Wed, August 25, 2004
Dancing About Architecture
This past weekend I watched Playing By Heart on DVD. I still can't remember exactly why I added this to my Netflix queue – probably fondness for Angelina Jolie – but what surprises me even more is that a relatively sizable group of us went to see this film in the theatre, back in college. I can't for the life of me figure out why we'd do this. It's not that it's a particularly bad film (although it isn't particularly good), but I just don't see how it would have held enough appeal to inspire a group of us to trek over to Westwood and pay for parking to see it. Maybe it was our youthful naïveté – back then we saw Dennis Quaid and Angelina Jolie in ways we can't today. Who knows?
I do remember that we found Ryan Phillippe's acting as laughable as ever. But I don't remember anyone being gravely disappointed by the experience. I remember the hilarious stupid girls behind us, who squealed every time a Los Angeles location showed up on the screen. (Not too surprising, considering the film is set in L.A. and makes a point of it. Many transitions between far-flung segments of the large ensemble story are stitched together with time-lapse footage of the sun rising and setting against the L.A. skyline or freeways.) They also couldn't handle the movie's large cast. Admittedly, Dennis Quaid's character pretends to be different people, but it's clear early on that he's one guy pretending to be different people. They couldn't follow. When Jon Stewart takes Gillian Anderson to dinner, every time the editor cut to Anderson for a reaction shot and then back to Stewart, you could almost hear these girls ask, "Who's that guy?"
Anyway, for some reason (Jon Stewart, maybe?) this was on my Netflix list and so I watched it. (I think I may have added it the last time Jolie was a guest on The Daily Show, because the two of them were familiar and chatty about having worked together before, and I wanted more. Still doesn't explain why it was so close to the top.)
Playing By Heart is not – as I said – a particularly bad movie. But it suffers from a severe lack of point. The cast of characters is so huge that it's practically like Coffee and Cigarettes – you never spend enough time with any of them to feel like their story has much depth to it. In fact, maybe splitting it up into vignettes would've been better. You would be able to close the book on one set of characters and move on to the next. Jon Stewart and Gillian Anderson are good, and their story is entertaining, although not that interesting. Stewart gets off some good lines, like the one in the trailer. (Anderson: "So you're divorced. Was it acrimonious?" Stewart: "No. [beat] Oh, 'acrimonious' means bitter and hateful. Yes.") It is very creepy to see him in a romantic role after a few years of The Daily Show. It was weird enough seeing it the first time and knowing him as a stand-up comic, but now the whiplash is just too great. Watching him make out with Scully on the floor... yerg. I think Dennis Quaid is excellent and always fun to watch. Here, he's playing a somewhat tortured character, although you mostly only see him pretending to be other people, so it's pretty remarkable that Quaid manages to show you what's really underneath that at the same time. And – sue me – I like Angelina Jolie. I pretty much always have. I thought her Oscar turn in Girl, Interrupted was a little over the top, but most things I've seen her in, I've liked her. I really enjoy her Lara Croft. (Again, sue me.) Plus, I just like her. She's pretty. And maybe she's a little bit dangerous, but maybe I like that, too. For most of Playing By Heart she's dealing with a character who's incredibly poorly written, and on top of that she's playing against Ryan Phillippe – which is only slightly harder than playing against a cardboard cutout of Ryan Phillippe. (Arksie has said that when Phillippe has to act in a movie, they just put peanut butter in his mouth and get someone to provide the voice from offstage as he moves his jaw.) Given these challenges, I think she's pretty amazing in the film.
So, Stewart, Anderson, Jolie, and Quaid. But those four only make up about a third of this massive cast. As the story trundled on, I found myself wishing I could watch Playing By Heart like those government reports with whole sections of text blacked out. Just show me the four decent performances, and leave out the whole Madeline Stowe/Anthony Edwards tryst, the random gay (literally) Jay Mohr deathbed situation, and the meaningless bickering between Gena Rowlands and a woefully underused Sean Connery.
What really surprised me upon the second viewing is that nothing ever comes out of the relationships between the separate pockets of the ensemble. I'm sorry to give away the shocking ending, but Gillian Anderson, Madeline Stowe, and Angelina Jolie are all Connery and Rowlands's daughters. (It's pretty obvious from about the halfway point.) This is the thing that, in the end, collides all the stories together with brute force – just like Independence Day or any other movie where you have a bunch of separate little phalanxes that all march towards each other and meet at the end. Judd Hirsch drives Jeff Goldblum to the White House to meet Margaret Colin because they used to be married; Jon Stewart dates Gillian Anderson and they go to Sean Connery's house to watch him renew his vows to Gena Rowlands. Same basic deal. Only in the case of Playing By Heart, nothing ever happens. It's not like it's a twist ending: "Oo! They're related!" There's no inherent point in revealing that they're sisters, so what is the point? All through the film, these three women have great difficulty expressing themselves to romantic partners and fitting into the roles they believe they're supposed to play in a relationship. They're distant, restless, and at times self-destructive. Meanwhile, Connery and Rowlands are bickering about a young woman he once had romantic feelings for early in their marriage. It's not clear whether he ever even had a relationship with this woman, except that she worked for his wife. Bringing these four stories together hardly explains why the women are so messed up. All it shows is that they can put on a happy face for a party.
Plus, everyone talks in that slightly austere patois that – while not approaching Kushner levels – is still distracting and awkward. Jolie's whole "dancing about architecture" speech just sounds like something that was written in a script for a movie. Ick. Nastassja Kinski is excellent in a cameo, though. Can't go wrong with her.
Sorry if the related link to Angels in America gave this away as an unfavorable review before you could get started. Maybe I should start using that as a shorthand for readers on the go. Garden State? Good review. Angels in America? Bad review. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Really bad review.
