False Notes
It was a disconcerting
experience, waiting to enter the theater to see One True Thing . The
earlier screening was ending, and out came one woman after another with tears
streaming down her face or eyes bloodshot from weeping. "I cried during the
first scene and never stopped crying," said one to another, then joined the
long line for the ladies' room. Later, watching the movie, I found myself
nearly sobbing, too, except from boredom. One True Thing isn't a
snickerfest like Beaches (1988), and it isn't as emotionally
pornographic as parts of last year's As Good as It Gets . It's pretty
much inert. But my benumbed responses don't account for all those weepers
leaving the theater or for the snuffling and nose blowing I heard during my own
screening. No, the movie's themes are enormously resonant, which makes its
doddering tastefulness that much more frustrating.
One
True Thing is based on a decent, understated novel by Anna Quindlen, the
story of Ellen Gulden, an ambitious young magazine writer who moves from
Manhattan back to her small hometown to care for her cancer-ridden mother.
Never close to this unassuming homemaker, Ellen returns reluctantly, at the
behest of her father-mentor, an imposing professor of literature at a small,
middling college who maintains that he's too busy to tend to his wife. In the
course of the book, Ellen learns that her father's life, while ostensibly rich
in literary-philosophical meaning, is a sham, while the real meaning--and
bravery--can be found in her mother's household and community rituals and in
how she faces death. In the last 100 pages, Ellen goes on trial for her
mother's mercy killing and only then manages to remove herself, with
bitterness, from her father's constellation.
The film, directed by Carl Franklin from a script by Karen
Croner, throws most of its weight onto the mother-daughter relationship, which
wouldn't be a problem if Croner knew how to dramatize it. The novel includes a
scene in which the mother, Kate, is too weak to prepare an elaborate luncheon
for a group of women, so her daughter dons the apron and, under Kate's
direction, cooks a successful meal. In the movie, Kate (Meryl Streep) passes
out on the sofa while Ellen (Renée Zellweger) comically botches whatever she
touches, and Franklin goes for cheap laughs with shots of burning chicken
paillards, a smoldering chocolate cake, and plates on which the food has been
left uneaten. Think of the possibilities in Quindlen's original--the rapport
that might have developed as Ellen sautés and mixes and bakes and Kate offers
her expertise. That could have been the core of the picture, right there, and
Franklin and Croner toss it into the trash. When, later, the newly domesticated
Ellen whips up a masterful Thanksgiving dinner, her skills have arrived out of
nowhere.
One
True Thing taps into the same yearnings as Field of Dreams (1989),
only for mothers and daughters instead of fathers and sons. That earlier work,
impossibly fraudulent on every level, dramatized the ways in which baby
boomers, who came of age with the counterculture, rejected their daddies along
with their daddies' conservative values, only to be left with an emptiness
filled only by, gulp, a supernatural baseball game. One True Thing
doesn't employ fantasy (at least not overtly) but tries to stir similar regrets
about the feminist dismissal of housewives: You moved to New York and the
heartless magazine world, you dressed in black, you rejected Mom. But look how
you barely knew her! How she held your home together! Look at how it was
her--not otherwise engaged Dad--who gave your life its true foundation!
This foundation is embodied by Streep, who
might be the biggest reason the film goes wrong. The central fact of Kate is
that she's an invisible woman--always taken for granted, in the background,
doing things but never really registering. Employing an accent that's straight
out of Fargo , Streep clucks and flutters and sighs and acts so
ostentatiously industrious that it's hard to imagine anyone not noticing (or
not wanting to bludgeon) her. Kate is a character whose face you should want to
scrutinize for hints of a larger awareness, but I found it hard to look at
Streep, who's always busy radiating virtue. Later, ash faced with cancer, she's
paradoxically easier to watch (she does less), and she hits some convincing
notes of pain. But when she finds her tongue and protests the injustices of
literature, in which "clever" girls are always depicted as superior to merely
"good" ones, she's pathetically unconvincing. The dots remain unconnected. As
her husband, William Hurt is an expert at appearing to think deep
thoughts, but the character's groggy pretentiousness and the actor's merge
uncomfortably. Hurt plays George from the movie's point of view instead of the
character's: The professor's self-absorption and obliviousness are so apparent
from the start that it's a wonder he could ever have fooled anyone.
