we watched this some weeks ago. i didn’t blog about it then because i thought sunhee–who liked it more than i did–would; but she didn’t. then yesterday we were at a party where a number of people raved about it. i heard what they had to say but remained largely unmoved. has anyone else seen it? it is about four (beautiful) people in london who fall in and out of love over the course of a few years. i found parts of it funny and touching and it is a stylish production (in the way that mike nichols’ films are) but other than clive owen’s performance there’s nothing here i would recommend to anyone. beautiful people fall in love, are shallow, cheat, swap partners, get back together, have control issues and deal with them differently. on the whole i had a hard time caring about any of them or any of it. in many ways it goes over a lot of the same ground as “we don’t live here anymore” (did we discuss that here?) but i preferred that film (which i didn’t like that much either).
someone want to convince me otherwise?
No I don’t, but I’ll respond anyway. Is We Don’t Live Here Anymore the film with Laura Dern and Mark Ruffalo? I hated that film–pretentious crap. Closer was . . . smooth and NAUGHTY. I liked Clive Owen, and I liked the scene in Julia Roberts’ photography studio, and I liked Natalie Portman (with the exception of the dance sequence where I felt like she was working really hard to redefine herself as a grown-up actor; then again I thought Owen’s work in that scene was really strong so I’m ambivalent). I liked the scene in the hotel room. So I guess I’m feeling similarly to you arnab. I might add that these beautiful people also use really smutty language which was probably daring for such A-listers. I walked out of the movie theatre feeling a bit depressed about relationships in general and mine in particular and then, about three hours later, I couldn’t give a shit.
jeff, the reason i think i might prefer “we don’t live here anymore” is that i believed those relationships–i believed that those people had been couples and that their relationships had fallen apart. i didn’t believe any such thing with “closer” which felt more like an exercise. it might work better as a play (which i believe it originally was). on the other hand if this one was a little too cold the other one was a little too pushy.
I don’t discount your response but I didn’t believe anyone in that film. Does the lecherous creative writing professor exist anymore (outside the imagination of Neil LaBute)? Are there any college towns in America like the one presented in this film? Pretentious might be too hard a word. Maybe portentious crap would be a better phrase. I don’t really remember the film that clearly but I do remember there was a lot of big acting going on–some great reckonings taking place in small rooms. Laura Dern, now she seemed to fill the screen with some emotional credibility but even her character felt like a throwback to another era. We Dont Live Here Anymore reminded me more of Burton and Taylor spitting vitriol in Whose Afraid of Virgina Wolfe than anything else, and I’m not sure I mean that as a compliment.
I finally saw “Closer” — I’d read the play whenever it came out, and … well, it read fast. I was curious how it would work, and now I find that it really doesn’t.
My two cents (late in the game) for why this movie mostly fails:
–Jeff brought up “Virginia Woolf” in his post, and I couldn’t stop thinking about “Carnal Knowledge” — in all of these films (also both written by playwrights, and both Mike Nichols directing), there is a venom to the dialogue, but “Closer” felt like a bad spiderbite, while the former two could kill you.
I rarely felt the sting, watching “Closer”… Jeff said naughty; I might say we never get beyond potty-mouthed. I kind of like potty-mouths, but just yelling “cunt” or “cock” is not (pardon me, Frank Black) that educational. “Closer” was rarely witty, and even less often is it wicked, and rarest of all is it wise. There was a moment or two that seemed recognizably savage: when Owen confronts Roberts about sleeping with Law, and pushes for her to provide details about the sex, the whole scene played actorly and writerly–let’s say some bad words, let’s translate anger into sarcasm, let’s show how the intellectual sublimates pain in nasty meanspirited conversation. Okay. But only when Roberts finally spits back something, and Owen … well, he seems to both revel in her final display of anger *and* reveal his own pain in hearing her define the betrayal explicitly, adn that seemed like a slamdunk: smart, caustic, and compassionate about the cruelty the characters were displaying.
But, mostly, it all felt very chambered, very mannered–a dimwitted clone of Nichols’ earlier, much more pointed depictions of sex and anger and love.
–One other point: everybody but Clive Owen seemed ill-fitted to this work. Why? Roberts… well, like many outsized stars she hasn’t got many registers, and she couldn’t seem to convey anything much past weariness in many of the scenes. Law is good–but he’s kind of lousy here; I think he played it too natural. He didn’t need to ham it up, but he seemed to think the dialogue worked best if conveyed as believable… and it wasn’t. (Of course, he was also too fucking good-looking for the role.) Portman also played too natural, but … in a few scenes when she got around having her character “act,” she was effective. (Ironically, she seemed strongest when her character seemed weakest…. what does that say?) Owen is outstanding; without hamming it up, he delivers a Burtonesque, or Tayloresque, or Nicholsonesque caricature of human aggression, desire, and debasement…
What do I mean by that last? Jonathan Franzen, writing about the Peanuts cartoons in an article, made a point about how animation that is patently even absurdly unreal can have a far greater emotional impact than mimetic works. My own sense of that twist is that we are freed to experience the dangerous entanglements of the emotions conveyed when we no longer fret about finding ourselves in the picture; in “Closer,” too often the actors, playwright, director seem to be trying to hold up a mirror–this is us. Look at how nasty we are. Ooh. But Owen seems merely concerned with conveying how nasty he is, how outrageous his character is, how lost and pitiful desires can make us. Now there’s a problem Charlie Brown would understand.
Ah, I don’t know if I even get what I’m saying. Somehow, Owen’s performance succeeds where the rest of the film fails for me, precisely because the absurd exaggerations–maybe especially its pointed dullness, its schoolyard profanities–are much less fleshed out and complex than the characters (or the actors? the writer?) seem to think they are; he plays it not as “pitiful,” with the actor behind the dialogue judging it, but he plays it pitifully, fully immersed.
Maybe. I didn’t like the film. It did, however, make me want to reexamine “Carnal Knowledge,” which I remember as being a punch in the throat, and funny. (And it also made me long for the great black comedies: Little Murders. California Split. …. others?)