Auto Focus is picture perfect

After watching so many movies try to shock me, it was a shock of its own that the most unsettling scene I have seen in a long time is not particularly inventive and even somewhat clichZd. I didn't even notice its subtle power at first; when it bugged me after seeing it, I figured it was due more to bad direction, as it seemed uncertain whether the scene was meant to make the audience laugh or cry, than to any conscious intent of the director to give his audience goosebumps.

The scene in question occurs in the new independent film, Auto Focus. Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), star of Hogan's Heroes, is filming an episode for the television series. In the middle of filming, he zones off from reality, and his own inner conflict takes over the plot. Hilda (with whom he has been having an off-screen affair) shows him into Colonel Klink's office and then jumps up on Klink's desk, bares her breasts and extends her long, fishnet covered legs. Crane is surprised, but Schultz and Klink start pawing at her. They all urge Bob on, though he is unsure of what's going on and whether or not to act. His wife and kids appear at a window in the fake room and urge him on as well, then disappear. Still, Crane is frozen, though we are no longer sure whether it is because he wonders whether this is reality or because he is genuinely contemplating having sex with Hilda. Finally, before we find out, the director calls Crane back to reality, telling him he zoned out.

Because the camera, which starts filming the scene with the angle and bright color of the Hogan's Heroes series, never changes -- even when it becomes a sinister fantasy -- except to darken the lights and add loud ominous music, this fairly traditional scene in movies seemed overdone, almost clichZd enough to make me laugh. Add to it the campiness of the Hogan's Heroes characters (Schultz runs his hands up and down Hilda's legs), and I was sure the director was playing for comedy, though this seems to clash with the seriousness of the issue in Bob Crane's life. Only later did I realize that this wasn't the director's conflict but Crane's, a conflict between a campy comedic public image and a dark seedy sex addiction which this movie examines.

The film follows the public and private life of Bob Crane from its early days as a disc jockey all the way through Hogan's Heroes, his career's death, his sexual attraction's death and finally his own. During this span, Crane was a full-blown sex addict, having sex with thousands of women and videotaping and photographing these encounters. Crane is our only constant companion throughout this journey, though we encounter plenty of random girls in the seedy nightclubs of the film and two ultimately doomed wives. However, through all of this, we are at a loss to understand what is going on inside Crane, and after the very brief moral battle initiating him into this secret life, we begin to suspect there may be nothing at all, save for joyless addiction. He seems to derive no pleasure from his random encounters, but he is still compelled to go out night after night in search of tail. In (perhaps) mock profundity, he exclaims: "A day without sex is a day wasted."

This shallowness is most definitely the character's, not Kinnear's, who plays this shallow shell with exceptional attention to detail. Another bit of wisdom his character dispenses is: "Likeability is 90 percent of the battle." His character has a genuinely likeable charm that wears on the audience only because we consistently see his worst side. It is easy to see how a woman meeting him the first time could be taken by him so easily. However, Kinnear does an excellent job of quietly letting this star and charm fade away, as the inescapable emotional residue of thousands of seedy sexual encounters accumulates on Bob Crane.

Willem Dafoe is John Carpenter, a hanger-on around the Hollywood of the "60s, selling video equipment to the stars. This is less a job than a justification of his presence around Hollywood sets and later providing the video equipment for Crane's homemade sex tapes. His true passion, like Crane, is sex, and he spends his prime years following Bob Crane around, taking his sexual table scraps. In Crane he has found the perfect host; once he lures him into sex addiction, he can follow him around, picking up whatever girls Crane leaves behind, all the time necessary to him to feed Crane's habit of taping the sex.

Dafoe turns in another fantastic performance, showing his uncanny knack for playing offbeat characters. Here he resists the temptation to play Carpenter shallowly as well, bringing a perverted vulnerability to his role. He is in charge in the beginning, but quickly this monster he has created in Bob Crane moves beyond his control, and he is forced to play the role of the ugly friend. He quietly deals with Crane's condescending comments and heckling, but when Crane cuts him loose, at last trying to get out of the scene of meaningless sex, the justification for his existence is threatened, and he explodes.

For his part, director Paul Schrader takes a simple approach to filming the movie. The beginning takes place outside or during the daytime; the colors are bright and vivid, everything is alive. Most of the scenes take place on movie sets with many people or in the comfort of Bob Crane's own home. As the movie progresses, the scenes retreat into the night or indoors and the scenes shift to shady half-deserted night clubs. Probably not accidentally, shades of black and blue come to dominate the film. The score is a little heavy-handed here, the ominous music protruding from the background of the film and becoming a distraction. However, the approach in general works well, depriving the audience of all that is familiar and real and placing them in a creepy place.

The payoff comes, at last, the morning after Crane's murder, when the sunlight finally comes through the window. We feel relieved, as perhaps Crane's death brings relief to him, from a joyless pit of meaningless sex.