User reviews

Acting, of course! Think about it, Closet Land could easily have turned out so horribly - an entire movie filmed in one room with only two people, they better have some damned interesting things to chat about.

But it didn't turn out horribly. On the contrary, thanks to incredible portrayals by both Stowe and Rickman, Closet Land is a masterpiece in its own right.

That's not to say it is for everyone. Persons who have had their attention spans decreased through glitzy sex scenes and random gun fire may have trouble digesting Closet Land. However, those who can appreciate good story telling without explosions should give it a look (no matter how many video stores you have to call to find someone who has it in stock).

This two-character drama is extremely well-acted and has a valid message and some TRULY shocking moments (shocking not because they are graphic, but because you're not prepared for them when they come). But eventually it does become oppressive, just like the somewhat similar "A Pure Formality" did. Still, Alan Rickman should have gotten an Oscar nomination for his multi-dimensional performance, no doubt about it. (**1/2)

I saw this movie only a few days ago at a convention, and was moved to think about a side of torture tactics that I had never examined. The power of mental abuse can surely override any physical abuse, and that is shown through Madeline Stowe's wondrous acting in this movie. Likewise, Alan Rickman brings to the screen a marvelous portrayal of a ruthless government interrogator. It is interesting, though, even while he tortures Stowe's character, how you see a bit of himself shine through his terrorist personality. It grabbed me, in the scene where she is blindfolded, and he is pretending to be someone else, how he lets the mask fall from his face even as his voice continues his work.

The basis of the plot is this: A children's book writer (Stowe) is arrested on the premise that her books hold subversive political ideas, trying to get children to go against the government. The writer continues to deny these allegations, even as she is questioned and eventually abused physically and mentally by a government agent (Rickman). The showing of these torture techniques is disturbing, and probably should not be watched by those who are squeamish about such things.

The film was made in partnership with Amnesty International in the early 90's. On the surface of this movie, I would have to agree with all their policies, but as with any movie of this sort, a viewer should not support the organization purely on the face of the movie screen, but it should spur the viewer to outside research. I believe that is what this movie does for many of us.

The upshot of this: I would say I enjoyed the movie, but 'enjoy' is not quite the right word. I would watch this movie again if the opportunity arose, and would also recommend it to anyone who has a taste for realistically disturbing movies.

4 stars out of 5.

Closet Land. The title itself conjures up thoughts of secrets. And that is really what's at the heart of this Amnesty International film. Government secrets, personal secrets, both are integral pieces of this story.

By far the greatest acting seen in too long a time, both Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe were phenomenal in their portrayal of a Government Interrogator and Victim respectively. With only the two actors in this unusual standard length film, it is instantly clear that both actors were dedicated and talented enough to pull the viewer into this tiny bubble of a world and shut the door.

A WORD OF CAUTION...

What isn't mentioned on the description of this movie is that there is a subplot that deals with childhood sexual abuse. While there is no graphic detail about the abuse, the nature of it may be difficult for some viewers to watch - especially given the intensity of the film on whole.

I'm not a big fan of Amnesty International films, but this movie drew me in because the acting was so exceptional, and I can't help but make this movie one of my personal favorites.

"Closet Land" tells a powerful story and has many different subtle elements. You could read lots of stuff about the movie's plot before hand, but you don't really need to. All you need to know is that the movie is all about an interrogation. Along the way, we learn lots of things about the interrogator and the person being interrogated. We also learn that the world can be a dark and scary place. Especially when you have absolutely no control over it.

In the end, the movie amounts to a warning (really though, the movie has several different aspects to it) about what happens to people's freedoms when they "look the other way" and ignore injustices happening to those around them.

If you've got about an hour and a half and know where you can rent this, I strongly recommend that you do so.

Waking up blindfolded, handcuffed, and with no idea where you are or why you're there could be very scary. The start of Closet Land is filmed in black as Madeleine Stowe discovers her surroundings. Not until her blindfold is taken off does the screen show anything but darkness. The first thing she, and we, sees is Alan Rickman's very handsome face. Nothing can possibly go wrong!

Well, in this two-person psychological drama, that's not exactly the case. Alan plays mostly villains in his career, and as Madeleine is clearly the victim, there doesn't leave much room for him to take a heroic part. How cute is it, though, for Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham to be locked in a room together for ninety minutes? In theory, it's very cute. This movie is just about as far from cute as you can get. Madeleine is accused of inserting political propaganda into the children's books she writes, and to get her to confess, Alan uses any number of imaginative torture techniques. He tries being the good cop, the bad cop, blindfolding her and disguising his voice so she'll think there is more than one interrogator in the room, as well as physical violence. Some of these scenes are extremely tough to watch, and I don't recommend this movie for squeamish viewers with sensitive hearts. However, if you sat through Goya's Ghosts and lived to tell the tale, you'll survive this one.

