My Netflix movie of the week this week was Closer. I had heard nothing but mixed reviews about this movie since its release. Some people I know truly love it while others seem to hate it or, at least, believe the film version fails to hold a candle to the stage version. I have not seen the stage version, and I thought, since I like all of these actors, I might have a nice, unbiased approach to watching the film. Now that I have watched it, I'm left squarely in the middle, as neutral as neutral can be, regarding what I've seen. At the very least, the movie presents an extremely narrow and cynical, or, at least, one-sided view of love and romance, which, in some ways, is refreshing, as it's not the side usually portrayed, but in other ways is wholly depressing and not in a meaningful or powerful way.
When Dan (Jude Law) meets Alice (Natalie Portman), an American expatriate working as a stripper, after she walks in front of a careening London taxi, it's something like love at first sight. Then, Dan meets Anna (Julia Roberts), a high-concept American photographer living in London, who takes his publicity photos for a novel he's written. Though he is in a lasting relationship with Alice, he is immediately attracted to Anna, forming an unlikely obsession. Anna at first spurns his advances, which Alice overhears while in Anna's bathroom; Alice asks Anna to capture her teary reaction on film. Anna's rebuff prompts Dan to play a prank where he poses as Anna on an internet sex chatroom and sets up a meeting between the real Anna and a horny dermatologist, Larry (Clive Owen), at the London Aquarium. The prank backfires, however, as Larry and Anna hit it off, and when the Dan and Alice are invited to Anna's exhibition featuring the sad photograph of Alice, Dan sees this as an opportunity to home in on Anna. Except, Larry and Alice, who also meet, find some animal magnetism between them and also share the unspoken common thread of self-deception as it relates to their partners and their undeniable emotional connection. Afterward, deception is the key theme, as the four lives interweave, and the complications of love and attraction are explored.
I did not like this movie, but I also did not hate it. I didn't hate it because it was extremely well-performed. Four extremely good actors in the main parts make for some solid performances, particularly from the women. Julia Roberts played a selfish and weak character that is completely against type and as non-celebrity as can be and did so to the complete suspension of my disbelief, such that I forgot I was watching Julia Roberts. Natalie Portman, who never ceases to impress me, played an emotionally complex character and also a character balancing innocence and wisdom, childhood and clearly grown-up ideals. She's not a little girl anymore and wears that badge nakedly (pun intended). She was nominated for an Oscar, and I can see why. The men also gave performances not to be sneered at; I'm always drawn to Clive Owen. Any movie with him in it gets automatic points from me because he is simply so charismatic, even when he is playing someone as flawed as this alpha-male motivated by passion and revenge. Jude Law's performance may have been the weakest, but it was not weak; the climactic scene between his Dan and Owen's Larry, where they reach an uncomfortable understanding about their situation, had me sympathizing for his unsympathetic character.
Mike Nichols directed this film, and I think he handles stage adaptation well because he is still able to capture nuances that always seem to read better on stage. Emotional reaction, moments, chemistry - he is able to illicit these elements from his performers no matter how good or bad his film is. I was engaged because of the strength of the performances and the careful rhythm Nichols employed, with close attention to dialogue tempo, atmospheric soundtrack, and so on.
I didn't like this film, though, because the story, frankly, seemed incomplete and was disjointed. For a character drama, these characters were starkly incomplete in my eyes, with the possible exception of Alice, who is the starting and ending character in focus. It seems like their histories, their motivations, got lost in the shuffle of fast forwarding the story through time, without anything but a brief mention, and which happened quite a bit. I was left asking questions throughout the whole film: why does Dan pounce on Anna the way he does if he's happy and in love with Alice? Why does Anna think it's wrong one minute and ok the next to give into the affair when Alice is still with Dan? Why does Anna lead Larry on if she knows so much earlier that she loves Dan more? Why is Larry so devious - what makes Anna worth it to him? How is Alice different from Anna to either men, and why is Anna, seemingly the more imperfect of the two, the one the two men fight hardest for? All of my questions about Alice were answered, but with the other three characters, I felt something was missing, some vital clue about their character or circumstance that would lead them to act selfishly or deceive each other and themselves into these sins of passion. What I can't figure out is whether it's the stage play or the film to blame for this lapse in the narrative. Perhaps, someone would like to shed some light on that for me.
In the end, I was mildly entertained but ultimately put off and a little depressed about the film, and I think the narrative flaws are kind of huge, because I just kept shouting at the screen: "Why?" and "WTF?" To that end, I rate this film a 6.5, between "cute but mediocre" and "shaky" because it's shaky or worse, but the strength and spectacle of the performances gives it points it would otherwise have lost. As to the test, this is a fail. I didn't like it all that much and would not spend additional money on it for the above reasons. The movie kind of has the effect of making the viewer cynical about relationships in general, and I don't like to watch cynical romance repeatedly, even if it is a new and interesting take on the subject. Such a view doesn't get me any closer to understanding relationships myself.