Closer keeps an intimate eye on its four leads: Julia Roberts,
Jude Law, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman (the latter two were Oscar-nominated
in supporting categories). Based on a play by Patrick Marber, it feels very
much like a stage work as it essentially boils down to observing the love and
betrayal habits of its central quartet. The film has a deliberate intent of
showing us beginnings and endings often comprised of two-person scenes –
the actors alternate with each other, challenging each other in each encounter
in building blocks of heightening emotional strain. Rising above the misanthropy
is a mordant sense of humor. We laugh at the deviant behavior.
There isn’t exactly a linear progression to the story. The story also
has no conventional timeline, there’s no predictable clockwork to depend
on. The audience sometimes has to come up with their own speculation of what’s
happened between episodes. Conservative viewers might be yearning for some middle
filler to close in the gaps between scenes. You won’t find conventionality
in this film.
The cast of characters are like refugees from a Neil LaBute play, and the actors
seem to be gratified by ripping open their inner mean streak. The sight of seeing
matinee idols like Roberts and Law playing these types of characters is an initial
surprise. Roberts is an artsy post-modern photographer, while Law is as a fledgling
writer for the obituaries. Owen is a successful dermatologist, while Portman
is a sometimes stripper. All of them have their own method of selfishness. But
Law is responsible of kick-starting the cycle of vehemence.
It begins innocently enough when Law meets Portman at the beginning of the film.
He takes her to the hospital after an accident. He sticks around because he
wants to get to know her. They flirt. They talk. He gets her number. One sequence
later, Law has moved on from obituary writer to first-time published novelist.
He is getting his picture taken by Roberts. He lets her know the book is based
on his experience with his girlfriend Portman. Somehow he weasels his way close
to her and kisses her. Portman catches on what’s just occurred between
them, but she lets the incident slide.
Law’s attraction to her is kind of sleazy because it comes down to that
traditional bad male habit – he wants someone he can’t have. Law
and Roberts’ first kiss has some kind of forbidden excitement about it.
But it means something to Law – he’s obsessed by her and can’t
let her go. By fault, Law introduces a stranger (Owen’s character) to
Roberts’ character. At this point, Law sees Owen as the competition. The
gloves are off – both men screw each other over. Roberts is the object
of desire while Portman gets dumped, used, and re-used. Portman is spectacularly
great in the scene where Law tells her that he’s leaving her for Roberts
and that he’s been sleeping with her for a period of time. The emotional
abuse that Portman endures is palpable and real.
Mate-swapping becomes the design of the movie, but it’s not what happens
that’s important. It’s how it happens. It’s how cold-hearted
these four characters break each others’ hearts. How they deal with their
dirty little secrets. How they use sex to screw each other over. And it’s
about the explicit, dangerous language in the dialogue. It’s pungent and
mean. On the downside, some critics have argued that for all the grueling behavior
the film is not exactly authentic in its depictions. Agreed, because Closer
is stylized in order to oversell its point of how adultery bruises and wounds.
On that merit, the film is a work of quality and purpose.
For sheer scene-stealing, the acting honors go to Owen for playing a pig chauvinist
who feels entitled to any woman who enters his life. Sex is not above love to
him, it’s about proprietorship. In the story’s peak development,
Owen confesses one night to Roberts that he slept with a prostitute while he
was away on his business trip. Owen becomes disturbed that Roberts isn’t
as bothered by his immoral trespass as she is expected to be, and becomes convinced
that Roberts is hiding something herself. In a scene both wrenching and powerful,
Owen pries out information from Roberts is cheating behind his back with Law.
Owen is more concerned by knowing whether or not he is better in bed than he
is concerned with saving the marriage. The fact that his priorities are mixed-up
is salient to the film’s message of how lousy adults can be.
Revenge is a very strong theme in Closer, and at the risk of
spoiling it, it’s worth noting that the alpha male inevitably wins. If
director Mike Nichols makes one mistake in the tone of the film it’s perhaps
in the use of the theme song “The Blower’s Daughter” by singer
Damien Rice that’s used at the bookends of the film. It’s too lyrical
and romantic, and in its attempt to strike an emotional chord it’s really
too facile. Closer is a companion piece to the director’s
Carnal Knowledge (1971) with Jack Nicholson, which is one of
the great American films of the cinema. That film was compelled by the way men
emotionally abuse women in relationships (as well as being a portrait of the
emptiness of womanizing in Nicholson’s character). In Closer,
the men and women emotionally abuse each other.
The DVD extras are meager with the inclusion of the theme song music video and
random theatrical trailers from the studio vault. But a loss of extras is a
price worth paying because Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is releasing
the film with Superbit picture quality. Sophisticated moviegoers will want to
at least rent this film. If you plan on buying it, do yourself a favor and buy
Carnal Knowledge, too.
Movie Score: B
Extras Score: B-
Overall DVD Score: B
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