(Anthem Art and Culture), by Gary Morris (Editor), Bert Cardullo (Introduction), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Foreword). London and New York: Anthem Press, 2009.
— David Hudson, IFC.com
But in the next scene, all's changed. Dan isn't a lost lamb anymore, a poor sub of a sub sub; he's a feral fox on the prowl, a hot young novelist with a scandalous book in the offing. In his smooth, black-on-black ensemble, he looks about as helpless as a switchblade, and he's being photographed by Anna (Julia
Roberts), another of his kind. They're both artists/thieves — Dan steals stories (his book is based on Alice's life), while Anna steals faces. All the dialogue here is done in malicious, manipulative shorthand — each is too greedy for control to allow the other more than eight words before launching a comeback — which sets the tone for the rest of the film.
Another jump and we're at Anna's first show, and for the only time in the picture all four principals will be in one room together. The setting is nothing but sleek — the bright lights, big city jungle where art, ambition, and avarice all bleed together — the world Mike Nichols has called home for a good forty years. The two pairs shuffle and reshuffle, share secrets and tell lies in compulsive bouts of one-upmanship. Only Alice, our adorable naïf stripper, remains uncorrupted. In the longest speech of the film, she trashes the "pretentious arseholes" who use art to camouflage a privileged lifestyle that denies the reality of human suffering. "The pictures are beautiful, but the faces are sad," she says. But "they" don't care. All "they" want is old money, white tie bling — champagne, caviar, and chauffeured limousines.
6
I wouldn't be quite so hard on Mike if he hadn't further burdened this film with perhaps the worst film score I've ever heard. I could forgive, sort of, the coy sampling of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutti,12 but the opening and closing "ballad," consisting almost entirely of the line "Can't get my mind off of you,"13 repeated over and over again, each rendition more precious and "exquisite" than the last, starts at unendurable and goes downhill fast.14 I don't mind suffering for art, as long as it doesn't hurt too much, but suffering for affectation is too damn much to ask.
1. Twenty-five years later, I am sans both girlfriend and cash, but — and I would like to think that this is the most important thing — my dining room still looks nothing like Mike Nichols'.
2. Since Marber thought the whole thing up, and wrote the screenplay, one can assume he's in on it too.
3. Anna's photos are a dead ringer for the way Nichols photographs Closer — enormous, unglamorous close-ups of glamorous people. Roberts' weathered beauty is certainly striking — she isn't a movie star by accident — but there's no context to give it meaning. Is she a suffering goddess, a compromised one, or corrupted in herself? Her character, which becomes increasingly less defined as the film progresses, gives us no clue. She's just a lovely, middle-aged woman, about whom we know nothing.
4. We know that Dan has become a complete hound because we see him chain-smoking through the proceedings. In the first scene, Alice was ballsy because she smoked while Dan was a wimp because he was afraid to. At the end of the film we're asked to admire Alice because she the "strength of character" to quit while Dan doesn't. "Strength of character"? Is that what this film is about?
5. Anna eventually figures out what really happened and explains it to Larry, who is disbelieving. "No man could have written that!" he exclaims earnestly, as if anyone could believe that women typically want to be humped by five men at once. "He must be some writer," he says grudgingly, once Anna has straightened him out. Yeah, it takes real talent to write shit like that. Take a bow, Mr. Marber!
6. "They," Mr. Nichols? "They," Mr. Marber? How about "we"?
7. According to online gossip, Natalie gave Julia a "Cunt" necklace to commemorate all the trash-talking. Julia later responded with a "Li'l Cunt" keepsake for Natalie.
8. Their showdown scene has more than a touch of Dad telling Junior what's going to happen to him if he doesn't keep it in his pants. Larry is portrayed here as a busy executive in serious Bond Street pinstripes, while Dan, after getting caught in a cloudburst, looks like a drowned cat.
9. Anna's character also dissolves into almost nothing. After her show, she never takes a photograph again, and never talks about her career, which, when we first met her, seemed to define her.
10. When he tells Larry that he's now head obituary writer because his boss died, it's supposed to be funny. Why do live theater audiences still laugh at lines like this? Are they afraid to go outside? I guess I just answered my own fucking question.
11. And what, one has to ask, is the big deal with all the bodily fluids? If you stop to think about it, semen is pretty innocuous stuff as fluids go, bland indeed compared to vinegar or grain alcohol, not to mention ammonia or gasoline. Yes, it does come out of a man's penis, but a penis, after all, is God's handiwork — not one of his better pieces, perhaps, but still from the Master's workshop. Maybe we can't get past the fact that mom has mucus-lined orifices, that she secretes saliva, and that she used to suck off dad. But at least we can have a sense of humor about it, can't we?
12. In fairness to Nichols (and I am trying to be fair), even Mozart (and his librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte) don't quite square the circle and make a harmless joke out of infidelity. Hey, it's not always a laughing matter.
13. If this is not an exact quote, I'm glad.
14. Both sequences feature Portman walking in slow-motion, a device that Nichols seems to confuse with art. You have to feel sorry for Renoir and those other guys, wasting all that time with scripts and actors. Just set the dial, dude! It's a no-brainer!
