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Blu-Ray : Recommended
Ranking:
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Release Date: July 5th, 2016 Movie Release Year: 1993

Suture

Overview -

Inspired by the paranoid visions of John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds, the desert noir of Detour and the black and white widescreen beauty of Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Face of Another and Woman of the Dunes, Suture is one of great feature debuts – by writer-directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee – and a truly unique piece of cinema.

The wealthy and self-assured Vincent (Michael Harris) meets his blue collar half-brother Clay (Dennis Haysbert) at their father's funeral and is struck by their similarity. He decides to murder Clay and take his identity, only Clay survives the assassination attempt with no memory and is mistaken for Vincent. The fact that Harris is white and Haysbert is black only complicates a film that probes into the nature of identity.

After viewing an early rough cut, Steven Soderbergh came on board as executive producer and enthusiastic patron. Suture went on to become a hit on the festival circuit, including Sundance where it deservedly won the award for Best Cinematography.

OVERALL:
Recommended
Rating Breakdown
STORY
VIDEO
AUDIO
SPECIAL FEATURES
Tech Specs & Release Details
Technical Specs:
Region A/B/C
Video Resolution/Codec:
1080p/AVC MPEG-4
Length:
95
Aspect Ratio(s):
2.35:1
Audio Formats:
English PCM 2.0
Subtitles/Captions:
English SDH
Special Features:
Still Gallery
Release Date:
July 5th, 2016

Storyline: Our Reviewer's Take

Ranking:

The plot of the very arty 1993 thriller 'Suture' is built off a classically Hitchcockian premise. Co-writers/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have a lot of fun paying homage to the master by shooting their film in stark black-and-white and staging the type of meticulously-constructed suspense set-pieces Hitchcock perfected. At the same time, they manage to spin both the story and its execution off in their own very weird and fascinating directions.

Having only recently learned of each other's existence, half-brothers Vincent and Clay meet for the first time after their father's death. The brothers share a striking physical resemblance, enough so that they could easily be mistaken as twins. Despite inviting Clay to stay with him for the weekend, Vincent treats his brother coldly and almost immediately makes excuses to leave town on a sudden business trip. In short order, we'll learn that Vincent has ulterior motives for wanting Clay to stay at his house, drive his car, and (at his insistence) even wear his clothes. Deeply in debt and under suspicion for killing their father, Vincent plans to fake his own death by murdering Clay. Since no one knows that he even has a brother, much less one who looks identical to him, everyone will assume the body is his. It would be the perfect crime… if only Clay didn't live.

Clay miraculously survives a car bomb that Vincent set for him, but suffers amnesia due to the head trauma. Believing himself to be Vincent, he spends the bulk of the film piecing together the clues to his attempted murder and discovering the truth of his real identity.

Memory loss, mistaken identity, an innocent man wrongly accused of someone else's crime… these are all well-worn tropes of the mystery/suspense genre. Where Siegel and McGehee twist the formula in daring ways is by casting Clay and Vincent, the lookalike brothers, with a black man and a white man respectively. In fact, to the audience, they look nothing alike at all, but no one in the movie can see or understand that. To every character they interact with, they are identical. Badly disfigured in the explosion, Clay's face must be reconstructed by surgeons using only photos of Vincent. In one of the movie's most amusing scenes, Clay's doctor describes his narrow nose and thin lips, in clear contradiction to what we see on screen.

Isn't the resemblance remarkable?

Allowing the audience to see something so blatant that the characters in the movie cannot is an intriguing metaphysical twist. By its nature, this device removes viewers from total involvement in the story and forces them to examine its meanings. The movie is less about race than it is about identity, but leaves itself open to multiple readings. This could devolve into pretentiousness, but the directors cleverly wrap their philosophical musings with the interesting thriller plot and some subtle humor.

The film is heavy with on-the-nose symbolism and Freudian psychoanalysis. The black-and-white photography bluntly emphasizes the theme. Much of this is comically simplified and flirts with parody. The hero's name being Clay is hardly incidental, and his doctor is actually called Renee Descartes. In a running subplot, Clay visits a psychologist to help regain his memory. The doctor insists that analysis of his dreams will unlock his subconscious, and spells out their symbolism with an explicit cause-and-effect relationship to the film's plot. This seems ridiculous at first and his results often run contrary to what we know of the case. Then, as the story progresses, they fall into place. It's a delicate balance, but the filmmakers pull it off.

'Suture' was a low-budget movie with no major stars. Lead actor Dennis Haysbert had a memorable supporting role in 'Major League' but wouldn't achieve greater fame for several more years. At the time, the biggest name in the cast was Mel Harris from 'Thirtysomething'. That's not the kind of star power that sells tickets. Being made right in the middle of the 1990s indie boom proved to be both a blessing – in that up-and-coming filmmaker Steven Soderbergh liked what he saw of a rough cut and signed on as Executive Producer to secure financing for completion – and a curse, in that the movie was ultimately lost in a sea of other quirky indies at art film theaters and was forgotten quickly.

Even if a box office disappointment, the artistic strength of the film allowed McGehee and Siegel to collaborate together on a few others, including a pretty interesting thriller with Tilda Swinton called 'The Deep End'. Unlike their friend and producer Soderbergh, however, they never broke out as auteurs. Nevertheless, 'Suture' remains an intriguing and unusual movie worthy of repeated viewings.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

As one of the small handful of people who actually saw 'Suture' in the theater in 1993, I feared that the movie would be lost to obscurity. MGM put out a crummy non-anamorphic letterbox DVD in 2001, which I doubt sold terribly well, and showed no interest in revisiting it afterwards. Fortunately, Arrow Video has come to the rescue with a new Blu-ray edition that treats the film like the cult classic it never became.

