Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Puritan (2005)

Director: Hadi Hajaig

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

Making the most of its modest budget, this ‘modern film noir with a teasing hint of the supernatural’ confidently takes on genre conventions and big ideas. Writer-director Hadi Hajaig’s clear storytelling and stately, composed images, draw us in with sly plot shifts and Gothic atmospherics. There are some rough edges – confusing scene transitions, dodgy sound-recording, a confusing hybrid feel – but Hajaig knows, respects and understands his ‘B’ films noir.

A morose drunk since his marriage breakdown, journalist Simon Puritan (Nick Moran) moonlights as a fake medium, consoling bereaved relatives with cosy lies. Introduced to the brittle, beautiful Anne Grey (Georgina Rylance) by her burn-scarred ‘husband’ Jonathan, Puritan reassures her about her dead sister, then seduces her with talk of a Fourth Dimension, where past, present and future are conflated, and everything that has ever happened to a person may now be happening again, all at once. Ignoring Jonathan’s warnings that Anne is a manipulative femme fatale, Puritan becomes embroiled in a heated affair, and in the death of Anne’s true husband, messianic business guru Eric Bridges (David Soul).

This crime story is intriguing, but Hajaig gradually ups the supernatural ante, an accumulation of tiny details hinting at a larger mystery. Puritan’s house was built after The Great Fire by seventeenth-century architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, whose London churches are alleged by some to be pagan temples. Notorious necromancer Aleister Crowley was a former tenant. Mixing its genres, the extended climax leaves Puritan straddling a fault-line in the time continuum, an elastic concept that stretches our credulity. Even so, Hajaig’s bold ideas and filmmaking skill hint at a bright future.

Author: Nigel Floyd 2006-11-07 11:16:32

Time Out London Issue 1890: November 8-15 2006

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Puritan

Cast & crew

Director: Hadi Hajaig

Producer: Hadi Hajaig

Cast: Nick Moran, Ralph Brown, David Soul, Georgina Rylance, Pete Hodge full cast

Genre(s): Fantasy, Thrillers, Drama

Duration: 96 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.