Broken

Dimension Extreme

Unrated Edition

Genius R1 DVD

Broken is a challenging, visceral and harrowing journey into violence, torture and death. It is not for the faint hearted and at times seems unnecessary vicious. It could even be said to revel in its depiction of torture. It is not an easy film to watch and could easily be placed in the “torture porn” category except it does have some interesting and nuanced performances and its exploration of the nature of “power” in relationships, especially between captive and captor, elevates it above films normally found in the “torture porn” genre.

The storyline centres on a nameless woman (the credits call her Hope) who meets what seems to be a nice young man on a date, they discuss her family background in some detail and she hopes to see him again on the weekend. How this is connected to what happens next is not made clear, but she wakes up in a hole in the ground. She has a pain in her abdomen and spends the day disoriented, without water and claustrophobic. She tries to push her way out of her prison, but cannot escape. The next day (each day is noted on the screen), she is set free, knocked out and then tied to a tree, her feet are balanced precariously on a piece of wood. Across from her is the dead body of the previous victim. We come to realize (in flashbacks) that her captor has “tested” various woman, one failed and disembowelled herself, the other pulled the trigger on his gun despatching herself to eternity. He wants a strong woman for whatever he has planned. The next day arrives.

The only way that Hope can escape is by using the sharpened stick he has given her to cut open the stitches in her stomach, retrieve a razor blade and cut through the rope around her neck before falling off the wood and hanging herself, never mind avoiding disembowelment while she works! She succeeds in her task, is retrieved from the ground, patched up, fed and allowed to recuperate.

This first section of the film is extremely harrowing and the violence and gore is equally matched with psychological terror. Hope now becomes his slave, she cannot find out where her child is and he slowly conditions her to her new role. He refuses to use her name and makes her scrub pots, look after the garden and become what he sees to be “his partner”. He does not rape her; he has only sex with her after she has seemingly voluntarily entered into the new arrangement. He does not realize that her acceptance is faked and she steals a key and tries to escape (after partially slashing his leg), he breaks her leg and drags her back to camp.

The story becomes more complicated as he travels away for seven or eight days and returns with a young school age girl. It is as though he is attempting to create an artificial family. When she refuses to fit into his plan, he cuts out her tongue and uses Hope as a lever to control her behaviour. After a long period of time Hope seems to be identifying with the situation (Stockholm Syndrome), but when the girl escapes and is killed, Hope snaps and kills her captor with a metal bar in an especially violent scene.

The final horrific twist is when she finds her daughter alive in a cabin near where she has been held captive, however, (SPOILER ALERT), when she opens the door it lets loose a trap and shoots pellets into her face, she truly will not see her daughter again.

This is a cruel movie which at times seems to focus way too much on the violence. There is no doubt the captor is depraved but I am not sure you need to show so much detail to make your point, the cathartic killing by Hope at the end is understandable but again a bit overplayed. The heart of this film seems to be the psychological power relationship that exists between the captor and Hope through his desire to create an “artificial” family via force. This is a fascinating concept and is explored in many subtle ways, for example, when Hope finally leaves the camp, she looks back at the chains which held her legs and her vegetable patch with what could even been described as a sense of loss.

The exploration of the captor-captive bond and what is clinically known as the Stockholm Syndrome is far more intriguing than the close-ups of Hope fingering her open wound trying to get a razor out. Sure, it helps set the dark, vicious and depraved nature of the captor’s madness, but I still think less could have been more. I have no problems with extreme violence when it serves a purpose; here I wonder if it actually took something away from what is otherwise a very powerful film.

I found Broken a challenging and gut wrenching cinematic experience, many people will turn off due to the excessive violence, however, if you can deal with the harrowing ride it ends up being an interesting journey.

This review will appear in Volume 2:1 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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