If
Eye of the Beholder ever had something to say, that got lost in
not knowing how to say it. Slow meandering through abstract
psychological and spiritual terrain that carries an art-house flavor and
aspires to Hitchcockian tension ultimately falls apart because of the
lack of character conflict. Even the charisma and allure of Ashley Judd
cannot rescue this film from the incompatible mix of fractured
characters and the glitzy spying technology that tries to keep them in
touch, symbolically if not literally.
Judd plays Joanna, a cold-hearted serial killer of the
men she gets involved with. Ewan McGregor is the high-tech surveillance
expert on her tail named simply Eye. They both carry psychological
wounds that force them into continuous hiding. What begins as an
assignment for Eye turns into his romantic obsession. He recognizes
something of himself in Joanna. They both live in a way that leaves them
spiritually and emotionally hidden away. She hides beneath wigs and
behind a string of superficial relationships, and he hides in the
darkness from which he observes others.
Eye loves Joanna, but he knows that she will kill him
if she ever finds out how much he knows her. That is her pattern that he
has witnessed in grisly detail as she dispatches man after man. Out of
the psychology of these two characters comes the shadow of an idea that
could have made this film truly beautiful. In her heart and soul, Joanna
yearns to be known. She transforms her awareness of Eye's presence into
a fantasy about a stranger who follows her like a guardian angel, who
knows her every breath, every thought and every move, who saves her when
she needs help, but who remains at a distance so that she is never
forced to bring her darkness out in the open and face its pain.
For Joanna and Eye, as for all people, finding the
strength to face the chains of internal pain is one of the ultimate
challenges that leads to the hope that relationships offer. The film
endeavors to symbolically capture the distance we must sometimes cross
to reach another human being and the battle we must fight to hold on to
them.
Unfortunately, to fill the void that arises from the
lack of contact between its main characters, Eye of the Beholder
relies on Eye’s unintelligible spiritual musings about his daughter.
This is supposed to reveal the ghost of his past, but instead, it
becomes a confusing mess that is glossed over with frequent display of
the high-tech gadgets.
In the end, we neither cared nor abhorred the meeting
of the two. We were just glad the film was finally over.
