Closer (2004)

[hengcs]

I have just watched Closer! ;)

What is great?
- wow ... Clive Owen literally stole the show!!! With his laudable performance, I wonder if he will be nominated for Oscar. (But this year, it is pretty competitive for male performances!).
- The entire ensemble is great. Natalie Portman was daring, Julia Robert was different (not always smiley), and Jude Law had a range of emotions.
- The script (esp. dialogues) is very good! (probably because it is adapted from an award winning play?!)
- Realistic portrayal of LIFE, everyone is seemingly noble, everyone is seemingly a victim, but everyone is also guilty ...
;)

What is weak?
- The "time" fastforwarding is often unknown, until it is realized through the dialogue. Months and years have often passed from scenes to scenes, without initial indication.
- It feels like a play, more than a movie.

In sum, definitely watchable for its wonderful PERFORMANCE and SCRIPT! ;)
Just treat it as a play ... hee hee

[hengcs]

Hmmm ...

No one has gotten CLOSER to the movie?
hee hee ...

would like to hear from you ...
;)

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by hengcs
Clive Owen literally stole the show!!! With his laudable performance, I wonder if he will be nominated for Oscar.

Owen deserves the nomination.

Natalie Portman was daring

Wanking material. She's a complete turn-on. A very sexual movie without a single sex scene per se.

Julia Robert was different (not always smiley)

Ms. Roberts finally plays a role not dependent on her star persona. She passes the test in the presence of better actors.

Realistic portrayal of LIFE, everyone is seemingly noble, everyone is seemingly a victim, but everyone is also guilty ...

"Seemingly" being the key word since these deceitful, self-absorbed people are truly odious. How "realistic" this is to you depends on your own experience. Also, notice how the film is only concerned with moments in which characters fall in love (or think they do) or break up. All relationship-building is excised. What seemed most realistic to me is the dialogue, even though overall the film doesn't have much to say besides: people are deceitful (to themselves and others) and will use sex as a weapon in hateful, cruel ways.

It feels like a play, more than a movie.

This is where we part company, mon ami. The play has been expertly fleshed out by Mr. Nichols, as he did with Wit and Angels in America. Excellent use of London locations, particularly in the opening (car accident) and final scene (cementery).

[hengcs]

Originally posted by hengcs
What is great?
- wow ... Clive Owen literally stole the show!!! With his laudable performance, I wonder if he will be nominated for Oscar. (But this year, it is pretty competitive for male performances!).


I know it is very tough this year, but I really hope Clive Owen will win Golden Globe or Oscar for Best Sup Actor.

The last time I recall rallying support was Haley Joel Osment. Frankly, he deserved it during that year. I also thought he was much better than some of the child actors that have won in other years.

[hengcs]

I wrote
Realistic portrayal of LIFE, everyone is seemingly noble, everyone is seemingly a victim, but everyone is also guilty ...

Oscar wrote
"Seemingly" being the key word since these deceitful, self-absorbed people are truly odious. How "realistic" this is to you depends on your own experience. Also, notice how the film is only concerned with moments in which characters fall in love (or think they do) or break up. All relationship-building is excised. What seemed most realistic to me is the dialogue, even though overall the film doesn't have much to say besides: people are deceitful (to themselves and others) and will use sex as a weapon in hateful, cruel ways.


If you look BEYOND the obvious plot of s** and betrayal, what I was trying to say about "realistic portrayal of life" is ...

-- In real life, in many scenarios (e.g., office politics, being sabotaged, the art of survival, etc etc etc), many of us do feel that we are often victims of others or victims of circumstances, but have we ever realized that many other people also feel the same way (and probably about us victimizing them too) and so, we may unknowingly be guilty.
-- In simple terms, I am saying that in life, we all are victims at times, we all are guilty of sins at times ...

;)

[JustaFied]

I was really disappointed in this movie, particularly in that it's a Mike Nichols film (I still have faith!) and seeing how many Golden Globe nominations it garnished. Clive Owen deserves the best actor nod (and Natalie Portman is indeed "wanking material", thanks for that, Oscar), but there's not much else going for it.

