Friday, April 08, 2005
Dvd Review: Closer
Our friend Tony loved Closer, which Wendy and I never saw in the theater. He told us a number of times that we should rent it when it came out on DVD, so we did on the day it was released. Immediately after we finished watching it, I e-mailed Tony the following note:
I was totally sincere about that, too. Closer left me feeling bruised; kicked in the groin. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything harder to watch. Closer puts the brutal in brutally honest.
Still, it is a movie that stays in your brain for hours and even days after you watch it, and that is the mark of a good film. Once you get past the emotional violence that the characters inflict on each other (and, consequently, the emotional violence that the movie inflicts on the viewer), you have a lot to think about. The day after we watched it, I thought about Closer all day at work. I wondered if the career choices that the four characters had made were symbolic of their romantic motivations. Was Jude Law’s character a professional obituary writer because of his tendency to prematurely declare his personal relationships dead and then move on? Was Julia Roberts a photographer so that she could observe as her subjects revealed themselves to her and then use their weaknesses to her gain? Then there’s Natalie Portman’s diminutive and devastating stripper, a woman who bares her soul as easily as taking off her clothes, but uses lies as the buffer zone that keeps anyone from really touching her. Most upsetting of all, there’s the doctor played by Clive Owen, a man who uses the truth to cut with surgical skill.
Closer is all dialogue, and some of the exchanges between the couples in the film made me feel slapped as I watched them. One particular exchange between Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, as a couple discovering each other’s infidelities, is especially like taking a beating. It’s an amazing piece of acting, and is both the main reason to watch Closer and the main reason to never want to see it again. If you’ve ever been through a relationship that ended on bad terms due to infidelity, watching that scene is like picking at a sore you may have thought had healed. I can’t imagine what may have driven playwright Patrick Marber to have drudged up that scene… other than to see if he could withstand the writing of it.
Reviewing Closer for Time, Richard Corliss raved “at last, a love story for adults.” That’s disingenuous. Closer is about selfishness, about fear, about jealousy, lust, hate and indifference, but it is not about love. I’ll agree, though, that it’s for adults and only for adults. The singular advantage of watching it is the introspection that it might draw from the viewer. That’s also the biggest disadvantage. If you want to see an honest love story for adults, rent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that creatively and honestly looks at what makes couples tick, what makes relationships come apart, and what makes it worth the effort to keep them together. Don’t rent Closer looking for love. It’s not a love story. It’s an acid bath.
¶ 8:02 PM 
Our friend Tony loved Closer, which Wendy and I never saw in the theater. He told us a number of times that we should rent it when it came out on DVD, so we did on the day it was released. Immediately after we finished watching it, I e-mailed Tony the following note:
We've just finished watching Closer. It's a truly remarkable film. The dialogue is absolutely razor sharp, the characters are complex and compelling, and the acting, by all four principles, is beyond criticism. It's remarkable. I don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever want to see it again, and I wish very much that I'd never seen it to begin with. It's the most violent movie I've ever seen. I am not being ironic. I mean that sincerely.
I was totally sincere about that, too. Closer left me feeling bruised; kicked in the groin. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything harder to watch. Closer puts the brutal in brutally honest.
Still, it is a movie that stays in your brain for hours and even days after you watch it, and that is the mark of a good film. Once you get past the emotional violence that the characters inflict on each other (and, consequently, the emotional violence that the movie inflicts on the viewer), you have a lot to think about. The day after we watched it, I thought about Closer all day at work. I wondered if the career choices that the four characters had made were symbolic of their romantic motivations. Was Jude Law’s character a professional obituary writer because of his tendency to prematurely declare his personal relationships dead and then move on? Was Julia Roberts a photographer so that she could observe as her subjects revealed themselves to her and then use their weaknesses to her gain? Then there’s Natalie Portman’s diminutive and devastating stripper, a woman who bares her soul as easily as taking off her clothes, but uses lies as the buffer zone that keeps anyone from really touching her. Most upsetting of all, there’s the doctor played by Clive Owen, a man who uses the truth to cut with surgical skill.
Closer is all dialogue, and some of the exchanges between the couples in the film made me feel slapped as I watched them. One particular exchange between Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, as a couple discovering each other’s infidelities, is especially like taking a beating. It’s an amazing piece of acting, and is both the main reason to watch Closer and the main reason to never want to see it again. If you’ve ever been through a relationship that ended on bad terms due to infidelity, watching that scene is like picking at a sore you may have thought had healed. I can’t imagine what may have driven playwright Patrick Marber to have drudged up that scene… other than to see if he could withstand the writing of it.
Reviewing Closer for Time, Richard Corliss raved “at last, a love story for adults.” That’s disingenuous. Closer is about selfishness, about fear, about jealousy, lust, hate and indifference, but it is not about love. I’ll agree, though, that it’s for adults and only for adults. The singular advantage of watching it is the introspection that it might draw from the viewer. That’s also the biggest disadvantage. If you want to see an honest love story for adults, rent Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that creatively and honestly looks at what makes couples tick, what makes relationships come apart, and what makes it worth the effort to keep them together. Don’t rent Closer looking for love. It’s not a love story. It’s an acid bath.
¶ 8:02 PM
