| Written by John Shea,
on 28-12-2004 07:03
|
Published in : Reviews, Movies |
It's interesting that in taking an intelligent, analytical dissection of love that it becomes cold, sterile and more about sex and power. That seems to be the lesson of Closer, a movie about four people careening off each other like Cupid's pinballs rather than drawing closer as the title might imply.
The movie's intelligence is easy to appreciate but its harsh unblinking gaze is hard to love. It opens with Dan (Jude Law) meeting Alice (Natalie Portman) on a London street. As a recent transplant from New York, Alice isn't looking the right way for traffic, and distracted by Dan, is hit by a cab. He spends the day with her after taking her to the hospital, despite already having a girlfriend. A year later he is living with her and flirting heavily with Anna (Julia Roberts), a photographer assigned to get a headshot for the jacket of his new book. Another year later, Dan, still living with Alice, chats online, pretending to be a woman to seduce a doctor named Larry (Clive Owen). He sets up a fake date, calling himself Anna. Miraculously, Anna is there when Larry shows up and the two are soon dating. Later, at a gallery showing of Anna's photos, Dan meets up with her again and once again flirts heavily, even though both of them are with someone. It goes on and on like this, with the quartet swapping partners back and forth seemingly on whims.
As you might expect, it's hard to find these characters sympathetic when they are constantly going behind the backs of their partners to sleep with someone else. Alice would seem at first glance the most decent as she never deliberately cheats on Dan. But we come to question just about everything about her by the end of the movie, possibly making her the worst liar of the lot. Dan seems the most selfish, constantly working on his next conquest, never happy with what he has. He seems like a child, someone who can't bear to be told no. Anna initially seems like a decent sort who attracts bad men. But over time we see she makes a habit of it, luring men in when she can't stand being tied to the one she has. Larry seems at least superficially more decent than the others until you consider the way he batters the others with honesty. His veneer of decency fades when it becomes apparent he often tells the truth just to be hurtful, when a small lie or silence would have been kinder. Similarly, he badgers both Alice and Anna for the truth when the telling of the truth serves only to cause them pain.
The movie plays with the actors' established personas to throw off our expectations for the characters. If you expect a sweetly romantic figure from Julia Roberts, you'll find yourself thrown for a loop by an argument where her character shares her preference in ejaculate. It's a jarring line coming from an actress of her stature. Jude Law is usually charming but here comes across as a whiner. Clive Owen is generally so smooth that he is regularly mentioned as a potential replacement for Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. In this movie he is coarse and vulgar. Perhaps most shocking is Natalie Portman, an actress who can always project sweet innocence, playing a stripper. A scene in which Larry pays for her time in a private room at a strip club is shocking for being so cold and blunt. While Portman doesn't actually appear nude, she wears very little and gives a dead on performance. This kind of brutal honesty and realism is completely at odds with a Hollywood studio film. It deserves a lot of credit to strip away the glamour and not be afraid to be ugly. Portman deserves credit for taking a role in which she must be so exposed, without the crutch of sexiness to lean on.
The movie only contains six speaking roles and two of them are bit parts, leaving the four stars to carry everything. That also has the effect of putting them in a vacuum. Without other characters to compare them to, they exist in moral free fall. We know they are behaving badly, but deprived of more pleasant characters to latch on to, we have to judge these people purely on their behavior towards each other. It is similar to the Godfather movies where we rarely see characters that aren't gangsters and thus gravitate toward the Corleone family because they have are less repugnant than the others mob families. By isolating difficult characters the audience can't be as judgmental they normally would be, making them accept the characters as they are. It's why I debate which of these characters is the most decent instead of asking why they are all such selfish manipulators.
Closer is a sharply written, well-acted and well-directed film. The simplicity of its style belies the complexity of the dialogue, which is the movie's driving force. There is actually little sex in the movie, but endless discussion of it. Oddly, despite the subject matter, there is nothing truly sexy about the movie. Sex is an idea in this movie, something that is debated but not engaged in, at least not on screen. The result is a movie that is rather cold and analytical. While I can admire the fierce intelligence in the movie, I can't quite love it. Its attitude toward love and relationships is rather nihilistic, an attitude I don't share and thus it stays at arm's length. I strongly recommend seeing it but it's just not possible to claim love. Maybe it would be more appropriate to love another movie while continuing to admire this one.
- John Shea
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