The movie seems to take the easy way out, as all relationship building is excised, as Oscar points out. We must simply take on faith that any chemistry exists between the characters, because none is apparent on screen. At one point, the characters played by Julia Roberts and Owens are engaging in semi-filthy small talk at the aquarium, the next moment they're unhappily married. We're never shown any realistic foundation for that marriage (or even that relationship).

The movie (and possibly the play) seems to be at its happiest and most self-satisfied when it's at its dirtiest. This must be the "realistic" part of the film. To me, many of these scenes simply seemed cheap and superfluous. I have no problem with profanity or with sexually-explicit dialogue as long as it's done in some proper context. I thought the phone sex scenes in "Punch-Drunk Love" and "Happiness" were funny and incisive, whereas the internet chat room scene here didn't seem to have much purpose other than to make the audience members uncomfortable. Several audience member in the screening I saw left during the middle of the film; I just tried to stay awake.

[arsaib4]

Note: Please keep one hand on the keyboard at all times, just in case someone walks in.

http://media.exbyte.net/media/videos/84a296acef5c942092fa17d48703fae6.wmv

[Chris Knipp]

I agree with JustaFied that this is a disappointment, and overrated. It's all smoke and mirrors: A-listers, flashy acting, honed-down hipness, with mean-spirited, incomprehensible results. What's all the fuss about? Yes, Owen does steal the show, and Julia is welcomely soft-pedaling. But the other two just provide window dressing. My review:

Mike Nichols: Closer (2004)

by Chis Knipp

Patrick Marber (I'm told) pared down his own play to essentials for the screen. One can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that the play was made better, if even nastier, by those "inessentials." Some critics say that. One -- the irascible Armond White -- calls Nichols "evil" for making the movie, and says it's just a British knockoff of Neil LaBute. Closer does show LaBute's low opinion of the relations between the sexes but Marber's four criss-crossing adulterers are simply fickle and valueless, rather than possessing the conscious cruelty of LaBute's males. Closer is indeed loathesome, but there's not much to loathe. What remains is the theatrical effect of dialogue that may have seemed clear on the London stage seven years ago but now sounds cliched, repetitive, and unreal.

The players are Dan (a weepy Jude Law, whose pretty face goes funny when he cries), Alice (a decorative Natalie Portman), Larry (Clive Owen, strongest of the four) and Anna (a pleasingly recessive Julia Roberts). The two ladies have been given US passports to connect with the Hollywood market. The whole production crosses the line from cool and abstract into simple fake. When successful photographers -- Anna is reputed to be one -- have shows in movies lately, their work looks like Avedon, superficially, that is, without the late portraitist's distinction. The result is easy to film but very generic. Unfortunately Julia Roberts and her handlers seem unaware that a handheld 35 mm. camera, whose image is not square, can be and usually is turned sideways for closeups of a face. They also ignore that a doctor's desk normally doesn't take up more space than his examination table. Or that an aspiring writer might not decide he's a "failed novelist" simply because his first book hasn't sold well. Somehow the scene in which Ms. Portman -- Alice -- plies trade (lap dancing in the private room of a strip house), though one of the most memorable moments in the movie, seems equally inauthentic: the place and Ms. Portman are too immaculate and perfect for such a situation. In short, there's nothing believable about the sanitized Avedon-esque backgrounds these Hollywooded versions of play characters are given.

It's hard to follow or care about the action. Dan meets Alice, "meets cute," as they say through the crude device of having him present when she's knocked down by a car. She never acquires an identity. We're supposed to believe that's because she doesn't like hers. Fair enough, but such people do have pasts. Later (we have no idea how much or little time has passed) Dan and Alice are living together. Dan gets his photo done by the famous Anna in connection with his book (nice going for a soon-to-be "failed novelist"), and he kisses her. She won't go out with him, so as revenge he tricks the promiscuous Larry into a cybersex date with her, which delights some viewers; I found it extremely unfunny, as well as unlikely. The joke backfires because Larry and Anna become a couple and eventually marry -- again, we don't know quite when. But Dan does finally lure Anna into an affair, and Anna breaks up with Larry. Alice breaks up with Dan, though he has lured her back and pleads with her and cries and cries but...at this point one loses track and ceases to care.

