Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone, Jeanne Tripplehorn,
George Dzundza, Denis Arndt
In the decades since its release, I can't think of another movie that
generated as much buzz as Paul Verhoeven's
Basic Instinct did back in 1992. Among my peers at my Catholic boys school it was
certainly the most talked about movie of the year, and no doubt the most
paused when it hit VHS. The tabloids couldn't get enough of it, setting
the hype train in motion months before its release once word got out that
this was a film that was going to push the boundaries of what could be
shown in a Hollywood movie. The then relatively unknown
Sharon Stone took Princess Diana's place as the most photographed
and talked about woman in the world. On its release, the film was a
massive hit, spawning a slew of imitators from glossy Hollywood
productions starring Madonna to the many Shannon Tweed fronted straight to
video knockoffs that sated teenage boys' curiosity in the years before the
internet gave them access to a world of hardcore porn.
For a movie that occupied so many column inches,
Basic Instinct was summarily dismissed by critics on release
as a piece of vapid, exploitative trash. Ironically, it was feminist
critics, spearheaded by Camille Paglia, who gave it the most favourable
reviews, praising the film's portrayal of a powerful woman who wraps men
around her fingers. While in production, the film was picketed by LGBT
rights groups, but its bisexual villainess has become something of a queer
icon in the years since.
So is Basic Instinct a piece of misogynistic, homophobic
trash or a classic depiction of queer female power? Well, it's both, and
neither. Basic Instinct is the most frustrating movie in
Verhoeven's filmography, a mass of contradictions. On one hand it feels
like the quintessential Verhoeven movie with its boundary pushing
depictions of sex and violence and its prodding of conservative and
liberal mores, but on the other it feels compromised, a case of a European
filmmaker mocking American sensibilities while simultaneously trying to
work within a traditional thriller template.
Basic Instinct made headlines for many reasons. One of them
was the then staggering $4 million sum paid for Joe Esterhasz's
script. If Basic Instinct works, it's in spite of Esterhasz,
whose clunky script is little more than a collection of clichés (the
maverick cop meets the femme fatale) that utilises dialogue reliant
storytelling more befitting a TV cop show than a Hollywood blockbuster. It
may be set in San Francisco and feature an enigmatic blonde who likes to
wear white, but that's where the Vertigo comparisons should
end. There's nothing Hitchcockian about Basic Instinct, which is a whodunit, Hitch's least favourite mode of storytelling, and
for all its swooping steadicam it's barely cinematic.
Esterhasz's story is as old as the San Francisco hills. A troubled police
detective, Nick Curran (Michael Douglas), recently cleared of
killing two tourists who got in his line of fire, investigates the murder
of a record producer. His primary suspect is Catherine Tramell (Stone), a
wealthy psychiatrist/novelist who was the dead man's lover. Nick has no
real evidence against Catherine, save for the fact that one of her novels
features a woman murdering her lover with an ice pick, the very same
weapon used in the killing of the producer.
I suspect it's this aspect that attracted Verhoeven. This was an era when
writers, filmmakers and musicians were scapegoated by the media as being
responsible for the corruption of the western world. Every time some
lunatic shot up a McDonalds, conservative and liberal media outlets united
in blaming violent movies, horror novels and Heavy Metal. In reality, it
was respected authority figures like priests, politicians and policemen
who were the real sickos. Basic Instinct latches onto this
idea, commenting on the hypocrisy of the era in this regard. When Nick
arrives on the murder scene he tut tuts at the cocaine found in the room,
but we later learn that he had a coke problem of his own. The film is
ambiguous regarding Catherine's guilt, but it plays far more thematically
interesting if you view it as an innocent woman having fun ruffling the
feathers of a bunch of squares who have condemned her simply because she
writes nasty books and is proudly sexually promiscuous. She knows she
hasn't done anything wrong and turns the tables on Nick, who could be
viewed as the film's antagonist. Nick is a hypocrite who assumes the moral
high ground, yet he's killed four people in the last five years alone, and
isn't above sexually assaulting his on/off lover, police psychologist Beth
Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn).
But as I said, this is a frustrating film and its most annoying element is
the coda that makes such a read difficult. After Catherine has seemingly
been cleared of the murder, we end with a scene of her making love with
Nick. After rolling off his sweaty body she appears to reach for something
beside the bed, only to then embrace a nervous Nick before the movie fades
to black. That's a perfect ending that seems to confirm Catherine's
innocence and allows us to view Basic Instinct as the
story of an intelligent, educated libertine poking the bear of mainstream
American morality. But then we cut back to a shot of the camera panning
down beneath the bed, where an ice pick lies in wait. Ugh. Why the
previous fade to black though? Why not just pan down to the offending
weapon in one continuous shot? Is this Verhoeven's way of telling us that
he doesn't approve of an ending likely tacked on to tease a sequel (which
would finally arrive as late as 2006, but the less said about that the
better)?
At the time, Sharon Stone's name was considered a byword for bad acting,
which seems preposterous now. While she hasn't exactly set the screen
alight since, in Basic Instinct she's nothing short of
fantastic, taking a clichéd archetype and turning her into an icon. Her
biggest previous role had come in Verhoeven's
Total Recall and here the Dutch provocateur latches onto her
as a cipher for his own cheeky ways. As we watch Stone's Catherine make a
bunch of middle-aged men uncomfortable in THAT interrogation, it's
impossible not to think of the scene as emblematic of Verhoeven's
Hollywood career, a self-confessed European sleazebag relishing playing
America's external prudishness and internal perversions off one another.
With Basic Instinct and later Showgirls, Verhoeven satirises America's hypocrisy when it comes to sex in the
same way he used Robocop and
Starship Troopers to comment on his adopted country's
near-fascistic obsession with authoritarian power. On the surface it's
little more than a slick erotic thriller, but look under the bed and
you'll find Verhoeven wielding a sharp weapon of his own.
Basic Instinct is on Prime Video UK
now.