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CLOSER
The exquisitely polished direction of the late Mike Nichols makes 2004's Closer, the often ugly and uncompromising deconstruction of two relationships, seem like a lot better film than it really is.
Contemporary London is the setting for this complex quadrangle where we meet two separate couples whose relationships become permanently mangled. Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer who falls for Alice (Natalie Portman), a waitress he meets after watching her get hit by a car. Larry (Clive Owen) is a doctor who meets Anna (Julia Roberts) at an aquarium after mistakenly thinking he communicated with her online the night before. These are not terribly healthy relationships to begin with, but are forever altered when Dan writes a book and Anna is hired to shoot his picture for the book jacket.
Mike Nichols deserves the lion's share of the credit for making this extremely unpleasant story appointment viewing. The reason Nichols gets the credit is because the meat of this story is told through his directorial eye...Patrick Marber's screenplay (adapted from his own stage play) doesn't reveal too much about what makes these characters tick, except for the fact that pretty much nothing that comes out of their mouths is the truth. Nichols' direction almost allows you to forgive the small flaws in the screenplay. The truth that these characters so conveniently dodge in the dialogue is revealed in their eyes and their actions, evidenced in an exceptional use of the closeup...the camera lets us inside these characters so effectively that we are able to almost completely forget to watch that we are watching a photographed stage play. The story is revealed through the camera and the actors, not the dialogue.
Nichols lets us inside these characters' head because their outer behavior is often unpleasant and not concerned with political correctness. Dan and Larry are alpha males in the truest sense who want what they want when they want it and once they get it, they don't want it anymore. It was fascinating to watch these men who felt their infidelity was always justified but when they felt betrayed, they simultaneously couldn't deal with it but wanted every detail about what happened. Anna is an icy and emotionally detached enigma whose romantic desires change from scene to scene. Alice is a sexually charged creature who seems completely in charge of her life and what she wants until it appears that she may have lost Dan.
As he always does, Nichols pulls superb performances from his quartet of actors who actually make you forget that they are pretty much the only actors onscreen for the majority of the running time. Jude Law gives us a broken and vulnerable Dan, a character so emotionally raw that he actually cries in front of his romantic rival. Julia Roberts does some of her strongest work here as an ice queen who actually manages to elicit sympathy from the viewer though she's not always worthy. Clive Owen is at times chilling losing himself in a character who is, for my money, a disgusting human being and Natalie Portman's sexually charged performance as Alice lights up the screen. Owen and Portman won Golden Globes and received Oscar nominations and Portman should have won for this eye-opening performance that rivets the viewer to the screen.
The film is beautifully photographed with some effective London backgrounds and kudos to the sophisticated musical score as well, but more than anything, this film is a tribute to the genius that was Mike Nichols.
The exquisitely polished direction of the late Mike Nichols makes 2004's Closer, the often ugly and uncompromising deconstruction of two relationships, seem like a lot better film than it really is.
Contemporary London is the setting for this complex quadrangle where we meet two separate couples whose relationships become permanently mangled. Dan (Jude Law) is an obituary writer who falls for Alice (Natalie Portman), a waitress he meets after watching her get hit by a car. Larry (Clive Owen) is a doctor who meets Anna (Julia Roberts) at an aquarium after mistakenly thinking he communicated with her online the night before. These are not terribly healthy relationships to begin with, but are forever altered when Dan writes a book and Anna is hired to shoot his picture for the book jacket.
Mike Nichols deserves the lion's share of the credit for making this extremely unpleasant story appointment viewing. The reason Nichols gets the credit is because the meat of this story is told through his directorial eye...Patrick Marber's screenplay (adapted from his own stage play) doesn't reveal too much about what makes these characters tick, except for the fact that pretty much nothing that comes out of their mouths is the truth. Nichols' direction almost allows you to forgive the small flaws in the screenplay. The truth that these characters so conveniently dodge in the dialogue is revealed in their eyes and their actions, evidenced in an exceptional use of the closeup...the camera lets us inside these characters so effectively that we are able to almost completely forget to watch that we are watching a photographed stage play. The story is revealed through the camera and the actors, not the dialogue.
Nichols lets us inside these characters' head because their outer behavior is often unpleasant and not concerned with political correctness. Dan and Larry are alpha males in the truest sense who want what they want when they want it and once they get it, they don't want it anymore. It was fascinating to watch these men who felt their infidelity was always justified but when they felt betrayed, they simultaneously couldn't deal with it but wanted every detail about what happened. Anna is an icy and emotionally detached enigma whose romantic desires change from scene to scene. Alice is a sexually charged creature who seems completely in charge of her life and what she wants until it appears that she may have lost Dan.
As he always does, Nichols pulls superb performances from his quartet of actors who actually make you forget that they are pretty much the only actors onscreen for the majority of the running time. Jude Law gives us a broken and vulnerable Dan, a character so emotionally raw that he actually cries in front of his romantic rival. Julia Roberts does some of her strongest work here as an ice queen who actually manages to elicit sympathy from the viewer though she's not always worthy. Clive Owen is at times chilling losing himself in a character who is, for my money, a disgusting human being and Natalie Portman's sexually charged performance as Alice lights up the screen. Owen and Portman won Golden Globes and received Oscar nominations and Portman should have won for this eye-opening performance that rivets the viewer to the screen.
The film is beautifully photographed with some effective London backgrounds and kudos to the sophisticated musical score as well, but more than anything, this film is a tribute to the genius that was Mike Nichols.