Brooklyn 45
December 27th, 1945; the war may be over but the friends who gather at the brownstone Brooklyn apartment of Lieutenant Colonel Clive Hockstatter to offer some cold comfort following the death of his beloved wife Susan at Thanksgiving are as bitter as the winter weather, interrogation expert Marla Sheridan walking with a cane after she was bombed by the enemy and abandoned in the rubble by her squad and Major Archibald Stanton facing a high profile trial accused of war crimes.
Susan having become obsessed with the German family who ran the local grocers, the Baumanns whom she was convinced were Nazi spies, since her death Hockstatter has become similarly obsessed with spiritualism and the possibility of talking to the dead, not necessarily believing but needing to keep a door of hope open when religion tells him she is damned for the mortal sin of suicide, requesting his friends join him in a séance to seek the answers he needs from beyond.
Set almost entirely in a single room for its compact ninety-minute duration and told in real time, writer and director Ted Geoghegan’s Brooklyn 45 is quite literally a parlour drama, a rending supernatural crucible of rage, regret and revenge built upon misplaced honour and guilt, misdeeds, mistrust and misunderstandings, far from a sentimental Christmas tale of understanding and forgiveness despite the seasonal setting.
Starring Anne Ramsay as Marla, Ron E Rains as her husband Bob, an intelligence officer and the only invited guest who saw no active service, Jeremy Holm as Archie, Larry Fessenden as Clive and Ezra Buzzington as his right-hand strongman Major Paul DiFranco, as they join hands around the table any doubts are shattered by the immediacy of the response but the misgivings remain; what mysterious force or entity have they contacted and can it or any of them be trusted?
Unwillingly pulled into the circle is Kristina Klebe as Hildegard Baumann, her guilt presumed by no more than her accent which identifies her as an enemy of the people, the hatred learned in the long years of the war finding its way to home and hearth in the land of the free where it has lurked in shadow, the friends tearing into each other to prove their patriotism, their valour, their manliness, driven by half-glimpsed spirits and fuelled by alcohol, while Lucy Carapetyan is Susan, the spectre at the feast who speaks not only for herself but all the victims of war.
Built around the superb ensemble, their long friendship sullied by revelations and the stranger in their midst who stands accused without evidence, for all the blood and ectoplasm on display Brooklyn 45 is about the damaged people driven by the dead who won’t take no for an answer, satisfying in its refusal to wrap up neatly, instead trying to stitch together the bloody edges of what is left and using tears for disinfectant, surviving another day and calling it victory.
Brooklyn 45 will be available on Shudder from Friday 9th June