Franklin,
a director of marvelous thrillers such as One False Move (1991) and
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and of the intricate HBO miniseries
Laurel Avenue (1993), must have taken on this project to prove that an
African-American filmmaker can bring a fresh perspective to the white-bread
tale of mothers and daughters in snowy New England. He does bring his customary
leisurely pacing and attention to place, especially in the lovingly coordinated
(flowers, flowered wallpaper, chintz) family homestead. What he doesn't provide
is a pulse. The film unfolds in flashbacks, as Ellen is interviewed by a
district attorney about the circumstances of her mother's death, but the
framing device doesn't generate any suspense, and the linking scenes are so
clumsily overwritten that the woman might be talking to her therapist.
What holds the film together is Zellweger's Ellen, and not
because of anything she does but because she's the only major player who seems
to be listening. I first saw Zellweger as a hot pants hell raiser in a
miserable Tarantino knockoff called Love and a .45 (1994). She was
exuberant, as she was in her star-making turn in Jerry Maguire (1996)
and in the same year's superb, largely overlooked drama The Whole Wide
World . Unlike Streep, she slips easily into her roles, revealing her
disparate characters not through epidemic tics but in how she reacts to the
people around her. Through her eyes, even Streep looks halfway human.
So why do
people cry at One True Thing ? It might be that even an ordinary
relationship between a mother and daughter is so fraught--with so much left
unspoken--that any film that hammers so relentlessly on that spot will hit a
nerve. It might be, too, that Franklin's unhurried tempos give us plenty of
time to look back on our own lives and loved ones and to think about the people
whose labors we didn't register until they were gone. One True Thing
prompted me to call my mom when I got home. Of course, AT&T
commercials do that, too, and they get the same point across in under a
minute.
In Pecker , John Waters seems to wonder
aloud if you can ever go home again, especially when your success, like his
own, has transformed that home from something authentically tacky into
something ironically chic. His eponymous hero (Edward Furlong) is a boyish,
happy-go-lucky Baltimore photographer whose pictures of urban grotesques--from
fornicating rodents to lesbian strippers to homeless exhibitionists--renders
them objects of beauty and wonderment. Acclaimed as a "humane Diane Arbus" by a
New York gallery owner (Lili Taylor) and assorted pompous critics and
collectors, Pecker finds his haunts suddenly withering under the attention, his
subjects demanding model fees, and his girlfriend (Christina Ricci), the
compulsively by-the-book proprietor of a laundromat, fleeing his wealthy new
cohorts for the safety of her suds.
This is
the subversively lovable Waters of Hairspray (1988) rather than the
in-your-face deformity maven of Pink Flamingos (1972) and the more
mainstream Cry Baby (1990) and Serial Mom (1994). Pecker
is a breezy, agreeable picture--a charmer, thumbs-up, three stars--but there's
something disappointing about a John Waters film that's so evenhanded and
all-embracing, even if its sunniness is "ironic." Waters seems to be trapped in
an ironic loop, making movies that look more and more like love-ins, in which
name actors go slumming and people like Patty Hearst show up for
nudge-nudge-wink-wink cameos. He must know that no one can be shocked when
everyone's in on the joke, but he doesn't seem to want (or to be able) to step
outside the camp aesthetic and play anything "straight." There's nothing in
Pecker that isn't done more brilliantly--and more subversively--every
week on Mike Judge's inspired cartoon series King of the Hill .
Rush Hour, the first real Jackie Chan picture crafted for
the American market, is a terrific piece of junk filmmaking. The plot is by the
numbers, and you can't help but notice that Chan has more stunt doubles these
days, but the movie has been photographed (by veteran Adam Greenberg) and
staged (by director Brett Ratner) with unusual polish, and Chan has been paired
with the black comedian Chris Tucker, who's like Eddie Murphy on helium. Tucker
can be trying when the script isn't good, but he's a great foil for
Chan--physically gung-ho and with supersonic timing. The young daughter of the
Chinese consul is kidnapped, and Chan is summoned from Hong Kong to Los
Angeles, where FBI agents saddle him with wild man L.A. cop Tucker ("My own
mama ashamed of me, she tell everyone I'm a drug dealer!") to keep him out of
their way. Of course, the pair ends up in the middle of every conflagration.
The fights are riotous slapstick set pieces: In the art museum finale, Chan
fends off hordes of assassins while catching giant, priceless Ming vases as
they tumble from their pedestals. As he demonstrates in picture after picture,
he's willing to be stomped for art's sake.
