Should we conceptualize The Secret History as if it were not only Southern but also set at a fraternity with the slackest students who rarely took their classes seriously, the picture would be akin to The Line. In this campus thriller, viewers will follow Alex Wolff’s performance in Dual Tom Baxter, starting his second year with the full confidence that space is not made for people during the first semester. Tom Baxter’s fellow fraternity members are Mitch, Todd, Frank, and Robert, played by Angus Cloud in one of his last roles. Their world turned upside down when a freshman pledge member Gettys played by Austin Abrams refuses to follow the fraternity’s very intrusive and abusive system. Other interesting names in the cast are Halle Bailey, Denise Richards, and John Malkovich.
There is nothing new to what is being said, or even done here, but it is nevertheless well executed with some dramatizing element. With an intense atmosphere and some fascinating performances, the cast and crew manage to create a whole believable world. This is Ethan Berger?s feature debut as a director and co-writer (along with Zack Purdo and Alex Russek) and it was obvious that he knows how to outline his own ideas into something tangible, the film. The Line is an intense movie that explores the relationship of masculinity, tradition and money with privilege.
In the beginning, we meet Tom, the protagonist in search of his identity, who leaves for college after spending his last night in his mother’s house. In a few words, we learn that over the summer he worked in order to pay his fraternity but his actual college tuition would be provided by his mother. This is not a typical case of a student who has all the resources available in the fraternity but provides insight into Tom’s world where he can afford college on his own but does not have wealth as many of his brothers in the fraternity has. In subsequent sections, the growing tension of being trapped in class on a college campus only to have his best friend and roommate, Mitch, and his parents later be presented to Tom as a part of potential reasons why he would be ever interested in joining the fraternity.
Tom has the affection and trust of all, while this is not the case for Mitch, who plays the role of contrast and appears to be some sort of a drawback. It can be easily noticed that it is due to Tom’s wide-ranging popularity in the fraternity and the reason being college has caused his mother, who is a source of embarrassment to him, causing him to develop an accent. Additionally, the extent to which Tom contains his personality and character becomes even clearer when one considers Mitch, who is excessive in his volume and irrepressibly obnoxious.
As for Wolff, his most remarkable quality is the fact that he is able to portray a certain feigning of emotion and laying of hurt in a manner which is apparent to the audience but not to his fellow actors. Tom is depicted as one of the group but in his dullness quite a lot is revealed about his character that cannot be associated with the completion of a person. It is quite surprising for the audience when he tries to learn about Bailey’s character Annabelle and the character himself can’t tell anything — asking about his parents, he can’t even remember how they are. He never feels such an unnerving silence within himself that Wolff is able to deliver throughout the performance of a character role. Nothing and everything changes at once, what Tom’s expression is about.
It is worth talking about Halle Bailey, for although her role here is short, it is significant. Perhaps mutual love is too strong a phrase to describe the situation but there’s no doubt Tom of course is smitten with her. He resolves to portray himself in a favorable light after getting to know her in class and even manages to convince her that he is not like the other boys in the fraternity despite her lack of interest in the first place. You sense a gradual warming up of the two sides, but as with every one of Tom’s relationships, there is not much depth (which appears to be the point and is certainly not a complaint).
Professionally, in this case, Bailey succeeds in her attempts. She embodies a representation of a ‘normal’ person who’s practically amused by the bushy sheer male glamour portrayed in the frat house and responds to the weirdness of Tom’s habits the way the majority of the viewers in the audience would. In her sparse minutes of presence, she contributes in making Annabelle feel real, and as if the character has a life of her own (because, we don’t hear about it, although she would be expected to have one).
None the less other than best of these great performances, the highlight of the show is the gloomy, and to be honest, very strange feel of the world of The Line. No disrespect to the frat bros, or perhaps some, but the cultures, exchanges, and customs that are practiced by these particular characters are just plain weird. The Line does not take the Korean route of attempting to enthrall the audience into the lifestyle being pictured, before shocking them with the reality, but conversely, it makes it clear from the onset that this is not the right behaviour.
Every bash or general symposium gets an icy stare and ends up with harsh music (or devoid of it). These men talk so much about women and the sex these men have, but the only actresses we really see are Annabelle and a few boys’ mothers. In addition, the dance group is confined to the performance of pelvic thrusts by men towards other men. All these things lack warmth, character, improvisation, and relationships, making it pointless to think that you’re losing out on anything other than the presence of such dreadful people.
While the movie’s tone has many layers of effort that goes into it, in other respects, this effort is in some ways somewhat undermined by more overt visual metaphor. In the same manner, Tom and Mitch’s bedroom is accented with walls that are covered in what could easily be at home in a young girl’s room with ribbons. (There should be an official comment made that there is nothing wrong with men having ribbon wallpaper, but these men would clearly not acquiesce to such a claim). On the contrary, this wallpaper is also previously decorated in regard with ‘women-in-underwear-posters’ and ‘Conservative memorabilia’. The glaring contrast between the naivety of children’s wallpaper patterns and the more adult themes and aspects featured is rather naively overpowering.
In the same way, in a previous tell Mitch’s father also makes a ‘joke’ about how the only fish you see mounted on walls are those with open mouths – a picture that resurfaces in a couple of other episodes in a rather crude way. It is easier to comprehend what the fish images intended to mean, that these men are told to remain silent about themselves, their friends, the things they do as well as their emotions, as performed by Wolff, than interpreted as this too obvious manipulating of the scenery. But non-verbal explanation is certainly more preferable than the rest of describing in words every single thing.
The fish images extend and complete this line as well, it appears in the beginning of the movie and appears again in the last scene. To avoid spoilers, The Line’s synopsis shows how the systems of oppression and their tools are constructed by the privileged. This makes the narrative believable but a common flaw of this kind of stories is that once the thrill of the basics is understood, it is easy to predict the trajectory of events leading to the “climax”, which takes away some thrill of the build-up. So, in a sense, the film moves against its own logic.
Though, that does not imply that it is not worth a watch, just do not expect that the pace will be all over the place or that the movie will throw you a lot of surprises. There is a lot of really interesting work going on from all angles, and Wolff gives an utterly unique and haunting performance. More specifically, you will not experience the strange and bitterly depressing mood it develops in anywhere else.
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