Film
Patrick Marber's critically acclaimed second play finally makes it to the big screen complete with an all star cast and Mike Nichols at the helm. But has it benefited from the transfer?
What made the original play's presentation of intimacy and desire so compelling was its mixture of detached insight and agonisingly honest involvement. Marber's contemptuous analytical interpretation of the sinister motives that often form the basis of relationships is ruthlessly convincing; devotion is seen a result of either hopeless inadequacy ("Can I still see you?....No one will ever love you as much as I do") or the desire for power and control. This cynical perspective instills the rest of the play's sincere emotional admissions with an affecting degree of self-consciousness and shame ("I didn't stalk... I lurked"); the self-disgust that accompanies a frustrated infatuation has rarely been so powerfully realised. The play's exploration of jealousy is also startling; scenes of characters hysterically interrogating each other, desperately groping for infuriating intimate details rings with hideous emotional truth, Larry (Owen): "You like him coming in your face?...What does it taste like?" Anna (Roberts): "It tastes like you but sweeter."
The film adaptation is, how-ever, something of a curate's egg. The early courtship scenes are virtuosly staged (watching Roberts spar with Owen and Law is relentlessly amusing), but problems arise in the transition, with director Nichols employing cinematic devices in ways which seriously compromise the drama.
For example Alice and Dan's (Law) fateful first meeting, an event revealed so effectively in the play simply through the characters conversing, is now shown explicitly in a horribly clichéd slow motion sequence. Elsewhere, we see the couple's reminiscent musings interrupted by clumsy, unecessary flashback sequences, and the final violent encounter between Alice and Dan is played out with all the unconvincing melodrama of an episode of Hollyoaks.
However, Portman's character Alice is the major casualty of the transition. Although the actress puts in a predictably solid performance, much of her character's troubled backstory has been cut, crucially robbing the play's most beguiling character of much of her fragile, flawed beauty. In a work primarily concerned with the convoluted and often troubling nature of intimacy, this omission seems like an unfortunate cop out intended to sanitise the play for squeamish mainstream audiences.
Overall, it's a film of surprisingly flawed execution (especially considering the track records of those involved), but still made interesting by the extraordinarily emotive writing at its source.
Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai has created a real mixed bag of a film. Filled with brilliance yet often wrapped in superfluous detail it is likely to irritate some and guaranteed to move others.
The story focuses on Chow (Leung), a journalist living in a hotel in 1960s Hong Kong. He spends his time writing a science fiction novel 2046 and living the life of a playboy. The film cuts between his various dealings with women during the 1960s and sections of his future-based novel performed by the same cast.
However, within the narrative, the 2046 sections are entirely unnecessary. Chow tells us how the events of the present influence his novel yet the future sections are such exact retellings of events we've just seen they may as well be cut out. They add no new insight to Chow and seem to only exist to let half the cast show their, admittedly good, robot impressions.
Visually, the futuristic sections are much poorer. With weak computer imagery and some glaringly obvious product placement these sections hold nothing against the hazy and sensual world of the 1960s. Chow's world is one of shadow, hidden detail and excessively wispy cigarette smoke filmed by cinematographer extraordinaire Christopher Doyle, the visual genius behind Hero and The House of Flying Daggers.
However, it is a testament to the rest of the film's strength that it still manages to amaze. Leung and Ziyi are both stunning, and so natural together that they rarely seem to be acting. They are helped by the refreshing script that puts all the romantic comedies churned out for the legions of numbskulls that inhabit our multiplexes to shame. Never pandering to cliché, this is a much needed cinematic breath of fresh air.
2046 is occasionally irritating and sometimes pretentious, yet frequently masterful - when it succeeds, it becomes a master class in film-making. Hopefully Hollywood will (eventually) learn some lessons from this film, guaranteeing a brighter future for cinemagoers everywhere.
It is a universal truth that sports movies are never actually about sport: instead they serve as allegorical tales of courage and the transformation from desperation to redemption, taking Scorsese's seminal Raging Bull (or, for those with more populist tastes, Rocky) as their model. Eastwood's tour de force Million Dollar Baby is naturally not about boxing at all. But do not be fooled into thinking that Clint is going to trammell down the cliché-strewn path of Rocky or any sports movie featuring Kevin Costner. Nobody wins and nobody gets the girl. Herein lies the power of this devasting elegy to sweat and blood, which, like many a western before it, takes the honour of the noble loner as its central exploration.
Eastwood directs himself as Frankie Dunn, proprietor of the down-at-heel Hit Pit Gym, fighter-turned-manager, soulful reader of Yeats, whose weathered face hints at a lifetime of lost hope. Now out of the ring, he spars with Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a one-eyed ex-boxer who douses the blood on the gym's floor with bleach.
When Frankie's prize champ is poached, he grudgingly agrees to train Maggie (Hilary Swank, all rippling sinew and steely determination), a waitress from 'somewhere between no-where and goodbye' who pummels away at the bag like her very life depends on it. Here we are shown the truth of Scrap's narration: 'boxing is all about respect - getting it for yourself and taking it away from the other guy.'
Scrap also proclaims: 'the best way to deliver a punch is to step back' and that is precisely what Eastwood does in Million Dollar Baby. And to expert effect: the sting really is the twist in the tale, which leaves the viewer reeling with the force of a sustained wallop to the solar plexus.
A powerful, moving and inspiring film which, given the pedigree of the cast, should have Eastwood, Freeman and Swank dusting off their respective tuxedoes and Versaces come the awards season; avoid accusations of bandwagon-jumping in March by seeing this now.
20th Jan 2005