A Review by Phil Calabro
2004, Columbia Pictures, Dir. Mike Nichols - Starring Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Nick Hobbs, Colin Stinton
What is essential in a relationship? How do you filter out the avarice, the sexual drive, the lies, the hate, the affairs - and just settle down and love someone? Well, for one thing, don't ask that question to director Mike Nichols, because chances are he'll take a basic romantic undertone and turn it into total nuclear warfare in semblance of Jude Law crying. The National Board of Review gave 'Closer' a nomination for year's best picture, and it's simply boggling my mind how this convoluted and blantantly unrealistic film could achieve such high honors. I understand that some films are meant to make us evoke some serious emotion, but by the end of the film, I felt tired. Tired of the incessant twists between our character's relationships, tired of the hammish and inconsistent acting skills, tired of everything that Nichols considered to be the true substance of the film. 'Closer' is a hit-or-miss for the audience - they will either overanalyze the material looking out for every little metaphor possible, or just fall asleep.
How to start with this one: Alice (Portman) is a former stripper from New York who's moved to London. She's walking out on the street one day, gets hit by a car, and wakes up to see the face of Dan (Law) - the most beautiful man she's ever seen. Dan is a writer of the obituaries for a London paper, and also works on a manuscript. They form a relationship, and Dan's book is going to be published. While getting his headshot done for the cover, Dan falls in love with the depressive Anna (Roberts), who is undecided on how she feels about him.
Then, Dan talks in a sex chatroom disguised as Anna, and converses with a perverted dermatologist named Larry (Owen). 'Anna' tells Larry to meet him at the aquarium the day after, and by happenstance the real Anna is there. They fall in love and start living together - and that's when the trouble starts. So now - bear with me here - Dan is in love with Anna and Alice, Anna is in love with Dan and Larry, Larry is in love with Anna and finds Alice to be a delightful sexpot, and Alice needs Dan but her stripping job leads her to have sex with Larry. How did that all happen within 30 minutes? Well, I won't spoil your "fun".
Putting precious faces into the cast is not proof that it will save it - someone needs to tell Mike Nichols that for his next take. First off, we have the character of Dan, played by Jude Law. Dan is a character that runs entirely by honesty - which seems executed well enough, but there are a few inconsistencies. Jude Law is a great actor, but I've seen him too many times this year playing a woman-swapping jerk who thinks all can be forgiven at the end if he starts blubbering like a baby. It's a tiring use of characterization, which made this performance indistinguishable from any of the others.
Julia Roberts' character of Anna is a depressive who can't tell what she wants - she's a hub between Larry and Dan. Her character is part of the reason why this movie becomes so complicated. Her taciturn expressions don't let the audience experience anything - it's like watching a deaf person perform 'Hamlet'. Although my fellow moviegoers found her performance to be 'breathtaking' and 'realistic', I found it to be nothing but a waste of character. Natalie Portman, as attractive as she may look in a G-string, did nothing but annoy me throughout the film. I loved her character in 'Garden State', but this time it's just another eccentric youngin' who's smarter than her peers. She babbles some stupid statement about the simplicity of the world, and of love, of relationship - I didn't know strippers were so world-smart. An example that infuriated me on part of Portman and Nichol's work was featured at the beginning of the film. She starts crying out the window, and Anna asks her what's wrong, and then - BOOM - no answer is given. It's the beginning of the film, there's some form of dilemma, and nothing is explained. Raw emotion? Give me a break.
The best acting job of the film, and the film's saving grace, comes from the sick jerk Larry. A man who is obsessed about hearing other people's sexual encounters, who is obsessed with his short-lived relationships, and a man who is obsessed with screwing other's up. Clive Owen is a crude person, but somehow, he feels like the most realistic character of them all. He screams a lot, but the situations he's pulled under allows him to boil up like that. He's also a brilliant source of comic relief, with his unintended one-liners and the chat room scene - which is easily one of the funniest scenes of 2004.
I draw a pretty thick line between the complications of romance and all-out war. It's very hard to consider this a real representation of relationships, which is what Nichols has been credited with accomplishing (The Graduate comes to mind, even though that was a light comedy). It feels like a prozac-and-beer party for the rejected soul...almost as if it's sole purpose was not to show how different personalities handled the situation, but that love sucks. The ending was commendable, but tiring. It feels as if every director making a romance film these days has to end off on a sad note to show that the characters will prosper anyway. Here it seems needed, but in the end, we know the characters aren't truely happy, and nothing gets accomplished. Word to the wise: don't - and I repeat DON'T - bring your date to this one. For the sake of your relationship.
'Closer' brings the audience as far away from true love as possible. It's a disappointment - A-list actors, a somewhat-promising premise, but a terrible execution. When someone asks 'what is love', most people could answer in a good 1 or 2 paragraphs - Mike Nichols would rather direct a novel. It's a gigantic plot twist with no outlet - and no hope.
