Closer. Great play. Less great movie. Jude Law was the problem.
We watched a dvd of Closer the other night. It's the movie adaptation of the Patrick Marber play.
It really is a film of a play. I'm pretty confident in saying that other than the four main characters no-one else speaks. Besides a few scenes in a studio and art gallery, the setting of each scene is largely irrelevant to the development of the plot.
When I saw the play in Auckland I liked it a lot. But the movie left me a little cold. The relationships did not appear plausible, the attraction between Dan (Jude Law) and Anna (Julia Roberts) which subverts the other relationships portrayed doesn't appear real. It wasn't clear that they were really attracted to each other. Or, rather it's not clear that Dan is attracted to Anna, and why he wants to leave Alice. He seems to be doing it on a whim without a lot of inner conflict.
That wasn't the sense I got in the play. In the play, it was really pretty clear that Anna, Larry (Clive Owen in the movie) and Dan are all conflicted people with a bit of baggage, who aren't quite sure where their hearts, minds and loins are taking them.
The problem in the movie was Jude Law. That's a pity, because he's a good actor. His portrayal of the manipulative Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr. Ripley was especially good, and some of his other work has shown a range of acting capabilities.
But in Closer Law is emotionally flat -- he doesn't give Dan the range of emotions that appear to animate him on stage. In the movie it's not clear that Dan is capable of loving or lusting either Anna or Alice, let alone both of them.
It reminds me of the review I saw in The Australian of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's performance in Eyes Wide Shut that it made "sex look boring."
Jude Law does the same thing for affairs in Closer. He makes them look boring. In its own way that's quite the achievement, and perhaps socially useful, but it doesn't do justice to the script he was paid to portray.
Posted by robe0419 at June 13, 2005 4:59 PM