Movie Review: "Elegy"

Phil Nugent — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Back in the early 1980s, a new kind of movie hero appeared onscreen, a dashing international man of mystery pitted against historical bad guys. Now that the actor who played that role is in his sixties, there was some trepidation expressed in some quarters that he might be getting, as they say, too old for this shit. But now that the smoke has cleared, it seems clear that, yes, this has truly been the summer of Gandhi. Or at least of the actor who played him, Ben Kingsley. Things got off to an inauspicious start with the Mike Myers train wreck The Love Guru, where he made funny faces. More recently, he appeared in Brad Anderson's indie thriller Transsiberian, where he made with a funny accent. And in between, there was Jonathan Levine's The Wackness (also known as I Love the '90s: The Motion Picture), where he made out with an Olsen twin. (I forget which one--they do look alike, after all--but I'm guessing that it was whichever one was on Weeds. She seems to be the one with the wild-child gene.) Now Kingsley has a full-on starring role in Elegy. directed by the Spanish-born filmmaker Isabel Coixet from Nicholas Meyer's adaptation of the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal.

Kingsley plays David Kepesh, a New York literature professor and host of a Leonard Lopate-like radio talk show. (The novel marks Kepesh's third starring role in a Roth novel. He first appeared in the 1972 The Breast, which he narrates from his hospital bed after having metamorphosed into the 155-pound title character. After that, apparently, he got better.) Obsessing over his inability to fold in the face of "the tyranny of beauty" has always been Kepesh's thing, and this time the dictator with his heart (or any blood-pulsing organ) in her hand is Penelope Cruz, playing a student thirty years his junior who eases into a post-semester affair with the panting old thing. Actually, the biggest surprise of Elegy may be just how well Kingsley holds up his end of their steamy affair, especially in his bare-chested bedroom scenes. When Kingsley was a much younger man, he often had the reticent manner and the looks of someone who seemed to be killing time waiting to become as old as he felt. Now that he's 64, there's something commanding about him that goes beyond acting technique. I found the sexual attraction between him and Cruz convincing. Cruz herself is a different matter. Physically she embodies the concept of the tyranny of beauty just fine, but she still can't act with any authority in English, and Coixet makes her look kind of ridiculous by dressing her as if she were in her teens or early twenties (or as if she were a thirtyish woman acting out a premature midlife crisis, which doesn't seem to be the idea). In her shiny dark bangs and colorful East Village folk costume, she's the human equivalent of a Hello Kitty backpack.

Coixet--she made the deathwatch melodrama My Life without Me-- is not the world's most visually resourceful director, and here, telling a story that depends a lot on emotions that would be impossible to convey in words, she puts a lot of weight on Kingsley, shoving the camera in his face when he's alone in the frame and practically yelling, "Act!" (She and Meyer have also accommodated their star by making Kepesh a transplanted Englishman. This will come as news to Roth fans, but it's a relief to get to hear Kingsley caressing his dialogue in his own voice for a change.) The movie is worth seeing for his scenes with the other actors in the smallish cast: Patricia Clarkson as his semi-regular fuck buddy of the past twenty years, Peter Sarsgaard as his (embittered) son the doctor, and especially, and surprisingly, Dennis Hopper as his best friend, a bearded poet named George O'Hearn. Kingsley and Hopper may actually be a weirder pairing than Kingsley and Cruz, especially since this one works. I'd assumed that Hopper was perfectly content in his little rut, but he looks incredibly happy to get to be in a movie where he doesn't have to snort coke or get his thumbs scissored off or try to think up a new way to deliver the line "Fuck!" while wielding an Uzi, and he gives a fine, engaging performance that lends Kingsley solid back-up. (His wife is played by Deborah Harry, who, like Hopper, has aged a lot more gracefully than you might have thought possible: in profile, she looks as if she ought to be posing for her official portrait as First Lady of something.) And Ben Kingsley establishes himself as a formidable post-middle-age sex symbol for the literary appreciation set. It's a measure of just how formidable that he's got me trying to think up alternative terms for "old", since he looks as if he might conceivably be able to kick my ass.

Movies We Missed: My Life Without Me (2003)

Peter Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Mark Ruffalo has had an interesting career. He became an indie poster boy and critical darling overnight with the release of You Can Count On Me. He did his bank account a favor as the leading man in regrettable movies like 13 Going On 30 and Just Like Heaven. But he balanced those with ultra-indies like We Don’t Live Here Anymore and XX/XY. He’s also played detectives for big-name directors (Jane Campion, Michael Mann, David Fincher) to results varying from questionable to near perfect. As Ruffalo returns to the screen this week as a troubled father with a haunting secret in Terry George’s Reservation Road, we wanted to look back at one of his most honest and exposed performances, in the rarely seen My Life Without Me, where he plays a man who unknowingly falls in love with a terminally ill, married woman.

Why we missed it:

If it weren’t for the help of Pedro Almodovar, Isabel Coixet’s English language debut may never have been seen very far outside of Spain. Even with Almodovar’s name attached as a "presenter," the terminal-cancer plotline was a hard sell.

The cast of talented but little-known actors didn’t immediately draw attention.

Why we should have known:

Ruffalo's presence should have raised some eyebrows.

The trailer hints at the hopeful and inventive tone of the film.

Why we ended up kicking ourselves:

Sarah Polley and Ruffalo both give knockout performances without a single moment that feels forced or false. Together they convey the rush of discovering love, and the heartbreak of its eventual loss.Scott Speedman and Leonor Watling prove effortless in supporting roles.

The potentially heavy material is treated with skill and imagination. Coixet, working from a short story from author Nanci Kincaid, looks for the real.

Why we may have been better off without it:

There are unnecessary cameos (Debbie Harry) and an annoying co-worker (Amanda Plummer). But those are easily forgiven.

— Bryan Whitefield

The Screengrab : isabel coixet

Movie Review: "Elegy"

Movies We Missed: My Life Without Me (2003)