THIRTEEN


Thirteen Conversations About One Thing feels as if it should
be better than it actually is. I really needed it to be good (that's
a whole other story). But it's not that smart, nor is it great
to look at. Nothing new visually about New York city here (and
I have to mention, I just watched Cloverfield, so maybe that
film's spectacle is infuencing my expectations somehow) and
the transitions (the movie is an ensemble piece) from story to
story are cliche (visually). Titles often introduce shifts
to new narrative threads ("Fuck Guilt," for example, Ha Ha)
and that's a clever little feature I could have lived without.
I hate that I have to wait in these movies to see how all the
characters link up, which is unfortunately what I do
if the movie otherwise is not compelling enough to hold
my interest (Happiness and Magnolia are two recent films
of this sort that work for me). Speaking of happiness,
you can guess what the One Thing of the title is, right? I mean,
you did before you got to this point. And the film proceeds
thusly, never all that surprising. It's always fun, of course,
to watch John Turturro (even Margot at the Wedding, bad as
it is, risks coming to life when he shows up), although
he's doing a catatonic dazed thing, something I've seen from
him before, with a bit too much zeal, playing an obsessive
compulsive physics professor longing for authenticity. But the
jokes come straight from Monk (even if you've only watched
five or so episodes of that show, as I have), and we're not with
his character long enough to become attached and truly
interested. This is the problem with the movie as a whole. It's
all surface, not visually startling, and relies too heavily
on the script, which isn't up to the task. I was only really
engaged while watching Alan Arkin, who could read a grocery
list in a thoughtful and nuanced way. Who else, anyway,
but Arkin, can play disgruntled with such elan? And the scenes
that include him and his insurance brokering buddies are
campy, sweet at heart, and over-the-top ridiculous.
McConaughey stumbles through his parts of the movie as if the
script notes advised "Act Devestated" and so we get 20 minutes
or so of The Mummy. Everyone loses in this movie (not counting
"Smiley" Bowman), by chance or because of some character
flaw, but only Arkin has the force of presence needed to make
his character complex and interesting. In Little Miss Sunshine he
was similarly absorbing--amidst, admittedly, a cast of some pretty
compelling characters/actors. But I also kept flashing back to
Glenngary Glenn Ross, and now I know I have to see that
movie again. Alec Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey,
Al Pacino, Ed Harris . . . I'm reminded of hearing how Liam
Rector would, at the beginning of each Bennington College
MFA residency, show students Alec Baldwin delivering the
'Always Be Closing' speech from the film. It makes perfect
sense to me. The film is simply that good. Intense, urgent,
and necessary, minute by minute . . .