Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Released:  January 19^th, 2009

Rated:  Unrated

Distributor:  IFC Films

Starring:  Julianne Nicholson, Timothy Hutton, Max Minghella, Lou Taylor Pucci, Dominic Cooper

Directed by:  John Krasinski

Written by:  John Krasinski

Personal Bias Alert:  haven’t read any David Foster Wallace, likes batting around ideas

7 of 10

            Some movies have a certain rhythm that, when starting the film, makes you feel like you’re jumping on a slow-moving train.  You know that it will continue to chug along, never gaining too much speed nor grinding to a halt, giving you a comforting sense of consistency.  There’s an awareness that you can jump off whenever you want, and although nothing particularly riveting is happening, you stay along for the ride.  That’s what watching Brief Interviews with Hideous Men feels like; it’s brisk and pleasant, never overly impressing you, but never giving you a reason to turn away.

            As an adaptation, Brief Interviews comes with some particularly difficult obstacles to overcome.  First off, it’s based on a collection of short stories instead of a complete novel, so a through line following a female interviewer had to be created to give the stories some overarching structure.  Second, the stories were written by David Foster Wallace, an author known as much for the quality of his writing as the density of it.  Several studios have optioned Wallace’s work only to have the projects fall apart when the screenwriters get lost trying to distill the piece.  This is, in fact, the only adaptation to make it to audiences, brought to us by The Office star John Krasinski.  Considering he had never written nor directed before, he will undoubtedly seem like one of the last people capable of pulling the feat off.  His inexperience shows, but so does his enthusiasm and love for the material, and it’s this energy that carries you through the ups and downs of the piece.

            Krasinski does have a small role, but the lead belongs to the purposefully enigmatic Julianne Nicholson.  She plays the created character, the interviewer of the hideous men, gathering their monologues for some sort of psychological or philosophical research.  She says little, her face remaining placid throughout each interaction.  You come to realize that this isn’t a facade for her research but her natural state, and the reasons for her questions may be more personal than she lets on.  Nicholson does a remarkable job of giving the audience just enough to suss out her character’s thoughts, often using only a slight adjustment of her face to convey how many wheels are turning in her head.

            The cast of hideous men is filled with TV actors that presumably are friendly with Krasinski.  They breeze on and do their small roles, often having been matched to characters that fit comfortably in their wheelhouse.  Wallace’s words here are the real stars, conveying male embarrassment and the occasional challenging hypothesis with humor.  It does, at times, cross the line into grandiose self-importance, but for each slip there’s a new and delightful story nipping at its heels.  By the end, the men’s stories are sliding in and out of each other, forming into the interviewer’s hideously twisted perception of men until it ends with her quietly observing the culmination of her findings:  the most hideous man of all.

            For the most part, Brief Interviews is a bare-bones production, with basic (and cheap) sets, costumes, and music.  The one flourish is the camerawork, which initially seems out of place until you realize how much its working with the script to simulate the interworkings of the interviewer’s mind.  It’s small things at first, like seeing the men’s stories play out around them, through which we see how she imagines their roles in them.  By the end of the movie, reality becomes even more lost as she imagines them telling the same manipulative stories over and over again, or, in a riveting sequence, we see a series of intercut conversations that escalate in emotion and honesty, forming into a frenzy of ideas that she may or may not accept.

           

The whole enterprise is a tightrope to walk, one which Krasinski and company often fall off of, but what’s exciting is how they always jump right back on, too enthused to realize their failings.

Other Notes:

Ø  The last scene was overwritten.

Ø  I like the chorus section of the two college students talking about what modern women want.

Ø  “I don’t suppose you know where the little wrangler’s room is in this place, do you?”

Ø  That title, though.  That’s a great title.

Ordinary People

Released:  September 19^th, 1980

Rated:  R

Studio:  Paramount Pictures

Starring:  Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch, Timothy Hutton

Directed by:  Robert Redford

Written by:  Alvin Sargent

Personal Bias Alert:  haven’t read the book, few preconceived notions about those involved

6.5 of 10

            Let’s go back in time a bit.  It’s 1980, and you’re sitting in a movie theater watching the trailer for an intense family drama.  You think, Donald Sutherland makes sense, but what’s Mary Tyler Moore doing being so shrill?  And who is Timothy Hutton?  And does that say Robert Redford is the director!?  A few months later you’ll watch everyone but Sutherland attending the Oscars, with Hutton and Redford taking home trophies and the film being named Best Picture.

              I think it’s important to recognize just how much uncertainty must have hung over Ordinary People prior to its release.  It covers very difficult material with a first time director and a twenty year old actor making his feature film debut.  Moore and Judd Hirsch would have seemed miscast in their serious roles, leaving Sutherland as the only sure thing.  It doesn’t surprise me, then, to know that people reacted so strongly to such a solid movie.  There’s a lot to admire here, but I’m afraid I found it a bit overrated.

            Like I said, this is one intense family drama, detailing the crumbling of a well-to-do family after a devastating loss.  Sutherland and Moore star as the parents, but it’s Hutton as their teenage son, Conrad, who carries the film.  His depression is the most obvious and perhaps the most stereotypical; Conrad begins the film unable to eat or sleep, stumbling through the events of his days.  The part eventually balloons into something much more complex, and Hutton excels at making Conrad’s assorted triumphs and setbacks feel appropriately scaled.  It really is a wonderful performance, and is arguably the strongest aspect of the film.

            The portrait of the parents, in particular Donald Sutherland’s Calvin, is the other big standout.  Neither are the throwaway sort of parents that often appear in movies about teens.  Each have distinct personality traits and flaws, and their relationship with each other is as much a focus in the film as their relationship to Conrad.  What’s even more interesting is that they subvert the traditional gender roles by having the father be the sensitive one and the mother being more aloof and emotionally detached.  Moore does a good job, but she’s noticeably more one-note than Hutton and Sutherland.  Sutherland brings down the house with a couple late scenes that I wouldn’t change for the world.

            This core trio of characters is superbly written by Alvin Sargent, who was adapting from a novel by the same name.  The other characters aren’t as fleshed out, especially a nasty former friend of Conrad’s and the psychologist played by Hirsch.  I actually got annoyed with how stereotypical these two characters were, especially the psychologist, who I half expected at some point to tell Conrad to lie down and talk about his feelings.  I also found Sargent’s sense of pacing to be off, with a prolonged startup that spent several scenes rehashing character beats that we’d already seen.

            Redford’s direction is also a mixed bag.  He’s got solid fundamentals and is clearly comfortable with the style used in many of the late ‘60s and 70’s character-based films.  The problem is that he lacks a sense of personal style.  There’s no interesting framing or camera moves that could add layers to the story.  It’s mostly basic shot setups, and it makes me wonder if Redford was too uneasy to take any chances this early in his directing career.

            Despite the fact that Redford didn’t exactly impress me, I have to hang my lack of enthusiasm at the feet of screenwriter Alvin Sargent.  There were just a few too many missteps with his screenplay for me to totally get behind Ordinary People, even with performances as great as Hutton and Sutherland.

            Other Notes:

Ø  $50 an hour for a psychologist? Sign me up.

Ø  The future Lady Grantham played the girlfriend in her first feature film role.

Ø  That’s one bold ending.