Inserted into this dark script are a few very dry one-liners intended to be jokes. Madeleine complains of her treatment, and Alan quips that she's not enduring anything very bad, since most people endure cigarette burns. Then, when he does resort to that tactic and she cries out, he says, "You're not one of those anti-smoking activists, are you?" I don't think anyone's really supposed to laugh during this sadistic movie, but the jokes are probably supposed to show how terrible a villain Alan is. I will say this for the film: it's very difficult for a movie with a two-person cast to keep the audience's attention, and Closet Dark does. The two leads give very raw, upsetting performances, if you're prepared to watch them.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. There are several scenes that employ canted angles or swirling camera movement that will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to psychological torture and adult content, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

Even the trailer for this movie makes me cry, like the first time I saw this movie. Not for people who are easily upset by intense material! The finest performances by Alan Rickman and Madelaine Stowe, without a doubt. This dreadful tale of a society with the power to kidnap and torture it's citizens for ANY reason, whether they are anarchist's or the writer of children's books will chill you to the bone. I saw it when it first came out 1991 and I remember every frame. It still scares the hell out me today. It's happening now.

Apparently, IMDb requires ten lines to meet their criteria for a film review. IMDb might want to GET A GRIP! Some of us are a little more succinct about writing opinions.

The good news: the director is reportedly committed to the cause of Amnesty International and eager to deliver a solid message about the freedom of expression and the evil of oppression. The plot is distinctly original and the actors are two of my absolute favourites. The not-so-good news: 'original' is not everybody's buzzword when visiting the movies or video stores. Also, noted critics like Mr Maltin and Roger Ebert have dismissed the film as a genuinely failed attempt to convert a play from stage into cinematic form. If I remember correctly, the title is taken from the fairy tale Stowe's character has written and which has made her a possible subversive and suspect person in the fictitious place where the story takes place. Her dreams are dangerous to the government, represented here by Rickman as the intense, manipulative interrogator. Since those two people are virtually the only ones appearing in the film altogether, the director is in for a real challenge in keeping the viewer's attention. In the end, I found the whole thing fascinating. Not flawless and definitely not for everyone, but rewarding. It's nowhere near a masterpiece like Kieslowski's 'A short film about killing' or as explanatory as 'Dead man walking'. But if you're into those films or any of Costa-Gavras political thrillers, you may appreciate this one as well. Just don't expect any overexplicit sermons or eyefilling action sequences.

Closet Land is a nasty piece of work with superb actors. Nothing more (or less) happens in the movie besides the unending abuse of an attractive woman prisoner (mostly verbal) by a sadistic police official. The setting is minimalist. This might be considered soft core S&M porn because the drama is devoid of all reference points such as time, place, and political context. Since what happens is cut adrift in a fantasy futuristic environment, the abuse becomes purely personal. The pornographic aspects are justified by being a warning about the evils of totalitarian government, but because there is no real context for the torture of this young woman, we come away disturbed but having learned nothing.

What is the point? That torture exists in the world? That abusing prisoners is bad? That dictatorships abuse innocent people? We know that already. Closet Land has echoes of such works as Darkness At Noon and Ionesco's Rhinoceros, but both those works were made by competent artists whose work had historical context and depth of meaning. This film is amateurish and the dialogue sophomoric. A definite thumbs down.

This movie gave me recurring nightmares, with Alan Rickman's voice representing an omnipotent, insidious, fascist ruler. The scariest movie I have ever seen - psychological terror more powerful than anything any "horror" movie has ever achieved. Alan Rickman's voice will always represent to me the power and terror of a totalitarian state, reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. This movie describes to those who don't care the reality of a large part of current world governments. This film is disturbing, but in a way that everyone should watch it - it's a description of a reality that no one should ever have to experience, but so many do.

This movie includes 2 well known actors I have previously enjoyed watching. There actions are great and each action is heart felt. But it makes me think these 2 were thrown into a speech/drama class at college for the first time and told for one to act dominating and constricting to the other in a room without allowing her to leave and the woman to be truly innocent and treat her with enough mind-humping to drive the audience into tears for her release.

The only good part IS the acting abilities, the plot has the same ruse as Hitlers influence and I started to hate the protagonist for that. But all of this could have been done within 15 minutes in my opinion, so to drag it out for over an hour was just pure punishment for all who watched it.

These 2 fine actors played off each other perfectly in this terrifying film. Rickman was very effective as the brainwashing and brainwashed interrogator. Stowe as the confused writer was good, letting the crafty Rickman convince her that he only wanted to go one step further, then one more, etc. This movie came off as something that could happen in a country plagued with a police state. Very good film.

