The reviews in the States are no less powerful. The film-industry trade paper, the Hollywood Reporter, runs a celebratory review which talks about the film’s ‘hard forged eloquence’. Its rival, the other major industry paper, Daily Variety, publishes a review we could not have written ourselves, declaring it ‘a superior, brooding family drama worthy of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams’. (Amusingly, Tim reads me this over the phone while I shop for plants for our garden at Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard.)
We always knew The War Zone would be a challenging, painful film for audiences to watch – but now we know, too, that it has been received in the spirit in which it was made.
Paradoxically, it also marks the end of a deeply significant period in my life, spanning fatherhood, my son’s life and death, and a new beginning in America. Along with my pleasure and pride in the film comes an undeniable sense of loss, of letting go, and a determination to move on – to other projects, other concerns. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, I won’t have The War Zone to kick around any more.
Two weeks later, the film won a special jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival – although it was not in competition. It was invited to screen at a special performance as part of Directors’ Fortnight at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival – an honor for Tim, since Cannes usually will not show films that have previously screened in Europe.
The film went on to screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Sydney International Film Festival and to première in Britain at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It was also shown at the Toronto, Melbourne and Jerusalem Film Festivals, among others.
The War Zone on DVD
Tim Roth’s movie of The War Zone was scripted by Alexander Stuart from his novel. The film stars Ray Winstone, Tilda Swinton, Lara Belmont and Freddie Cunliffe, and is available on DVD.
Visit the Internet Movie Database web page for The War Zone for more details.
“A film of haunting power” – Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“A superior, brooding family drama worthy of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams” – Daily Variety
“Two thumbs up! A great movie. Tim Roth takes a story filled with hazards and tells it triumphantly” – Roger Ebert & The Movies
“Fueled by a quartet of stunning performances and a remarkably lean script by Alexander Stuart (based on his novel), The War Zone is one of the year’s best films – but it’s definitely not one for the faint of heart” – Time Out New York
Official Selection:
• Sundance Film Festival
• Cannes Film Festival
• Berlin Film Festival
About the Author
Alexander Stuart (also known as Alexander Chow-Stuart) is a Los Angeles-based, British-born novelist and screenwriter, whose novels, non-fiction and children’s books have been translated into eight languages and published in the US, Britain, Europe and throughout the world.
His most controversial novel, The War Zone, about a family torn apart by incest, was turned into a searingly emotional film by Oscar-nominated actor/director Tim Roth. At the time of the book’s initial publication, it was stripped of the Whitbread Best Novel Award amid controversy among the panel of three judges.
Stuart’s books include Life On Mars, his non-fiction account of his life in Miami Beach in the 1990s, which formed the basis of his Channel Four television documentary, The End of America.
As a screenwriter, Stuart has worked with actors ranging from Angelina Jolie to Jodie Foster, and with directors including Tim Roth, Danny Boyle and Jonathan Glazer.
Stuart lives in California with his wife, Charong Chow, their two young children and a growing menagerie of pets.
Praise for THE WAR ZONE
“Stunning… mysterious and deeply moving.”
“This is a pungent shocking book, superbly written (sharp, sensuous, bitter), which… presents the theme of incest not as a device of sexual titillation but as a symbol of social breakdown. I was horrified but seduced from first to last. The writing is remarkable.”
“From the novel’s first scene, the material is explosive. Mr. Stuart has written screenplays… the film training serves him well here, both in the novel’s skilled pacing and in the cinematic precision of the description. His Devon, ‘full of premeditated, parceled country charm,’ makes an ideal setting for this story. During a fight between Tom and his father in the backyard, Tom observes ‘the wrecked barbecue and the smashed table on the lawn like a still life in some crisp, arty photograph.’ Mr. Stuart often stops to linger on such images; they help to make The War Zone memorable.”
“Alexander Stuart’s The War Zone does for Britain now something of what Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange did a quarter of a century ago. It is several steps further into the nightmare… The emblematic shock in Orange was its gratuitous violence. In The War Zone, it is incest.”
“The Catcher in the Rye of the 90s.”
“Incest may not be a subject with which to conquer the hearts and minds of an entire panel of Whitbread judges, but in Alexander Stuart’s The War Zone it becomes the focus of acute, tense writing. This novel is neither voyeuristic nor ‘repellent’, but a tightly drawn, savagely seductive portrayal of adolescent anger and social disorder. In the tension it creates between sensuality and disgust, words are spat and purred by turn, and love and hatred are just opposite sides of the same foreign coin.
For Tom, the bitter-sour adolescent narrator, a sexual relationship between his father and elder sister is just one facet of a world twisted sideways, snarled up in knots. His language, sometimes raw, sometimes swollen with self-indulgence, tangles images of nature with sexual corruption: the sky blood red where it touches the backbone of the houses. His anger besmears even the bits of life he loves. This is a disturbing, claustrophobic book, fraught with obsession and fantasies.”