"But we're happy. Aren't we?"
As per normal, spoiler warning.
Just got in from seeing Closer with K down at the Bookshelf. There are certain movies (usually by Neil LaBute or Todd Solondz) that are on a level of nastiness unrivaled by just about anything else. Barring those, though, this was about the nastiest film I've seen, ranking up there with Shallow Grave. Both are unrelenting in setting up characters you think you like and then having them act such that not only do you no longer like them, you feel vaguely guilty for having done so in the first place.
The main difference, for me, is that where in Shallow Grave the spite is wrapped around a core of tension that steadily ratchets tighter and tighter, Closer substitutes instead a deep, profound sense of sadness. Dan and Alice, Larry and Anna; they're likeable, but not sympathetic. Not really evil, just terribly, believably weak (Jude Law's Dan in particular is what we refer to around these parts as a Cassidy). In the first half of the movie Clive Owen's Larry seems almost like the one we can get behind, but his sustained demolition of Dan's life later on (my favourite scene in the movie) puts the lie to that idea. Suddenly I was feeling more on Dan's "side", but given what he'd already done the feeling was utterly unjustified. Is what Larry says to him justified, even with what Dan has already done? I'm forced to say no, especially given the smile on Larry's face.
But let's not neglect the females. This is a very stagey movie, although pleasantly so, and with the customary zing of theatre language, words crafted for an arena where words are practically all you've got; when we say there are four characters in Closer, we don't mean four main characters, four is all you get. I don't remember anyone else getting a single line of anything approaching consequence. Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts both hold up their end well (it is worth noting that all four leads do excellent jobs, particularly Owen - I'm sure Morgan Freeman was wonderful in Million Dollar Baby, but Owen deserved that Oscar), although Portman is given more to do and is more showy about doing it. Roberts mostly just has to project a certain mood, one very different from what she's known for, but given that her character is the one much of the action between the two men (and rightly or wrongly, they are the main characters) that shouldn't be overlooked.
Roberts, and to some degree the other three, plays someone damaged by the truth. Neither Dan nor Larry can live with polite fictions, both hound others for it endlessly (as does Portman's Alice in one scene, although by the end things are much different), and both are destroyed by it at different times. By the time Larry tells Dan "You don't know the first thing about love, because you don't understand compromise", you can tell he's not necessarily talking about compromise with other people; On some level Larry knows Alice doesn't really love him, and he's okay with that, probably through denial. He doesn't care about the truth any more. And yet he and Anna end up "happy", and Alice and Dan do not. And why? Because Dan can't let go of the truth.
That's not a lesson I think is necessarily transferable to real life; but it makes for a damn fine film. Yes, Mike Nichols did Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge, and they may even be better films (I haven't seen them), but he clearly hasn't lost his taste for blood with age.
Just got in from seeing Closer with K down at the Bookshelf. There are certain movies (usually by Neil LaBute or Todd Solondz) that are on a level of nastiness unrivaled by just about anything else. Barring those, though, this was about the nastiest film I've seen, ranking up there with Shallow Grave. Both are unrelenting in setting up characters you think you like and then having them act such that not only do you no longer like them, you feel vaguely guilty for having done so in the first place.
The main difference, for me, is that where in Shallow Grave the spite is wrapped around a core of tension that steadily ratchets tighter and tighter, Closer substitutes instead a deep, profound sense of sadness. Dan and Alice, Larry and Anna; they're likeable, but not sympathetic. Not really evil, just terribly, believably weak (Jude Law's Dan in particular is what we refer to around these parts as a Cassidy). In the first half of the movie Clive Owen's Larry seems almost like the one we can get behind, but his sustained demolition of Dan's life later on (my favourite scene in the movie) puts the lie to that idea. Suddenly I was feeling more on Dan's "side", but given what he'd already done the feeling was utterly unjustified. Is what Larry says to him justified, even with what Dan has already done? I'm forced to say no, especially given the smile on Larry's face.
But let's not neglect the females. This is a very stagey movie, although pleasantly so, and with the customary zing of theatre language, words crafted for an arena where words are practically all you've got; when we say there are four characters in Closer, we don't mean four main characters, four is all you get. I don't remember anyone else getting a single line of anything approaching consequence. Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts both hold up their end well (it is worth noting that all four leads do excellent jobs, particularly Owen - I'm sure Morgan Freeman was wonderful in Million Dollar Baby, but Owen deserved that Oscar), although Portman is given more to do and is more showy about doing it. Roberts mostly just has to project a certain mood, one very different from what she's known for, but given that her character is the one much of the action between the two men (and rightly or wrongly, they are the main characters) that shouldn't be overlooked.
Roberts, and to some degree the other three, plays someone damaged by the truth. Neither Dan nor Larry can live with polite fictions, both hound others for it endlessly (as does Portman's Alice in one scene, although by the end things are much different), and both are destroyed by it at different times. By the time Larry tells Dan "You don't know the first thing about love, because you don't understand compromise", you can tell he's not necessarily talking about compromise with other people; On some level Larry knows Alice doesn't really love him, and he's okay with that, probably through denial. He doesn't care about the truth any more. And yet he and Anna end up "happy", and Alice and Dan do not. And why? Because Dan can't let go of the truth.
That's not a lesson I think is necessarily transferable to real life; but it makes for a damn fine film. Yes, Mike Nichols did Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge, and they may even be better films (I haven't seen them), but he clearly hasn't lost his taste for blood with age.
