director
Mike Nichols
screenwriter
Patrick
Marber
based on
his play
producers
Cary Brokaw
John Calley
Robert Fox
Mike Nichols
Scott Rudin
cinematographer
Stephen Goldblatt
editors
John Bloom
Antonia Van Dermellan
cast
Natalie Portman (Alice)
Jude Law (Dan)
Julia Roberts (Anna)
Clive Owen (Larry)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 100m
u.s.
release: 12/3/04
video
availability: TBA
official
website
other mike
nichols films
reviewed on this website:
- primary
colors
- what
planet are you from?
- wolf
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When Mike Nichols made his
early trilogy of marital-discord films -- Who's Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, and Carnal Knowledge
-- he was in his late thirties, and had probably been through
a few battles of the sexes himself. Nichols' latest, Closer,
finds him at age 73 and a bit gentler, even if the source material
-- Patrick Marber's 1997 play of the same name -- is harsher
and more profane than anything Nichols has directed to date.
Nichols has had a bumpy couple of decades; for every Primary
Colors or The Birdcage, there's
a What
Planet Are You From? or Regarding Henry. But
this eternally inconsistent director has been working on HBO
lately, helming the acclaimed Wit and Angels in America,
and Closer is like one of those films -- it's only as
good as its cast. Fortunately, it's a good cast.
The movie spans something like
four years in the lives of four people -- two men, two women
-- who engage in various pairings designed to strip the characters
to their cores. At the start, obituary writer Dan (Jude Law)
spots radiant stripper Alice (Natalie Portman) on a London street;
she is struck by a taxi, he whisks her to the hospital, and,
presumably, a relationship is born. No sooner do we process that
information than we leap forward, without warning or notation,
to a period when Dan and Alice have been together for a while;
he has now written a book, and is looking for someone else. He
finds Anna (Julia Roberts), a photographer who takes his book-jacket
photo. They kiss; she backs away; he can't stop thinking about
her.
Obsessed with Anna, Dan arranges
for her to meet a doctor named Larry (Clive Owen); the method
by which Dan does this is best left for the non-prudish viewer
to discover. Anna and Larry actually hit it off, and -- again,
somewhere outside the movie's margins -- they get married. But
now Anna is obsessed with Dan. And Dan is about to inform
Alice that he's in love with Anna. Poor Larry, drawn into this
by deception to begin with, can only fume and despair, and Alice
takes off into the night. There's more, but it doesn't really
matter. This isn't actually reality -- it's an actors'-scene
reality. Each of the four players gets a Great Scene, with Clive
Owen having a clear edge in two moments when he lets us see the
former working-class tough inside the domesticated doctor Larry.
Anyone expecting more than
that -- or led to expect more than that from the film's raft
of award nominations and critical bouquets -- is likely to be
disappointed. Closer is what I'd comfortably refer to
as a "piece." Aside from a clever ceiling view of Larry
and Alice facing each other in the champagne room of a strip
club, as filmmaking the movie is rather flat. Nichols isn't terribly
interested in razzle-dazzle here, and indeed, compared to his
other recent feature films, Closer has a scrappy independent
look and feel. He gives the actors space to seethe at each other.
Roberts, looking freeze-dried in her character's self-disgust,
closes her features off from the camera but has enough natural
charisma to get the audience to lean forward and come to her.
Portman sells a couple of heartbroken speeches, and is effective
as the most mystifying character, a self-described "waif"
who seems to exist only to bring out the protective streak in
men. (And women, too -- an early, quiet confrontation between
Alice and Anna is played with subtlety and precision.) The men
are fools, led by the nose and libido (and insecurity) away from
common sense, and Jude Law shows us the cracks in Dan's armor,
never thick to begin with, while Clive Owen drags Larry through
degradation and bitter triumph.
These people are essentially
abstract -- theatrical constructs created to make friction. The
characters are always confronting one another and demanding honesty,
then sorely regretting the demand when it's fulfilled. For whatever
reason, the movie skips the play's tragic final-scene revelation
about one of the characters, turning it into a harmless "meet
cute" earlier in the film. Anyone telling you Closer
dispenses stark wisdom about life and love is a bit too easily
impressed by the rare movie in which grown-ups actually have
conversations instead of blowing each other up. But the movie
is softened by Mike Nichols' affection for the characters --
or, rather, their dramatically abrasive potential.
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