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The first thing youll notice aboutDestroyeris Nicole Kidmans face.
Its an odd transformation.
The makeup isnt exactly realistic, which can be distracting.
My theory: Kusama and Kidman dont want to immerse us; they want to confront us.
The officers in charge dont want her around; its not her jurisdiction, and she looks terrible.
Nobody knows who the victim is, or why he was murdered.
Erin tells the other cops, offhandedly, that she might know who did it.
They dont care; they just want her out of there.
Her reputation for boozing, it seems, precedes her.
But something else seems to hang over this woman, like a curse.
Along the way, she also tries to piece together her memories of what happened during their earlier encounter.
These little story shards themselves are out of order, and at times contradictory.
Erin and Chris were, after all, living a lie, pretending to be something theyre not.
Destroyeris a fragmented film, which will exasperate some.
And theres something fundamentally unrealistic, dreamlike about Erins encounters in the present day.
Everybody has changed, and yet they all still seem haunted by what happened way back when.
Some of them are still taking down scores.
It feels like a metaphor for the movie itself.)
Erins visitations to her old crew have a Stations of the Cross quality to them.
Each seems to debase her further.
And Kidmans performance as this broken, obsessed woman is powerful.
Breathless, rasping through her teeth, she conveys both vulnerability and intractability.
And thats whereDestroyergot me.
There is something almost Kabuki to Kidmans face here.
When she speaks, she seems to speak from beneath a mask.
She is death itself, the destroyer of worlds.
