violent moment. It does so because it’s a prisoner of its doctrine, its logic and its rules. But this leads us to question the belief, the faith, the extremism and fundamentalism of this belief in a world where evil can manifest itself at any time. This is what is fascinating, also in relation to the world we live in.
An ending that questions
Approached as a horrible story, Homeland It is finally a sensory experience mastered by Alexandre Aja, who instead of multiplying the jumpscreate a worrying climate everywhere. And if it maintains a balance between fantasy and reality for a long time, it offers an answer in the end. At least it has its interpretation (which we will reveal in a future article), but it leaves everyone free to see something else.
Homeland is available in theaters on September 25, 2024.
Source: Cine Serie
Ray Ortiz is a journalist at Gossipify, known for his coverage of trending news and current events. He is committed to providing readers with accurate and unbiased reporting, and is respected for his ability to keep readers informed on the latest news and issues.
