Review: Peacock

By Lisa Anderson

Not much happens in the small, quiet town of Peacock, Nebraska, until one day, a train caboose jumps the rail and lands in the backyard of bank clerk John Skillpa. Everyone thinks the young Skillpa is a bachelor, and has lived alone in the house since the death of his mother the previous year; when the neighbors rush to the scene however, they find an woman—thankfully uninjured—who they’ve never met before.

She introduces herself as Emma and says that she lives there. Soon, this woman, who all assume to be John’s wife, is drawn not only into the web of state and local politics focused on the runaway caboose, but also into the dark secrets of John’s life, which he had been keeping even from her.

Thus begins 2010’s Peacock, a film directed by Michael Lander, which went straight to video in the US. It stars Cillian Murphy as John Skillpa, and also features such well-known actors as Susan Sarandon, Ellen Page, Bill Pullman, and Keith Carridine.

As Michael Lander only has one other film credit to his name (2000’s Solid Waste), it’s doubtful that the film would have gotten as much attention—or that its lack of a theatrical release would have raised as much ire—without Cillian Murphy’s fan following, which has been growing steadily since 28 Days Later and later took off with Batman Begins.

If you’ve seen the trailer then you already know: Murphy plays Emma Skillpa as well. John has a dual identity. Based on the trailer, I was afraid that Peacock was going to be a highly insulting depiction of gender dysphoria,but it only took a few minutes into the film to be assured that that wasn’t what was going on.

What I watched instead was a power struggle between two distinct people, each aware of the other’s existence, but each unable to remember the other’s actions. This struggle is set in motion when train crash disturbs the precise routine with which John controls Emma.

As always, Murphy is amazing. Ever since Breakfast on Pluto, his fans have known that he made both a very beautiful and convincing woman; and he does not disappoint here. (One surreal scene reminds us that what he does with his voice is as amazing as what he does with his face.) Unfortunately, his role is like something half-cooked. John is one-dimensional—twitchy and neurotic, by turns beaten-down and temperamental—to the point that he almost doesn’t seem believably functional.

Emma, by contrast, is poised, soft-spoken, and compassionate, as appealing as John is repellent. She is also, however, the one with the malicious streak, and the one who changes and grows the most throughout the story.

With the other characters, too, some are more three-dimensional than others. Pullman is a caricature of a taskmaster boss, and Carradine is your archetypal small-town pol. Susan Sarandon and Ellen Page have much more nuanced and sympathetic roles, as the mayor’s wife and a troubled young mother, respectively. Perhaps it’s fair to say that the women fare better than the men overall, although one does have to feel sorry for John.

I found the setting of the movie to be an interesting touch. You know where it is, but I don’t think they ever say when the action takes place. The clothes and the cars have a vaguely timeless quality. Based on the fact that no one uses a computer or cell phone, I’m guessing it takes place sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, the ’70s at the absolute latest.

The texture of a movie is something that I pay a lot of attention to. Peacock masterfully uses music to establish a simultaneous sense of melancholy and menace. Shadows and light are also used to great effect. As for things which viewers might find upsetting, only one brief instance of on-screen violence comes to mind. Some of the things that John has suffered—and they are horrible—are either related by a character, or implied in a fairly typical sort of quick-cut flashback montage. One of the most potentially dramatic things that happens—the caboose crash—happens in a strange, stylized way that fails to startle.

In the end, Emma tries to go back to where she started, but the world has changed so much around her that it’s doubtful it will let her be. You’re left wondering what will happen next.

I honestly don’t understand why Peacock went straight to video. It doesn’t have the pace of a typical mainstream movie, but it wasn’t any slower than some other psychological thrillers I could name, and was actually a lot better. It’s one of those movies that you get more out of and understand better each time you go back and watch it.

I’m a huge fan of Cilliian Murphy, but he’s had some rocky professional luck lately. 2007’s Sunshine did poorly both critically and at the box office, and frankly, it’s my least favorite of his movies. His follow-up Watching the Detectives, went straight to DVD; and while I didn’t dislike it, it didn’t leave much of an impression with me. I hope that the complex, engaging Peacock finds a broad audience on DVD, within Murphy’s fan base and beyond.

If nothing else, Murphy’s fans—and the summer movie-going public—can look forward to seeing him reunited with Ellen Page on the big screen, in Inception, also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Grodon-Levitt.

Peacock was released on DVD via Lionsgate on April 20; the DVD contains a featurette, deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and Cillian Murphy rehearsal footage.