Hams in Winter
The Alexandre Dumas-inspired
swashbuckler The Man in the Iron Mask is thoroughly second-rate--which
is to say that it waddles when it ought to whiz, clanks when it strives for
cornball poetry, and transforms its august stars into something akin to a manic
dinner-theater troupe. Nevertheless, armed with a tub of popcorn, a Three
Musketeers bar, and an industrial-size Diet Coke (with free refills), I liked
it better than the other, more artful pictures I saw this week. Here's an
example of why: In Twilight , aging gumshoe Paul Newman regards glamorous
movie queen Susan Sarandon with anguished eyes, his longing for her at war with
his loyalty to her cancer-ridden husband (Gene Hackman). It's terribly tasteful
and grown-up, but not half as compelling as musketeer Gabriel Byrne's fervid
declaration to foxy Queen Mother Anne Parillaud in The Man in the Iron
Mask : "To love you is a treason against France--not to love you a treason
against my heart." To love a line like that is a treason against my high
aesthetics--not to love it a treason against my even higher propensity for
florid kitsch.
The
Man in the Iron Mask features Leonardo DiCaprio (LEO!!! LEO IS DA BOMB! I
LOVE YOU LEO! LEO OH GOD PLEASE READ THIS!!! LEO IS GAY! LEO IS NOT GAY YOU'RE
JEALOUS! LEO IS A BEAUTIFUL HUMAN BEING WHO LOVES WOMEN!!! LEO PLEASE MARRY
ME!!!!) in the dual role of the overweening 17 th century boy king
Louis of France and his twin brother, Philippe, who was first spirited away at
birth by a father fearful of internecine struggles and subsequently locked in
the bowels of the Bastille, his features concealed by the eponymous iron
mask.
That would have been all, folks, were Louis not a complete
schmuck who capriciously drains the kingdom's coffers with foreign wars,
starves a lot of smudgy faced extras (who hurl rotten fruit at his guards), and
falls on whatever beauteous wench strikes his royal fancy. When he royally
fancies the lady love (Judith Godrèche) of the son (Peter Sarsgaard) of former
musketeer Athos (John Malkovich) and orders the young man shipped off to
battle, it's time for the aging Three Musketeers--Athos, Aramis (Jeremy Irons),
and Porthos (Gérard Depardieu)--to haul their uniforms out of mothballs and
prove once again that they're more than the stuff of chocolate bars.
This is
the first feature directed by Randall Wallace, who wrote Braveheart
(1995), in which Mel Gibson manages to bellow "FREEDOM!" shortly before his
upper and lower halves are cleft in twain--thereby liberating Scotland from
hordes of slumming Royal Shakespeare Co. actors. Wallace has a thing for men
who die with their boots on. ("This is the death I have always wanted," gasps
one fellow in this picture's lachrymose climax.) He also digs resplendent
brocades, alarums, male choirs, and handsome men on horseback saying things
like: "Then God be with you. For we shall not." He apparently has no taste for
pacing his actors, who are left to police their own histrionic impulses--which
is like leaving our president to police his libidinous ones.
Byrne, as D'Artagnan, the fourth musketeer,
torn between his loyalty to the king and to his all-for-one/one-for-all
compatriots, has the most complicated role and carries it off with real dignity
and discernment (which means, of course, that he's just a teeny bit
dull). Depardieu, meanwhile, demonstrates that Gallic ham is fattier than its
Anglo counterpart. Irons and Malkovich bring to the picture two distinct styles
of prissiness. Irons is the upper-class English poet priss, locking liquid eyes
on his co-stars and gravely over-enunciating. Malkovitch is the American Method
priss, feyly dragging out his words and democratically abolishing all
punctuation. (As his son, Sarsgaard does a brilliant--and
respectful--Malkovitch impersonation that's maybe the best thing in the
movie.)
At first
it seems that DiCaprio (LEO DESERVED A NOMINATION!!!) will be another
contestant in the American juvenile falling on his face doing period European
drama contest. (The reigning champion is Keanu Reeves.) Playing the swinish
king, his performance begins badly, and the long hair doesn't flatter his wide,
doughy face and compressed brow. But once the nice twin enters the movie,
DiCaprio can use his expressive eyes (LEO!!! READ THIS!!!) and his halting
sweetness to win us back into his good graces. (OH MY GOD LEO IS THE GREATEST
AHHHHH!!!)
It isn't nice to beat up on senior citizens, which must be
why Robert Benton's Twilight has received such respectful reviews. A
third-rate mystery tricked out with a great cast and some tony cinematography,
the movie unspools like an elderly director's swan song--a bitter,
late-Romantic threnody for the lost integrity of an American archetype,
co-opted by the evils of a shabbily materialistic culture.
Benton
isn't an old man--he only directs like one. This is essentially a twilit remake
of his wonderful 1977 thriller, The Late Show , in which a senior citizen
shamus (Art Carney) wrestles with both a brutal murder and the innumerable
humiliations of aging (they're connected), happily assisted by a New Age flake
(Lily Tomlin, in her most exuberant screen performance). Twilight is
The Late Show without the spitfire, and it succumbs to the paralysis it
means to portray. As the hero, Newman lets his voice go raspy to express
world-weariness. His mournful performance ennobles Benton's conception without
enlivening it. For Benton, aging evidently means forgetting everything you once
knew about drama.
More enlivening by far is Love and Death on
Long Island , in which another aging protagonist (John Hurt), a clubby
English novelist poignantly out of touch with modern society, goes on another
soulful quest, developing an obsession with a beautiful teen idol (Jason
Priestley) whom he accidentally sees on-screen in a film called Hot Pants
College 2 . First-time director Richard Kwietniowski has fun with the
collision of high and low culture, and he does elegant work. But his mistake is
the opposite of Benton's in Twilight . Where Benton couldn't distance
himself enough from his protagonist to generate a comic perspective,
Kwietniowski can't keep from satirizing his hero's passion. Emotionally, the
picture plays it safe, hugging the shore.
Hurt's face is so deeply
lined that he now resembles Boris Karloff's mummy--not flesh and blood but
flakes and embalming fluid. But if Hurt has the kind of visage we normally
associate with dissipation, few actors are able to combine such bleariness with
such (oxymoronic) concentration. This is a gentle tour de force by one of our
greatest comic miniaturists.