Closet Land is... something else. It's a movie about an interrogation, and one that ends on a note of a "message" (brought to you by Amnesty International, which is well intentioned but not the right note at the end of all of this). Up until then, it's an absolutely riveting display of acting prowess and technical marvel-work. Its bizarre execution comes from somewhere primal, somewhere from a filmmaker who wants to take you to some place that is rather unrelenting and sad about the human condition, where we put ourselves in a place we can't get out of - and, sometimes, how we can find a way to make it through, bit by bit.

It's like if Kafka had to do a remake of Saw and use nothing but politics. Oh, and cast Alan Rickman instead of Jigsaw and make it about a woman who writes children's stories and is accused of writing subversive literature hidden in her latest story 'Closet Land'... come to think of it, that's nothing like Saw at all (save for the bits of torture, which, gracefully, are kept at a distance).

Two things are striking here: the sets and lighting, and the performances (maybe that's three, who cares). It's a showcase for Bill Pope, later the mastermind behind lighting The Matrix, to really make this a claustrophobic but somehow baroque room the characters are in. We rarely leave it, save for those few flashes where Madeline Stowe imagines herself away with her creations, so the photographer has to come up with new ways to show us these people, in this very strange and oppressive environment. The other thing is the acting. If you ever want to look up 'underrated', here's the place.

In fact, I would make a bold statement: this is Alan Rickman at his very best. He's so good here because he makes this character unlikeable but hard to pin down. Is he a really bad person, or is he just crazy? Does he really believe what he's saying, as he breaks this woman, or does he mean it when he says "They're watching me, too", when talking to Madeline Stowe's children's writer. We get glimpses of his character's life before all of this madness. but it's hard to see how that informs the macabre, pitch-black comedy of when we wee him as the "other guard" when Stowe is blindfolded, cavorting and contorting around the room like a madman. He gets to go to town, and is sinister, subtle, even warm, and when he gets mad, you can feel it. Stowe, on the other hand, is given a more challenging task playing the victim, always on the alert but strong because of her own 'Closet Land' she developed as a child, not as any kind of political statement.

I believed both actors in the roles, no matter how horrifying things got, and the film-making is just direct and absorbing. There's a lot of dialog that they have to cover here, but it's never boring or slight. And, oddly enough, I don't think it would've worked as a play unless it was restructured or if things were cut out a bit. It is, for all of its 'wordyness', a cinematic piece, shot on a specific-film set, and given a musical score that, unless I was mistaken, sounded a helluva lot like Philip Glass (it says Richard Einhorn, but who cares). It's ultimately 'that' movie that you have to tell your friends about, since they probably never heard of it until you came across it on, say, Rickman's IMDb page. Among a small group of people, I imagine, it's one of the great little-seen films of the past twenty-five years: intelligent, provocative, adult film-making.

This film hits the heart with a reality like no other I have seen. It shows what us what we, in a democratic society, take for granted, and just what we are lucky enough not to be experiencing. The acting in the film is superb, sometimes you have to remind yourself that the movie is a dramatization, and not real life. Mr. Rickman does wonders with his role (as he does with all roles) making the interrogator fully dimensional and human. The set is incredible. It gives the feeling of 'in the round" theater. Which does not add or take away from the emotion of the action. This movie seeks to open the eyes of the viewer, and I'd say they have made a success of that goal.

"Hey! Let's make a movie about an oppressive government torturing one of its citizens for no real reason. That's pretty awful stuff, and we know it happens in the real world. The plot? Oh, who cares; it's the MESSAGE that counts. We must all fight for the freedom to think and write what we please!"

Those could have been the thoughts running through the mind of the filmmaker who created "Closet Land." The result is a desperately earnest but thin and tedious film. The hero's allegedly subversive children's story is of NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER, which makes the endless analysis and retelling insufferably dull. "But that's the point! She didn't write anything subversive, but those totalitarian monsters insisted on READING it that way!" Well, duh; who cares? Boring is boring.

It has been noted that "The Pillowman" by Martin McDonagh may have been inspired by the central notion of this film: an author being interrogated by a totalitarian officer for writing questionable stories. I almost hope it's true, as I can imagine McDonagh's irritation in slogging through this film: "What terrible, dreary handling of an interesting idea!" McDonagh's play fixes the two biggest defects of "Closet Land." First, his author writes *interesting* stories, and lots of them. They are genuinely subversive: creepy and twisted tales that inspire uncomfortable nervous laughter. Second, McDonagh handles the interrogator with black humor worthy of Kafka. The off-center levity heightens the surrealism and the tension.

