Damian’s Magnetic Band of Brothers Role Leads to Keane
by Erik Luers | Film Maker Magazine | August 19, 2022
If every film is a document of its own making, then Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane, shot in real locations in and around New York City in 2004, is also a depiction of the period in which it was made. Viewing the film on the occasion of a new digital restoration by Grasshopper Film that begins a theatrical run at Film at Lincoln Center today, I was struck by the numerous billboards and posters placed atop taxi cabs that the film’s lead character, William Keane (Damian Lewis), obliviously walks by. Short of pointing at the screen, Leonardo DiCaprio-style, as I noticed a poster for the upcoming season of The Sopranos or a cab ad advertising Bernadette Peters in Gypsy on Broadway, I appreciated the unintentional media ephemera that pops into the background of many of Kerrigan’s frames—such are the unexpected pleasures of filming in live locations!
When we first meet the title character, the unemployed, unstable redhead is wandering the Port Authority bus depot in an effort to retrace the steps he took when his daughter was abducted months prior at the complex’s basement level. When he’s not putting himself through this agonizing recreation of brutal trauma, Keane is living in a hotel and getting drunk, snorting cocaine, hooking up with various women in bathroom stalls,and purchasing children’s clothes for the eventual return of his kin. Something feels off: when Keane informs a character later in the film that he was married once but is now divorced, we begin to suspect that that might not be true and grow unsure as to whether there ever was an abducted daughter to begin with. When, back at the hotel, Keane encounters a down-on-her-luck mother (Amy Ryan) with a young daughter (Abigail Breslin), we fear that Keane may see something in the girl that reminds him of his. Sure enough…
Continue reading Always Maximize Your Shooting Time: Lodge Kerrigan on Keane