Bad Cinema 2004: Closer

Bad Cinema 2004: Closer
by Steve Finkelstein

In my last article, I stated that my selection process for viewing movies was less than foolproof. Evidence of this is borne out by the following review of 2004’s most disappointing cinematic lemon.

Closer: During the early days of Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd used to play a recurring character named Leonard-Pinth Garnell. Garnell was a smug, pompous host (some have noted similarities between Garnell and the author of this article), who would host segments of notoriously bad works of art (i.e., plays, operas, movies, etc.). In one episode of the show, Garnell aimed his vituperative remarks toward the work of a pretentious foreign film director who was ineptly trying to imitate Ingmar Bergman. The scene displayed from this director’s work took place in an oppressive Dutch flour mill. In this bleak place was a vertical stone shaft endlessly rotated by a silent, morose John Belushi dressed in a Dutchboy outfit (complete with wooden shoes). Every time Belushi completed a rotation of this shaft, Laraine Newman (who was standing next to him), would emit an ear-piercing scream. As this touching tableau was repeated endlessly, Garnell turned his face to the audience and cooed, “Wasn’t that perfectly dreadful?”

I was reminded of this funny sketch from bygone days as I was watching Closer. The film resembled the work of a hack director who was trying to imitate Mike Nichols’ classic sexual psychodramas Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Carnal Knowledge. Imagine my horror when I snapped out of my reminiscing reverie and realized it was Nichols who was directing this mess!

Closer takes place in London and details the travails of two men and two women whose hyperactive libidos cause them to sexually pursue each other’s partners. This unlikable quartet engages in manipulative, deceitful and malicious behavior to further their sexual conquests. A good movie could have resulted from this, but chances of that were dashed when none of the characters turned out to be remotely interesting, and were forced to utter reams of laughable, pretentious dialogue. None of the verbal exchanges seemed to be based on authentic human speech; instead, it sounds like the contrived conceit of a neurotic playwright (which is natural, since the film is based on a play by Patrick Marber).

An example of the film’s verbal campiness: Julia Roberts announces to her extramarital lover (Jude Law), that the only way that her husband (Clive Owen), would grant her a divorce is if she would grant him one final “mercy shtup” (yiddish for intercourse). This understandably pisses Law off, which causes Roberts to exclaim, “I can feel your love bleeding out all over me.” This clunker of a line provoked guffaws from the ne’er-do-wells and drunks that made up the matinee screening that I attended. (I claim to belong to neither of these demographics, though I have strayed into those forlorn categories from time to time.) Further adding to the film’s woes is the fact that Roberts and Law give affected, weak performances. On top of that, Julia also looks curiously unattractive; could it have been due to the fact that she was preggers during the course of this movie? Who knows?

Despite my harsh preceding comments, Closer is not a total disaster. The performances of Clive Owen and Natalie Portman (playing Law’s long-suffering stripper girlfriend) are excellent. In one of the film’s few good sequences, Owen has a humiliating, vitriolic exchange with Portman in a private “lapdance” room at the strip club where Natalie toils. As Owen angrily flings out pound notes, Natalie gleefully and sadistically exposes her intimate body parts. (In the two most-recent Star Wars movies, Portman played a character named Queen Amidala; in this film, she should be appropriately re-named Queen Anythingforadala.) This sequence works well because it has real verbal fireworks and bite. (Plus, the fact that Portman looks really hot in a skimpy stripper outfit doesn't hurt either.)

The film’s other good sequence occurs when Jude Law enters a sex chat room, maliciously pretends to be a woman, and “cybers” with Clive Owen. This is another sequence that has a real punch to it. If Closer had more scenes like this it could have been an excellent film, instead of the pretentious mess that it is. It’s not one of the year’s worst films, but it comes close. However, my colleague Leonard-Pinth Garnell would have been a bit harsher: “Ladies and gentlemen, wasn’t Closer perfectly dreadful?”

Steve can be reached at steve@babblog.com.