Cinematronical: Keane

English actor Damien Lewis gives an astonishing performance in independent filmaker Lodge Kerrigan's mesmerizing Keane. Lewis is William Keane, a psychologically damaged man torn apart by the disappearance of his daughter, who obsessively haunts the area around a bus station in New York City, where his daughter was taken. Keane stalks the streets, ticking out staccato mutterings to himself, barraging strangers with questions about his missing little girl, but is the trauma at the centre of his shattered mind real or a product of mental illness?

Lewis is in every frame of the film, shot by Kerrigan using a hand held camera in continuous four-minute takes and edited in-camera. Kerrigan keeps the camera tightly focused on Lewis, often framing shots with Lewis in close-up to one side of the frame, like the camera is perched on the actor's shoulder, forcing us into Keane's world with an intimacy infrequently seen in modern cinema. Keane’s gritty, realistic aesthetic achieves what the trendy shaky-cam style reaches for but usually misses: raw, honest immediacy.

I usually try to avoid hyperbole, but it's no exaggeration to say that Lewis' acting in Keane is among the most brilliant I have seen in a film: a staggeringly detailed portrayal of a complex, confused, sad, angry, fragmented soul. One of the most memorable scenes has Keane drunk in a dingy bar, shouting out the words to I Can't Help Myself, trying to drown out the images and the sheer pain in his head. In one simple but searing moment, Kerrigan and Lewis draw you into the agony of the character in an uncommonly tactile way.

The post-9/11 zeitgeist seeps into the film through the fearful paranoia and disorientation of the main character and of the cityscapes he inhabits. Keane meets another lost soul, a woman with a little girl, who she ends up entrusting Keane with for an extended period of time during which the movie tightens the screws as it becomes unclear if Keane will protect the kid or disintegrate.

Brilliantly filmed and constructed, Keane is elevated to the upper cinematic echelons by one of the most vivacious and involving performances in cinema.