What a thoughtful movie. It’s about this middle-aged man who’s in a real interesting career, been at it his whole adult life. But the guy is on its far side, losing it. What he’s doing — or selling, depending on the degree of jaundice in your opinion of work — well, maybe it’s best as a young man’s game or maybe his edge is dulling from having done it so long. But from what the multiplex audience is shown, our hero is still pretty damned good.
Is it just a loner-guy monologue, or a buddy-barracks movie? No. Though he is single but previously married, there is a woman in the picture. While somewhat younger, she is in a comparably vulnerable spot of aging, loneliness and dwindling options. The man is irresponsible, but does he realize that he is then feel guilty? Yes, and to demonstrate that we have the long-abandoned daughter, and boy is she still sore.
Maybe 2008 had a hundred movies like this that we missed, but last weekend I saw two (regular towns get the Oscar-contending and small movies in late winter). Wanna guess?
OK, Last Chance Harvey. Dustin Hoffman’s Harvey Shine has spent essentially his entire working life composing commercial jingles. Emma Thompson is the sad but hopeful love interest. The estranged adult daughter stays in the background, but her few lines are key.
Well-read or well-movied folks should have thought I meant The Wrestler. Indeed, that was the other flick. Mickey Rourke plays Randy “the Ram” Robinson. Marisa Tomei is the sad but hopeful love interest. The estranged adult daughter has maybe three significant scenes.
Sure, the reviews are spot-on. The Wrestler is remarkable. Last Chance Harvey should have gone straight to video. My Beloved though enjoyed the latter and won’t go near a movie like Rourke’s. I don’t mean to slight the differences. Hoffman’s jingle writing is sketched in, and Rourke’s rope-a-dope is as authentic and thorough as any documentary could hope to be. Thompson is a market researcher, not that we focus much on that. Tomei is a stripper and we get to hang around the club quite a bit.
There’s a couple good things about Harvey, though. First, a great interchange between Harvey and his nose-up ex-wife, outside their daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner. “Why’d you hook up with me back then?” he asks, and she answers, “Because I thought you were fun.” Then he asks about her successful second husband, “Why did he go for you?” and she answers, “Because he thought I was fun.”
The second thing is Hoffman now shows up in regular movies, no longer just Major Motion Pictures. His proud, angry, confused, should’ve-stopped-at-two-drinks toast to the young couple proves the character a bright but not brilliant man who plays piano far better than talks. As far as magnetism, Thompson and Hoffman showed it better in much less screen time in Stranger Than Fiction.
Rourke likewise has a big speech, to the fans before the climactic match. The film does have a predictable Rocky arc — and the similarities between showgirls and rasslers are painted thickly and often — but otherwise it deserves every rave. Rourke should win the Oscar for best actor. Acting Oscars often go for the emotive roles, and this would be one but Rourke never overacts.
Brick has addressed plain-folk characters in books and movies: “I don’t need fiction to be stocked with people better than me or just like me, but blockheads try my patience. Movies about dopes are intolerable, too.”
Both of these movies prove to be exceptions, because their creators did not patronize either the characters or the stories. Hoffman’s authenticity overcame the weak script. Both Rourke and Robert D. Siegel’s screenplay honored the backstage reality of this unaccountable but enduring world, with its violence, drug use and moral relativism — complete with a character seeing Jesus as portrayed in Passion of the Christ being just like a wrestler.
Unexpected double features add profundities. Ready for a Kate Winslet Revolutionary Reader?
