Slowly Going Bald

Starring Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Natalie Portman

Written by Patrick Marber (from his play)

Directed by Mike Nichols

3 stars (out of 4)

“I love you. I love every part of you that hurts.” –-Closer

“…a ‘low woman’ I’ve fallen in love with and it was the end of me. But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate. Remember that! I say it now while there’s still joy in it.” –-Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The most dangerous thing a filmmaker can do is tip his hand and reveal his secrets, desires, and true motivation. Like a lover waiting to hear his words returned, a filmmaker in that moment of total honesty is totally vulnerable; it is now up to us to accept his story or turn away. And this rarely, if ever, works. Almost no writer or director will offer up his characters this way; no one (Lucas comes to mind first, but there are many others) ever copped to the fact that he was looking to make a quick buck.

This moment of revelation in Closer comes fairly soon, at an exhibition by photographer Anne (Julia Roberts). At the show to flirt with her is struggling writer Dan (Jude Law), and while Dan wheedles Anne, his girlfriend, Alice (Natalie Portman), flirts with Anne’s boyfriend, Larry (Clive Owen, who played Dan in the original stage production), across the room. Alice tells Larry that the entire show is nothing but lies, a series of “sad strangers photographed beautifully.” She elaborates, telling Larry that the photographs are meant to reassure the viewer of a meaningful life, which is a lie, etc., but her further opinions pale next to that first bright line: sad strangers, photographed beautifully. There’s the rub.

We begin with Dan meeting Alice after she’s hit (not seriously) by a car in London, where the rest of this mess plays out. He takes her to the hospital and blows off work to give her a tour of the town, and before you know it they’ve been together several months and Dan’s flirting with Anne, who’s taking his picture for the jacket of his forthcoming novel. Dan and Anne share a brief, passionless kiss in her studio before Alice enters. There’s not any reason for Dan to like Anne, other than she exists to be pursued. Always looking for greener grass, Dan doesn’t really want that scotch on the rocks: he just wants to order it.

Closer is all beginnings and ends of relationships; nothing of the middle here, not even the gradual anabasis to breakup/divorce that you’d expect to see. The four main players form every possible (heterosexual) combination, with a few excursions to a prostitute thrown in for good measure. And although there is nudity (a few scenes in a strip club), we never see anyone actually having sex; they’re too busy talking it to death. It’s been a while since I learned a new word at the movies (“perineum” not exactly being a dinner-table word), so I guess I can thank Nichols et al. for that. The film’s only about 100 minutes long but feels longer because every one of those minutes is raw, brutal and uncompromising.

The film brims with acting, directing and writing talent. You won’t find any pedestrian titles like “Six months later” or hear dialogue like “I sure am glad we moved in together four months ago, right after that day we met.” Attention is required here, another sign that we’re in grownup territory. If you go see this movie, which you should, be aware that you could wind up watching it with people who can’t understand it and only bought the ticket because Julia Roberts is on the poster. Nichols throws a lot of material at us in a very short time, and I find myself mulling it over days after I saw the film and also amazed that I’m mulling over something so ostensibly inconsequential. I’ve rated it as highly as I have because, although difficult to watch, the awful story manages to stick with you after you’ve left the theater, to resonate long after you want it to stop. No one ever said they’d all be easy to watch.

The film brings us, yes, close to the subjects of the film, but only situationally and never emotionally. We get to know a bit about the habits and haunts of these people, but are never anywhere near caring for them. They are cold, calculating, vindictive, and prone to making arbitrary decisions. They’re doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Alice is the sanest one, or at least the most understandable and consistent, with her stubborn refusal to form to the mold of the other three.

What are we meant to take from this? Is this what relationships are supposed to be, or are becoming? No, but it’s the way some of them are. Four people so desperate to find something they don’t even know what they’re looking for, or why; yes, I suppose I can understand that well without too much trouble. As for the ending, I will not reveal it except to say that, instead of the hope or turnaround it was meant to convey, I was too nonplussed by then to feel anything other than detachment and a growing fear that the preceding sound and fury might really have signified nothing.

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