So see "Closet Land" if you feel obligated to perform a chore in support of a worthy cause. See or read "The Pillowman" if you actually want to see something good.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure why this movie has not made it in to the major lexicon of psychologically profound cinema. No spoilers, AT ALL, but the sheer terror and confusion this film illustrates is unlike anything I have ever seen. I was lucky enough to see the film at a small theatre shortly upon release. When I left the theatre I did not yet have an appreciation for what I had seen, as the complexity builds until the final moments, and then WHAM. The lights come on. It wasn't until it came out on public VHS rental some time later that I was able to grasp the magnitude of what I saw on screen. No other director could have worked so masterfully with such a complex script and dialog; no other actors (in my opinion) could make a minimalistic masterpiece the likes of this, as it had never before been done in quite the same way; no other production crew could coax the lights & shadows of a single room for 90 minutes and never have it grow stale. Forget the special fx, forget the blood and gore, forget the epic scenes of exploding viscera or dying brothers on the field...this terror is self-contained. It's not a monster, it's not an alien, it's not a supernatural force, it's not some crazy biological entity...but rather, the world's most terrifying enemy...the human mind, both in what it can do to others and what it can do to oneself.

This film is definitely not for everyone, as should be easily distinguished by the reviews. Most people either terribly dislike this movie or they find it an amazing film. I tend to think that folks' preconceived expectations for what they're about to see end up letting them down...in a manner that starts within minutes, thus never giving the movie an opportunity to establish its foothold with the viewer. For all intents and purposes, it is a "slow burn" that is likely better appreciated after multiple viewings. It will test your patience and pry on your own thoughts and fears, as real as the day is long. Certainly not a date-night movie unless you're lucky enough to have a partner who enjoys complex psycho-cinema.

This is the film that ANY Rickman fan must see. For if you do not, then you have not seen him at his best. Closetland, for me, is what made him one of my favorite actors to ever grace the screen.

This is possibly the hands down worst movie every made, that actually took itself seriously. And not as a result of the acting, because being an actor, I have to say that Rickman and Stowe had to be at their best, just to escape needing electro convulsive therapy after the principle photography wrapped. Being one of the 57 people that actually saw this movie in theatrical release, I have to say I have never before or since experienced a movie where the movie ended, credits rolled, the house lights went on, and no one moved from their seats. About five minutes after the house lights went up people started coming out of their comas to look around, and I think most of us thought, okay we get it, that was a joke, right?, they are going to show the real movie now. Eventually, after the ushers handed out disguises, and we swore an oath of secrecy to never admit we were there, we felt that it was safe to leave, praying that we would not be seen leaving the auditorium. I have seen some pretty bad movies in my day, (I have Cinemax for goodness sakes), but I am still bitter that I will never, ever be able to recover those two or so hours of my life that I lost watching Closet Land.

This is such an obscure film, but it was so powerful, I had to watch it a second time on the same night, just to be sure I didn't miss anything.

Alan Rickman is at his best in this film, essentially playing four characters: the ruthless interrogator, the sadistic torturer, the tortured witness, and the lost soul. Madeleine Stowe is as engaging as Rickman. Her strong-minded character put most of the modern, pop-culture action heroes to shame. This movie, at first, looks so simple, but it is one of the most complicated and layered films around.

As it has been stated, this movie could very easily have turned out to be a flop. The acting is some of the finest that can be seen from the last 20 or 25 years. This is so underrated, but I would not recommend it for everyone, least of all my generation (I'm only 17. Not many people my age would like or even understand "Closet Land."). In the movie age of special effects, explosions, explicit sex, and all-too-often pretty faces with poor acting and dialogue, "Closet Land" is one of the best films I've seen.

I caught this movie late one night and never knew what hit me. This was one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen, yet had me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen next. Alan Rickman is an excellent "bad guy" but this character beats all others. I've never been so affected by a movie! It's been 6 years and I still can't forget "Closet Land."

This little two-person movie is actually much bigger than it looks. It has so many layers. I've watched it over and over, and always pick up on something new. I am amazed at the depth of the acting, and I feel if this movie had gotten wider release that there would be no question that Alan Rickman is a major star

I classify this as the worst movie of all time.

If there ever was a movie I would wish upon my enemies, this would be it. The plot is ridiculous, there are only 2 characters, and the coincidences between these characters just completely strain belief.

These factors combined to make this an extremely boring movie.

My wife and mother walked out on the movie about 15 minutes in. I figured that a movie this boring and slow *must* have some cool interesting plot twist, and a was quite disappointed when nothing exciting materialized.

I briefly considered sending the filmmakers a bill for my 2 hours of lost life.