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What an exceptional, tight, smart little movie that manages to understand some things that movies rarely if ever do. That said, there's plenty in here to aggravate fans of the play, eventhough Marber did the screenplay on this.
I can't even get to the review review without saying what everyone else has been saying. Clive Owen owns this film. Completely. Now part of that is that Larry is the best written character, but mostly it's the fact he's utterly carniverous in the role and that his character's cruelty, even when necesarily calculated, always comes from some place instinctual as opposed to the clever intellectual cruelty that pieces like this easily (and often quiet pleasureably -- think Les Liasons Dangereux) descend into. Larry also feels like the first role Owen's had that is about his physical type -- he's a big man who often seems to be working against that (and succeeding) in past roles -- it's nice to see his physicality finally put to use.
Since I started there -- the others:
Julia Roberts, didn't agree with some of her choices, but completely credible. Unfortunately, Anna is the least well written character, and she seemed content with this. I felt there was room to give us more through the material, but we didn't get it.
Natalie Portman -- Alice is a problematic character because she's never herself (and is more problematic here than in the play, because ultimately, in this version, Marber lets her off the hook in a way, but more on that in a moment), and so at times the performance seems ungenuine, until if you've ever been or known that girl (and I've done both) you realize, sometimes every word that comes out of a 22-year-old's mouth sounds like bad theater. It's how they are. It seems like a choice, and she nails it.
Jude Law -- gives up his charisma to be a pouting, petulant little bastard who we essentially witness dissolving before our eyes. And he's exceptional and makes the interaction between Larry and Dan so much more complex than it could be (their final confronatation has a weird attraction/repulsion thing going on which can only partly be blammed on how they met (a cybersex incident where Dan was pretending to be a woman)). It's a case of having to know the play to see how great it is.
It would be impossible to say Marber removed the teeth from his own play, because Closer, the film, remains a vicious tangle of human desire, ugliness and compulsive cleverness. I mean, it's four people who can't stop wiggling at the same lose tooth eventhough it's bloody electrified. But that said, when one character hits another, we want a sharp crisp sound, and we get slow motion horror? Sorry, misstep there, although one I should probably lay at Nichols' door. But really, as brutal as the film is, it's only eviscerating in places, whereas the play never lets up.
But, it's also significantly pared down from its original state, and so we loose what I think is a critical conversation between the two women, as well as some of the most vicious and biting lines -- some of which had to go, I agree, but others of which I sorely miss. In fact the two big lines from the trailer (one of which isn't even from the original play) don't make it into the film (please let the DVD have all these brilliant extra snippets), and we loose some of the moments where Larry gets to be cold as opposed to consumed. Mostly they're necessary choices for the film... but... some of them it's sad to loose.
The big issue for me though is that at the end of the play, Alice is dead. Alice isn't dead at the end of the movie, and this manages to imply that she's a sassy heroine that has excaped this horrid mess, when the fact is she's just as culpable and just as capable of playing with the grownups as any of them. I loathe this choice intensely, and while I can see her death being perhaps too pat on film, or too easily construed as "she got what she deserved" (sidenote: Fundamentalist Christians seem to love this film, despite its vulgarity and sexual preoccupations, because it basically shows how modern "sophisticated" culture will eat your soul -- some interesting reading on the Internet there), ultimately in the play I always though it was more about symmetry and dumb luck and the holes in the stories of our lives that never get filled.
One of the things the film nails is the strip club where Alice works. It's a lot nicer than most strip clubs and has the requisite filmic unreality to it -- but it's perfect and credible and the music choices for those sequences (and the exchange between Larry and Alice in that setting) are amazing and justify the price of admission. Larry comes off as a man who wants to bite Alice's cunt as if it's an apple, and has yet to notice that it might not be. It's astounding.
Anna and Larry's big confrontation is also great (but it's here where I don't love all of Julia Robert's choices and the scene feels unbalanced because Owen's performance is just that precise), but the moment that got me personally, was when Larry and Anna are back together, and he falls asleep reading. It's such a profoundly ordinary, unflattering and briefly sweet moment (before we see Anna staring miserably into the dark), and all I could think was "I was supposed to have that, and I don't want it."
Another subject of profound intelligence in the film is (again) the use of music. Public scenes have soundtracks -- opera while they're in the bar at the music hall, some random Bebel Gilberto at the art opening, the strip club (including Smack my Bitch Up and The Smiths) and so forth. But in people's homes it's always silent, unless you see someone put on music, and it's an interesting statement about how we can pretend our public lives are movies with soundtracks far more easily than we can neaten our private lives. But then, the whole film is also about skin and image -- a striper, a writer, a photographer and a dermatologist. Exactly.
Despite my earlier complaint, Nichols gets kudos in many places, but perhaps most deservedly (and most absurdly) for making the most weirdly challenging scene in the original play (that aforementioned netsex with nearly no spoken dialogue) believable, funny, and really uncomfortable.
