Warning – I’m going to discuss the ending of the movie in this review so if you haven’t seen it and don’t want it spoiled, read no further.

Last night I was in my San Fran pad, thinking about some correspondence I needed to write.  I grabbed a DVD off the rack and put it in the player, expecting that I was going to just have it on as background.  The movie was Closer – a 2004 film by Mike Nichols which is one of the most grown up things I’ve seen in years.  Instead of passively letting it play behind me, I was sucked into it from the first frame and held transfixed until the finale.

The movie succeeds as a summation of the current attitudes and morality regarding love and romance.  What we say we want and what we really want are often two different things, and it is this inability for people to be honest with themselves that causes the characters’ turmoil and distress.

The Dramaits Personae:

Larry (Clive Owen) is one of the two respectable characters in the movie.  He’s a an unapologetic hedonist, but he’s upfront and honest about his intentions.  He knows what he wants, and he doesn’t mind telling you.  His flaw is that once you cross him, he doesn’t let it go.  He has to punish you.

Anna (Julia Roberts) is a bitch whose self-esteem is so low that she can’t handle it when someone loves her.

Dan (Jude Law) thinks he’s slick but he is a fuckin’ douchebag who can’t take Yes for an answer.  When everything is going fine, he need to mess with it and seems actually surprised when how horrible he’s been hurts the people who love him.

Alice (Natalie Portman, looking like a grown-up Mathilda from The Professional for a big chunk of the movie) emerges as the hero, and the only person of the four with any integrity.  She’s the only one who’s got their inner life in order, despite the fact that her past would make most people think she’s got the most problems and needs the most help.

The movie takes place over four years during which we see the beginning and the end but not the middle of relationships between Dan and Alice, then Dan and Anna, then Anna and Larry, then Larry and Alice.  These four people make up a model of the quadrants of the dating public.  I identify most with Alice, and I have dated several of each of the other three types, even though I’m sure you could find people who who would tell you I’m one of them.  I guess it’s one of those things where we can see a little of ourselves in each one of them but at the end of it all, being Alice is all you can hope for – love huge, wear your heart on your sleeve, and let other people deal with their own karma.

One of the most profound moments in the movie, for me, comes late in the film.  Alice and Dan have reunited, and we have every indication that they will live happily ever after until Dan has to go picking at it again.  He’s asking Alice about her interaction with Larry while they were apart.  She’s trying to make him understand that whatever may or may not have happened while they were apart, and were probably never going to see each other again, has no bearing on their life together now.  Dan knows the answer, but he won’t let it go.  He has to hear it from her.  By the time he finally gets her to admit that she had sex with Larry he’s destroyed his and Alice’s future together.  Still not satisfied, he screams at her “Why him??”  Alice, exasperated and crying, screams at him “Because you weren’t there!”  What is with this compulsion we have to punish people for things that have nothing to do with us?  And why do we insist on torturing ourselves with truths that we really don’t want to know, and that ultimately don’t matter in the grand scheme of things?

Other reviews of this movie have concluded that Alice is just as bad as the other characters when we discover her big deception that’s revealed at the end of the movie.  Not me.  I applauded her.  I think this moment reveals her to be the wisest and most grown-up person in the story.  She’s lived some, and she knows what people are like.  She knows how she wants to live and she won’t let anyone make her cynical.  In this world, sharing it with these characters, that’s heroism.

Tags: closer, jude law, movies, portman, review