What's so tedius about this play-turned-into-a-movie is not that it's all talk (so's Shakespeare, you might say), but because it's all nagging questions. The most flagrant examples are when Larry finds Alice at a strip club and keeps asking what her real name is, and when Larry learns from Anna about her affair with Dan and insists on being told every detail of their sex. If you want to see sexual questionaires done for a real purpose, go to see Kinsey.

[hengcs]

Hooray Clive!!!
;)

Hooray Natalie!

[Chris Knipp]

Good for them.

Closer is making Ten Best lists, but it's far down from the top, often appears as shortlisted or "also worth seeing" category.

On the Village Voice poll, "Take 6," Clive comes in 6th but Natalie is only 30th and 55th in two acting categories. As a film Closer ties for 60th place and Nichols doesn't make it into the director category.

The movie's successes owe a lot to timing and A-list casting, plus the appearance of (slightly out-of-date) hip cynicism and sexiness.

[hengcs]

I agree Closer is NOT the top 5 Best Film of 2005.

However, Clive is the Best Supporting Actor in 2005! hee hee ;PPP
As for Natalie, good for her. I would have NO qualms if Cate, Laura, or Virginia were to have won.

Quote from Trevor, a friend from another movie bulletin board, "
Went to see closer today, it was the best English language film I've seen in the cinema since Garden State in November. ... The acting all round was good, both Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman came out with expressions I would never have expected to hear from them and Clive Owen was a continuous mass of seething rage. ."

Before that, he watched King Arthur, so he asked,"You mean Clive Owen can act?"

In sum, I feel that an ACTING award should be given
-- ONLY for the movie they were nominated for, and NOT based on their past abilities. Lucky for me, I was not aware of Thomas old performances in "sitcoms?" A lot of people want him to win because they think he was unlucky to be featured in those poor quality works, and now he has a breakthrough. Likewise, a lot of people want to credit Morgan out of respect. But if you watch the 3 movies side by side and ONLY think about performance -- I believe Clive will REMAIN in your mind for a longer time than Thomas or Morgan. ;)
-- Also, performance awards should be separated from the quality of the movie as well as whether the characters are despicable. hiaks hiaks.


Recall I mention that Sideways is a bit "esoteric" ...

The British Film Academy Awards has just announced today!
http://www.bafta.org/film/announce.htm

Notice that Clive and Natalie is STILL in the BEST Supporting Role nomination. Hooray ... But, NOT for members of Sideways.

Sideways, however, is credited for its screenplay -- which I totally agree is very good.
;)

[hengcs]

Hmmm, how about IMDB ... when the masses talk ...

The INITIAL ballot, when all of us RANK ...
Some rank Thomas before Clive, some rank Clive before Thomas ...
http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000005/nest/14763903

The FINAL VOTE (only 1 vote)
http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000005/nest/14939704

As of now, I think Clive leads Thomas by a few votes ... hiaks hiaks ... ;)

[Chris Knipp]

Do not think Sideway's excellence lies in its screenplay (any more than in camerawork or setting or any of the things that make cinema cinematic) but in its acting and directing. Examples of excellent screenplays of major contenders on Best Lists would be: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Finding Neverland; Before Sunset; or (not so mainstream I guess) Primer (the first half). And, much as I hated it, since it grabs so many people, Dogville.

I'd go along with you that Morgan Freeman and Thomas Hayden Church look very good as supporting actors -- not only for their own merit but also because the lead actors are so strong in both films. Also to be mentioned are Jamie Foxx in Collateral; David Carradine in Kill Bill II; Paul Bettany in Dogville;if screen time is not a factor, Mos Def in The Woodsman.

I would not put too much faith in the IMDb threads. Nor in the Academy Awards, for that matter.

[hengcs]

SORRY to digress:
-- I like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind much better than Sideways. But too bad ... it suffers from "recency" problem.