Film
Hollywood is obsessed with shrinks, those annoyingly serene men who spew a lifestyle mantra at every turn. It all started with the Earnest phase, as the dewy-eyed Robin Williamses helped us get in touch with our inner selves: "I'm pumped - let the healing begin," sneered Matt Damon through clenched teeth before he too, in approximately 90 minutes, understood the meaning of redemption and gave a big bear hug to the Bearded One.
These days Hollywood is in its Cynical phase, and the big joke is that the more suave and soothing these guys are, the more you really, REALLY want to slap them (think Tim Robbins in 'High Fidelity', a masterpiece of glib oiliness).
Enter Jack Nicholson, Hollywood's favourite old reptile, whose long comfortable slide into the Grumpy Old Man mudbath was bound to lead him to the role of the shrink from hell - somewhat ironic, perhaps, in view of his early brilliance as the provocateur who drove an entire psychiatric hospital into Bedlam. But Nicholson is no longer the rebel: he's Nurse Ratched now, and it's not a pretty sight.
Nicholson plays the seemingly insane anger management guru unleashed upon the hapless Adam Sandler to help him sort out his 'issues'. It all starts with an amusing airplane scene prodding at the U.S.'s post-9/11 security paranoia: "Our country is going through difficult times," the huge vigilante declares as he leaps upon the astonished Sandler, whose only crime is that he asked for earphones. Sandler is then condemned to 20 hours of anger management with Jack Nicholson, setting forth a ludicrous plot involving penis jokes, group therapy jokes, a gratuitous lesbian couple, a Buddhist monk and the usual sidekicks. (Can't anyone give Luis Guzman a decent role? The guy needs to stop playing highly-strung petty criminals in bad clothes.)
For some obscure reason, both John McEnroe and Mayor Giuliani agreed to do cameos in the movie, providing us with a good opportunity to illustrate the difference between a good and a bad cameo. Good cameo: John McEnroe at the anger management session ("You CANNOT be serious"). Bad cameo: Mayor Giuliani in a baseball stadium, with no coherent reason to be there apart from getting told, once again: "You the man, Mayor Giuliani".
Anyway, don't bother with this film. If you want to see a good movie about insanity, vile psychiatrists and group therapy gone wrong, take out 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', from back in the days when Nicholson still gave a shit about cinema.
Benicio Del Toro - the Latin Brad Pitt - is underused in this film: there's none of the interesting emotional depth of 'Traffic' or his incomprehensible Latino act from 'The Usual Suspects' and 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. In 'The Hunted', mildly interesting chase scene follows mildly interesting chase scene, interspersed with tedious footage of an FBI investigation.
Del Toro plays a special forces officer psychologically scarred by witnessing genocide in Kosovo, which left him, much like John Rambo in 'First Blood', completely incapable of returning to civilian life. To this end he sets up in the woods in a survivalist mold; but by killing deer hunters, in revenge for what he sees as the unnecessary slaughter of deer, he attracts the attention of the FBI. Invariably for a Hollywood film it is not so simple as letting the FBI track him down. Instead, his former mentor (read father figure), Tommy Lee Jones, is called in to help track him down - and takes on the task single handed (who would want help to track down a special forces- trained murderer?).
As the chase proceeds, the audience is mildly engaged, but with Tommy Lee Jones in the chasing role, it's hard not to wish you were watching 'The Fugitive'. The potentially interesting parts of the film are underdone, Del Toro's psychological damage is taken mostly for granted apart from a few flashbacks, and what could have been a more interesting examination of the horrifying effects of war sits uneasily in a slightly hashed action movie.
That said, the excellently choreographed knife fighting scenes beat anything seen before, even Jones' previous effort in 'Under Siege', but the overall action is not enough to make one overlook the patchy plot and the lack of depth in the characters.
'Trembling Before G-d' isn't actually a film, but rather a feature-length documentary. Its stars are gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, all faced with the fact that in Old Testament law their sexuality is an abomination punishable by death. Their situation is not one which has arisen through lack of trying otherwise. 'Trembling...' features several men who have tried various 'curing' techniques, from rubber bands to electric-shock therapy. The cost of their homosexuality is rejection from both the Jewish community and their own families, as well as a knowledge that their whole lives are 'wrong'. 'Trembling...' follows several Orthodox Jews as they try to solve this undeniably complex issue. One woman says she wasn't advocating gay rights, but simply looking for a way to "deal with reality".
As a documentary, it fulfils its role well. There are no questions from the makers; instead the camera is there to observe the issue, not create it. The story and emotions involved are clearly explained and well elucidated. At only one stage does 'Trembling...' give the indication that it might slip away on the path to emotion-manipulating horror, as the camera zooms in on a shed tear. Otherwise it resists admirably. There are even helpful subtitles to help overcome the plethora of Jewish terms used throughout its 84 minutes.
To ask whether 'Trembling...' is a good film or not is to miss the point - as a documentary it is powerful, unprecedented, and one can't help but feel sympathy with those it focuses on. It's won a fair few film festival awards, and deservedly so. It's about as far away from the mainstream as you are likely to find, yet stands as a fine example of unexploitative film-making.
12th Jun 2003