A Review of ‘Theme: Murder ‘
Written by Chris Cooke | Posted by: Anonymous
Hyman Swetzoff was a prominent art dealer in Boston from the 1940s until his death, promoting both local artists and European masters such as Paul Klee, Odilon Redon, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, many of them relatively unknown in America at the time. His early ambitions were to be a writer, and his writings show him to be a man driven by complex and conflicting desires his wish to bring art to the public tempered by his contempt of the publics ignorance of art, his need to prove himself perhaps fueled by self-hatred, his desire for a family thwarted by his feelings of isolation. And even his early writing show a preoccupation with murder, in particular his own. "I want to commit a murderers act," he writes. "Death came running towards me from a direction I never suspected. Who knows the true story of anything?" Not surprisingly, the title of the film comes from his own words: "I want to write a little play for children theme: murder."
Filmmaker Martha Swetzoff then and now.
Ironically, the legacy he leaves his children is the unknowable story of his own murder. Martha in particular felt a strong bond with her father, one that hasnt diminished over time. The film chronicles her initial reactions to his death and the series of questions it has left her with. Did his self-destructive instincts lead to his own death? Have these instincts been passed on to her? She learns to associate an artistic life with early and violent death. She finds herself leading, like him, a double life, active on the exterior but deeply troubled within.
The film skillfully weaves interviews of family, friends, local artists, police investigators, and others (including an appearance by James Ellroy, author of "Black Dahlia" and "L.A. Confidential," whose own mothers murder remains unsolved) with an assortment of family photos, newspaper clippings of the murder, excepts from her earlier movie about her fathers death ("The Garden," made in 1979, when she was only nineteen), and fragments from Hymans poetry, journals, and letters. Lush imagery of water, clouds, and especially foliage permeates the film. Greenery inherently suggests renewal, rebirth, and growth, but Swetzoff makes her stepfathers gardenher new home after the murderseem labyrinthine, often dark and dense, at times stark and withered, sometimes fragile, ethereal, ghostlike. The effect is chilling, suggesting the brooding confusion, anger, and alienation the murder has instilled in her psyche.
If there is anything at all unsatisfying about the movie, it is its open-ended conclusion; Swetzoff and her film never arrive upon the "parcel of truth" she so desperately craves. Consequently, watching "Theme: Murder" is something like seeing "Apocalypse Now" only three-quarters of the way through. Its a fascinating and eerie trip, but Swetzoff stops just a touch short of confronting darkness face to face the darkness in her father, in herself, and in all of us. In a way, the film has two conflicting purposes: to pay tribute to her father and his gallery and to explore the self-destructive side of his personality and the legacy his death. Its difficult to thoroughly pursue one while still clinging to the other.
Regardless, "Theme: Murder" is a good film, a serious film that asks many of lifes important questions with intelligence and poignancy. If it has no easy answers, its because there are none. "When does the search for meaning stop?" asks Swetzoff at the films conclusion. I suspect her search is not yet over, that we may be blessed with more of her films in the future. I look forward to seeing them.
Art dealer Hyman Swetzoff was murdered in Boston in 1968. Thirty years later, his life and still unsolved murder is the subject of the film 'Theme: Murder' directed by his daughter Martha Swetzoff.