The 2-disc set contains both a newly remastered Blu-ray and DVD. The discs are stored in a clear keepcase with reversible cover art. Also inside the case is a booklet with two essays about the film and some production notes from the directors.

Video Review

Ranking:

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel made the bold decision to photograph 'Suture' in full 2.35:1 widescreen black-and-white, something that had only rarely been done for decades and is still uncommon today. (Even 'Schindler's List' settled for a narrower 1.85:1 aspect ratio.) Although shot using the Super 35 film format, which means that extra height image is available on the camera negative, the film has a very artful sense of symmetrical composition. Any alteration to the intended visual design would spoil its effectiveness.

According to the liner notes in the accompanying booklet, the Blu-ray's 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer is sourced from a new 4k film scan and was approved by both directors. Needless to say, it's a leaps-and-bounds improvement over MGM's old non-anamorphic DVD. The 2.35:1 image has excellent detail and nice gray scale. The contrast is gleaming bright in some scenes with more noir-ish shadows in others. Both appear accurate.

The film is also heavily grainy, in both bright scenes and dark. While this may be deliberate and does contribute to the arty mood of the piece, the grain is sometimes distractingly noisy. Although Blu-ray fans may cringe at the suggestion, I think a small amount of noise reduction might have been appropriate and would help to make the transfer look more like a quality theatrical print, even if it meant a trade-off in losing some picture detail.

The liner notes also explain the presence of vertical banding artifacts in some scenes, which resulted from damage on the film negative. Apparently, this happened during the production and has always been part of the movie, but was harder to see in lower-resolution video formats. Even here, it's faint and barely distracting. It's really only an issue if you make a point of looking for it. The Arrow restoration team tried a few different techniques to digitally remove the banding but couldn't find anything satisfactory. After consulting with the filmmakers, a decision was made to leave it be.

Although not perfect, 'Suture' is a very visually striking film and the Blu-ray does it justice.

Keeping it under wraps

Audio Review

Ranking:

Released theatrically in Dolby Stereo, the movie's soundtrack is encoded on disc in uncompressed PCM 2.0 format. The mix has strong stereo separation across the front channels and, when decoded using the Dolby Surround Upmixer feature in my receiver, a decent amount of surround bleed to the rear channels. Ambient sounds are dispersed effectively.

For a stereo mix of a low-budget indie film from the 1990s, the track has surprisingly good dynamic range. This is no rollercoaster action movie soundtrack, but it has at least one bassy explosion and a couple of startling gunshots. The clangy musical score also has nice breadth, depth and fidelity. Dialogue is crisp and intelligible, though some of the ADR work calls attention to itself.

Tell me about your mother

Special Features

Ranking:

Arrow has assembled a few new bonus features. This is another big improvement over the MGM DVD, which only had a trailer.

  • Audio Commentary – Writer/directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have recorded a new commentary moderated by producer Steven Soderbergh. The filmmakers talk about first meeting in art school, their influences, shooting in black-and-white, casting and other production details. They also own up to some rookie mistakes they made on their first feature. Soderbergh explains how he got involved and prompts them with a steady stream of relevant questions. This is a very interesting, in-depth conversation.
  • Lacerations: The Making of Suture (HD, 32 min.) – The directors appear on camera for a retrospective look back at the film. Also interviewed are stars Dennis Haysbert, Mel Harris, Sab Shimono, and several members of the crew. McGehee and Siegel tell an amusing story about writing a fan letter to Gus Van Sant when they were first starting out. Shimono, who plays a psychologist in this movie about twins, reveals that he actually has a twin brother who's a psychologist. Haysbert says of the film, "This was independent when 'independent' meant independent."
  • Deleted Scenes (HD, 4 min.) – Three scenes are presented with optional commentary. Mel Harris is prominently featured in all three, which might seem suspicious, but the directors insist that she wasn't the reason they were cut.
  • Birds Past (HD, 28 min.) – Before scraping together enough money to make 'Suture', McGehee and Siegel directed and starred in a short film about a man obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'. It's not very good. Honestly, I couldn't make it through the whole thing. The filmmakers were wise to stay behind the camera for their subsequent work.
  • Still Gallery – Some behind-the-scenes photos are provided, none too exciting.
  • Trailers (HD, 4 min.) – The U.S. theatrical trailer plays up the thriller elements of the film. The European trailer is basically just the first scene of the movie.


Scrub a dub dub

HD Bonus Content: Any Exclusive Goodies in There?

I debated whether to count the extras as regular supplements or as HD bonus content. Technically, most of the material (aside from the U.S. trailer) is new to home video and Arrow has not released a corresponding DVD-only edition of the movie. However, all of the content is duplicated on the DVD in this dual-format edition, which could theoretically be sold on its own at some point. Ultimately, I decided that it would be less confusing to list everything in the main Supplements section of this review.

'Suture' may be an obscure art film from the early 1990s, but it's one I've remembered vividly since first seeing. I'm thrilled to finally get a quality high-def edition, lovingly restored and gifted with some interesting bonus features. Arrow Video has bestowed a Criterion-level treatment on this almost-forgotten but fascinating movie.