I walked home.
I can't even get to the review review without saying what everyone else has been saying. Clive Owen owns this film. Completely. Now part of that is that Larry is the best written character, but mostly it's the fact he's utterly carniverous in the role and that his character's cruelty, even when necesarily calculated, always comes from some place instinctual as opposed to the clever intellectual cruelty that pieces like this easily (and often quiet pleasureably -- think Les Liasons Dangereux) descend into. Larry also feels like the first role Owen's had that is about his physical type -- he's a big man who often seems to be working against that (and succeeding) in past roles -- it's nice to see his physicality finally put to use.
Since I started there -- the others:
Julia Roberts, didn't agree with some of her choices, but completely credible. Unfortunately, Anna is the least well written character, and she seemed content with this. I felt there was room to give us more through the material, but we didn't get it.
Natalie Portman -- Alice is a problematic character because she's never herself (and is more problematic here than in the play, because ultimately, in this version, Marber lets her off the hook in a way, but more on that in a moment), and so at times the performance seems ungenuine, until if you've ever been or known that girl (and I've done both) you realize, sometimes every word that comes out of a 22-year-old's mouth sounds like bad theater. It's how they are. It seems like a choice, and she nails it.
Jude Law -- gives up his charisma to be a pouting, petulant little bastard who we essentially witness dissolving before our eyes. And he's exceptional and makes the interaction between Larry and Dan so much more complex than it could be (their final confronatation has a weird attraction/repulsion thing going on which can only partly be blammed on how they met (a cybersex incident where Dan was pretending to be a woman)). It's a case of having to know the play to see how great it is.
It would be impossible to say Marber removed the teeth from his own play, because Closer, the film, remains a vicious tangle of human desire, ugliness and compulsive cleverness. I mean, it's four people who can't stop wiggling at the same lose tooth eventhough it's bloody electrified. But that said, when one character hits another, we want a sharp crisp sound, and we get slow motion horror? Sorry, misstep there, although one I should probably lay at Nichols' door. But really, as brutal as the film is, it's only eviscerating in places, whereas the play never lets up.
But, it's also significantly pared down from its original state, and so we loose what I think is a critical conversation between the two women, as well as some of the most vicious and biting lines -- some of which had to go, I agree, but others of which I sorely miss. In fact the two big lines from the trailer (one of which isn't even from the original play) don't make it into the film (please let the DVD have all these brilliant extra snippets), and we loose some of the moments where Larry gets to be cold as opposed to consumed. Mostly they're necessary choices for the film... but... some of them it's sad to loose.
The big issue for me though is that at the end of the play, Alice is dead. Alice isn't dead at the end of the movie, and this manages to imply that she's a sassy heroine that has excaped this horrid mess, when the fact is she's just as culpable and just as capable of playing with the grownups as any of them. I loathe this choice intensely, and while I can see her death being perhaps too pat on film, or too easily construed as "she got what she deserved" (sidenote: Fundamentalist Christians seem to love this film, despite its vulgarity and sexual preoccupations, because it basically shows how modern "sophisticated" culture will eat your soul -- some interesting reading on the Internet there), ultimately in the play I always though it was more about symmetry and dumb luck and the holes in the stories of our lives that never get filled.
One of the things the film nails is the strip club where Alice works. It's a lot nicer than most strip clubs and has the requisite filmic unreality to it -- but it's perfect and credible and the music choices for those sequences (and the exchange between Larry and Alice in that setting) are amazing and justify the price of admission. Larry comes off as a man who wants to bite Alice's cunt as if it's an apple, and has yet to notice that it might not be. It's astounding.
Anna and Larry's big confrontation is also great (but it's here where I don't love all of Julia Robert's choices and the scene feels unbalanced because Owen's performance is just that precise), but the moment that got me personally, was when Larry and Anna are back together, and he falls asleep reading. It's such a profoundly ordinary, unflattering and briefly sweet moment (before we see Anna staring miserably into the dark), and all I could think was "I was supposed to have that, and I don't want it."
Another subject of profound intelligence in the film is (again) the use of music. Public scenes have soundtracks -- opera while they're in the bar at the music hall, some random Bebel Gilberto at the art opening, the strip club (including Smack my Bitch Up and The Smiths) and so forth. But in people's homes it's always silent, unless you see someone put on music, and it's an interesting statement about how we can pretend our public lives are movies with soundtracks far more easily than we can neaten our private lives. But then, the whole film is also about skin and image -- a striper, a writer, a photographer and a dermatologist. Exactly.
Despite my earlier complaint, Nichols gets kudos in many places, but perhaps most deservedly (and most absurdly) for making the most weirdly challenging scene in the original play (that aforementioned netsex with nearly no spoken dialogue) believable, funny, and really uncomfortable.
I walked home.
