John Skillpa, a quiet bank clerk living in tiny Peacock,
Nebraska, prefers to live an invisible life. Then, in a moment,
everything changes. A train caboose runs off its tracks and
ces into Johns backyard and destroys more than the weathered
planks of his wood fence. When neighbors descend on the scene,
they discover Johns other personality, Emma, for the first time
and mistakenly believe her to be Johns wife. This launches John
into the glare of the spotlight and eventually shatters the
delicate balance of his sanity.
.com
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Director David Lander's Peacock comes off like a combination of
Psycho, Sybil, and David Lynch--a rather unholy alliance, but one
that certainly makes for compelling viewing. At the heart of this
2010 film, which inexplicably bypassed theaters and went directly
to the home-video market, is a character named John Skillpa
(Cillian Murphy), a clerk in a Peacock, Nebraska, bank in the
1950s whose mother issues rival Norman Bates's; his recently
deceased mom's abuse has left John so peculiar (when it comes to
social interactions, this guy makes the Unabomber look
well-adjusted) that he has donned a dress, a wig, and makeup and
created an entirely separate personality. No one in the y
little town knows about "Emma," as "she" calls herself, until a
train derailment results in a caboose landing in John's backyard.
When neighbors come to check it out, they discover Emma and
quickly assume she's John's wife. What's more, a lot of folks,
including the mayor (Keith Carradine), who's also John's boss,
and his wife (Susan Sarandon), who runs a local women's shelter,
as well as both the U.S. Senator running for reelection and his
nent, are determined to make political hay out of the
accident. Things quickly become problematic for John, to say the
least, as he begins a torturous balancing act that becomes
increasingly difficult to maintain. And wait, there's more: dear
old Mom also forced John to have sex with a local girl of dubious
morals (Juno's Ellen Page), who then gave birth to a son. John,
not surprisingly, becomes nuttier and nuttier as the
complications pile up. But Emma goes the other way; initially
terrified and painfully introverted, she gradually blossoms in
inverse proportion to John's weirdness, until she finally devises
a plan to put an end to this insane conflict. (The film depends
on Murphy's ability to convincingly portray two distinct
personalities inhabiting the same body, and he is up to the task;
indeed, he makes us believe that neither John nor Emma really
knows what the other is thinking or doing.) With a passel of
bonus features, including a making-of doc and a look at Murphy's
preparations for his role, Peacock is an interesting journey off
the beaten path. --Sam Graham
Stills from Peacock (Click for larger image)
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