The Wrestler: Grade A

A
The Wrestler (2008)
Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood; Director Darren Aronofsky.

Rourke is “Randy the Ram,” a washed-up wrestler (theatrical wrestling, not the real sport). He looks great with his chiseled, beat-up face, long blond hair and muscular though sagging body. He speaks in a deep mumbling monotone like Stallone, that gives the sense of a large, dangerous, but confused animal.

He has a heart attack and must quit wrestling. Completely lost, he confides in his only friend, a middle-aged pole dancer (Tomei) at a sleazy club. The similar yet different lives of the flesh these characters lead are parallel. Each of them knows they are too old to be meat-based performers, but neither knows what to do. While much has been made of Rourke’s seemingly autobiographical performance (and it is tremendous) the best moment of the movie is Tomei wiggling around the pole and coming to an epiphany, shown by her facial expressions alone, “What the hell am I doing?” It is a truly memorable moment of film acting.

The relationship between Rourke and his estranged daughter (Wood) is a small subtheme that gives him a chance to display his tender side, but even there the interaction feels genuine and Wood delivers a fine performance. The story is extremely well written, so the parallel between Rourke’s and Tomei’s desperate lives is well defined. In the end, each character takes their drifting life into their own hands, each in their own way. The directing is exceptionally good as well. You get a real olfactory sense of those locker rooms, gymnasiums, and that strip club. A moving film, worthy of its many award nominations.

Synecdoche, New York: Grade C

C
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Diane Wiest. Writer-Director Charlie Kaufman.

It’s a great list of scintillating stars, but really it is the Philip Seymour Hoffman show and a little bit of Samantha Morton. Keener is written out of the script after 20 minutes and the other stars have small parts. Hoffman is a depressed, hypochondriac director of “bluehair regional theater” in upstate New York. His acerbic wife (Keener), exhausted by his whining, leaves with their young daughter for Europe and never returns. The movie had sparkle and humor up to that point, but then just wanders. Implausibly, the morose director receives a McArthur Foundation “genius” award, so relieved of financial concerns he begins a monster production in a huge NYC warehouse, of a play he hasn’t written yet. He experiments with ad hoc scenes while years and even decades slip by. He dates one of the staff members (Morton) who lives in a house on fire, but that relationship doesn’t pan out. His incoherent play involves an old guy who plays him trying to mount a play while dating a staff member, and there are some surreal confusions of reality and theater, but they don’t mean anything. Unlike Willy Loman, the Director comes to no meaningful epiphany. Hoffman is a terrific actor, there is no question about that, and the supporting cast is flawless, but the characters don’t do anything or go anywhere, so after a while, there is nothing worth watching except the good acting and the writerly surreal bits that are exactly as relevant to the story as the title is to the movie.

Elegy: Grade B

B
Elegy (2008)
Penelope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Sarsgaard, Dennis Hopper. Director Isabel Coixet.

How could a sensitive relationship movie with these stars be boring? You wouldn’t think it possible, but that’s what is achieved. A sixty year old college professor (Kingsley) is sexually attracted to a thirty year old former student (Cruz). That is believable, men being the animals that we are, but it is less clear why a gorgeous young woman would be attracted to a crusty old guy with a big nose. Her psyche is not revealed. There is a suggestion that the professor is motivated not simply by lust by also by an irrational, only partially conscious attempt to deny death by possessing a young woman. As the movie progresses, there is a hint that he really cares for her, maybe, so some character development is vaguely suggested. Cruz remains a cipher until the last act when she returns to him for solace. But since we never knew why she was with him before, it seems arbitrary that she would come back, so neither character adds up psychologically. There is no plot, so without characters, there is nothing, and that's a tragedy, because the themes of ageing, sexuality, and intimacy are rich veins of gold.

What makes this movie worth watching however is brilliant acting, especially by Kingsley and Cruz, but also by Clarkson. These are master players and you can’t take your eyes off them. Every moment of every scene is compelling, even if nothing is going on. Cruz shows her breasts, which was surprising. A case could be made that it was to demonstrate the old guy’s view of her as a body rather than a person, although with better writing that would not have been necessary. Photography is stunning. There are a lot of tight, intimate shots of conversations, with strong lighting and interesting camera angles. It’s a beautiful-looking picture. You could enjoy it with the sound off. Technical triumph in acting, directing, and cinematography cannot overcome lack of narrative content, but almost does in this film.

Burn After Reading: Grade C

C
Burn After Reading (2008)
George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins. Writers and Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen.

The first scene is Malkovich getting fired from the CIA. His sputtering, outraged reaction is comic genius. But that strong opening is about as funny as this comedy gets. Clooney fools around with Malkovich’s wife (Swinton), but ends up in bed with McDormand, who works at a gym with Jenkins and Pitt. All the actors do a first-class job, as you would expect from such talent, but the characters are flat and the jokes clichés. Pitt, who is 45 years old, plays a physical fitness trainer in his early 20’s and that didn’t work for me, although he gave it his energetic all. Swinton’s severe, humorless character is supposed to be parodic, but is only severe and humorless. She copies her husband’s CIA memoir to a CD as evidence in her anticipated divorce (why the memoir and not financial records is not explained). The CD falls into the hands of McDormand and Pitt, who attempt blackmail unsuccessfully. In other words, plot is virtually non-existent, so we must rely on goofy comedy to carry us along, but the jokes are lame, with a few sparkling exceptions. Good acting and a lot of pretty faces carry the movie. If there is a theme, it is a meta-theme, that despite youth-worshipping Hollywood, aging actors still have the liveliness to fill the screen with fun.