Holy Smoke

Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke (1999) is a film that is flawed, but it also rewards patience and possesses wonders that exist because of the very flawed nature of the film. Too comic to be a full-blown drama and too dramatic to be a comedy, this is a film that dances precariously on the edges of multiple genres, gaining both its greatest strengths and faults from its interplay of genre conventions. Yet the chemistry between the performers and their commitment to the material bring the drama to the fore and keep the comedic flaws from damaging the film.

Ruth (Kate Winslet) is an Australian girl who makes a pilgrimage out of her stay in India, becoming a convert to one of the Indian sects. When her friends begin to fear that Ruth is not gaining religious enlightenment but is instead being converted into a cult, they return to Australia to inform her parents. Ruth’s family intervenes, calling upon the services of a cult exiter, PJ Waters (Harvey Keitel), who works to break down Ruth emotionally and physically. Yet their attraction to one another begins to overrule the spectatorship that is predicated on breaking Ruth, so that once the cultish aspects of her past have been exposed, the deeper trauma of where the two go from here remains.

What’s fascinating about Holy Smoke is that the dangers of the cult are largely held by an emotionally distant family, which is indicative of culture that fears what it cannot understand. They constantly fear that anything Ruth says is a maneuver to brainwash them, rather than a simple desire to spread the word about the kindness and tranquility that Ruth has discovered. While the truth lies somewhere in the middle, these issues begin to find subtle reworkings of a classic collectivistic vs. individualistic fear.

Also successful is the fact that Campion avoids relying on a solipsistic and preachy characterization of PJ. In fact, he is played with such humanity that his initial success stories almost feel fabricated. The fact remains, though, that Campion fine-tunes a classic character construct to give enough flaws and faults to PJ to make him a distinct individual rather than a mechanism for the plot. Ultimately, the brutality through which PJ breaks Ruth leaves her with such an empty void inside that she relies on his attraction to her to give her something emotionally to invest in. While this opens its own complications, the manner in which PJ and Ruth reverse their roles as patient and physician become intricately wound together, allowing nuance and detail to take center stage. Indeed, few acts are as brutal as the gender debasement that Ruth puts PJ through, yet he is fully accepting of it, striving to gain a deeper and more intrinsic understanding of Ruth.

At the end of the day, this is a film where the most genre-comedic moments fail, such as the Fabio-like brother blindly running into a street sign. However, other moments that are more tied to the psychology of the characters, such as Ruth’s sister-in-law Yvonne’s attraction to PJ, give weight to the comedy, like when her absent-minded gaze at PJ leads to tragic consequences as her children attempt to jump from their truck into her expectant arms.

Given my card-carrying membership to the Kate Winslet is the most beautiful woman alive fan club, my loyalty to this film is probably expected. Nonetheless, I hope I’ve been forthcoming enough to allow that it’s still a flawed piece, but I also understand that the material and engagement one receives from watching it are very worthwhile and fascinating. I would have preferred a more open-ended ending with the film ending as the truck drives away, which would have foregone the “One Year Later” bit, but beyond that and Ruth’s abnormal family feeling a tad too tacked on, the central narrative and exploration of PJ and Ruth is incredibly evocative and beguiling.

Holy Smoke: 8.5/10