MISE-EN-SCENE ~ Annie Wilkes (Misery)

Annie Wilkes is a former nurse and the main antagonist of the 1987 novel, Misery, written by Stephen King, and its film adaptation (directed by Rob Reiner). The character Annie Wilkes has an extremely wayward disposition. Our initial impressions of Annie (played by Kathy Bates) is that she is lonely and a bit of bookworm (towards Paul Sheldon Novels at least), but towards the end of the story we realise that she is dangerously insane and bipolar, who has a history of murders that she committed. 

The setting of Annie’s house is where a majority of the film takes place. The house is old and is decorated by doilies, ceramic animals and antiques, which could remind the viewer of the home of a grandparent. It is possible that Annie’s love of antiques could stem from the Misery novels as it is set in the 1900s. The house itself is placed off in a remote part of the mountains of Colorado, this makes the Annie’s character seem distant, from not only civilisation but also from sanity, this isolation may have added to her mental state towards the end of her life.

Many props in the film are silver; the knife, the typewriter, the gun, Paul’s wheelchair. The colour silver can be associated with feminine power; this can directly correlate with Annie’s character because Annie uses the pills to manipulate Paul and also because Paul is so weak she has power over his life while she nurses him back to health.  The colourless energy of silver can lead to negative feelings of coldness this could be a pathetic fallacy towards the weather that proceeds while Paul is a held captive in Annie’s home.

The lighting often correlates with Annie’s mood swings. When Annie tells Paul she loves him, it’s the night time and raining. Although Annie does not show much violent anger in this scene she says “The rain gives me the blues”, she also pulls a gun from her pockets and says to Paul “Sometimes I think about using”. In this scene there is low-key lighting (a common trait in nearly all horror films).

Film Response – Misery (Directed by Rob Reiner)

3.5

Although I enjoyed the concept of the film and got a kick out of some of the gruesome parts, the film itself fails to deliver. It never uses its full potential to explore the psychological realms of depth that must be going through these two characters’ heads. For me the film doesn’t ask why she singled out Paul’s Misery novels, and it doesn’t even seem like she is some perverse mastermind with sinister motives to hold him there from the very beginning, this was something that bothered me greatly. Another thing I didn’t enjoy about this film is that the Misery novels made me feel like some outsider, I felt like I wasn’t in on this epic tale and that in actual fact does not exist, it annoyed me because these books are a huge part of the plot and the viewer just has to guess and fill in the gaps with scraps of information that is blurted out by the characters.

But there are some of good aspects of this film that I greatly enjoyed. For example, the scene where Paul and Annie have dinner they toast the Paul’s books, they say that they toast to Misery, (“To Misery?” [Paul]. “To Misery.” [Annie]), this almost has a comedic element because it seems like they are in fact toasting to mental discomfort and sadness instead of Paul’s books. I also found myself routing for the sheriff, I think this is the case because I find that he is a believable character. This was effective as I found his presence in the film became like some fresh air of sanity and hope, it was refreshing to know that people were looking for Paul. There was almost a strange contrast of the way in which people cared for Paul; Annie cared but was obsessed and kept him hidden away for her own self afflictions whereas the outside world cared and wanted to know where he was to ensure his safety.