Jayclops' musings on his favorite pasttime and escape.
Hello, stranger.
May 15, 2007Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004)
I watched Closer for the second time over the weekend. Natalie Portman seems to get better with the second viewing. But it’s not only the famous striptease, with the very lucky Clive Owen, that I liked about it. This is one movie that I appreciated because of Patrick Marber’s screenplay — one that displays the British’s wit and sardonic humor.
In the striptease scene, Alice (Portman) says, “lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, but it’s better if you do.” (Recently, the phrases find themselves as titles to two tracks to Panic! at the Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out album.) When her boyfriend, the childish Dan (Jude Law) confesses to have fallen out of love with her and says sorry to have taken such a long time, Alice quips, “Irrelevant”. She asks Dan why, to which Dan quickly retorts, “Cowardice”.
Closer is a different way at looking into relationships. Marber’s script chose to focus on both ends: the sugar-coated, intoxicating, sex-filled start and the often bitter and vengeful end. Because of the limited episodes we get to see the four characters, it has the tendency to reduce them into mere caricatures, except for Ms. Portman, who is saved by her breathtaking performance. Julia Roberts’ character seems to be underdeveloped and one-dimensional, so do Clive Owen’s Larry. Jude Law is irritating in his over-the-board facial contortions.
But perhaps, in the end, this is what Mr. Marber wants us to think of these characters, which we are forced to know in the bittersweet brief chapters of their relationships — that we are all indeed strangers dying for a piece of intimacy.
