It exists on the fine line between funny/affecting and cloying/precious. Sometimes it leans to one side, sometimes to the other, where it sadly ends up. Not bad for a first film, but so earnest in its desire to be moving that it reminds me of a kid on stage singing out of key--you barely have the heart to to tell them they're flat.
I suspect that Braff was watching tv one day when very young and caught Harold and Maude and it deeply affected him. He found this to be the ultimate expression of the world's sadness, and strove to recreate it with his own vision (Personally, I thought Being There did it better).
The movie was saved by Portman, who can be tricky and honest at the same time. She feels natural, unaffected and true.
The emotional climax was--well, anti-climactic. Here we had a perfect foil, played with cool distinction by Ian Holm, who, had the sterility and emotional warmness of a Dr. Christian Szell. So, the ending confrontation came off as Braff totally missing the point, and his manipulative father letting him.
Still, some truly original funny moments. Now that he's made his statement, I'm hoping Braff starts exploring. I'm definitely willing to give him another try.
Okay, I know you expect me to talk about con movies and such, but before we start I just have to say that what the fuck was Ridley Scott thinking okaying the motion graphics for the title sequence? Did he not see any Saul Bass title sequences? Did he not see the opening to Catch Me If You Can? Did his grandson decide to enter the field at age 15--because, I've seen better executed titles from a monkey with a mac. The motion was slow, hackneyed and completely un-playful. The effect they were going for was underscored by the music, but demolished by the terrible execution. Next time, buddy, get rid of your auto-tweening and build the damn thing by hand. Maybe you'll learn something. Word to the animators, yo.
Now then--the movie itself was pretty good. Yes, it was a con movie. Not a bad one at that, but I did have it figured out early. Really early. I mean, the breadcrumb is all there--a bit too obvious for my taste, but I could have been thrown by the the whole kid angle.
But then, remember, this movie is sold as a con movie. Even the trailer, if I remember correctly, said something directly about them being con artists. So, I was completely surprised to learn that it was a movie about an OCD whack job with a daughter he didn't know about. That was the con, for me--the fact that they successfully obscured the real plot from us ignorant movie-goers.
Thar blow spoilers, matey
But what the fuck? How many mentally ill people do you know that suddenly lose all of their ticks on a placebo? The GUILT of his job? Oh, give me a break. But, if we have a miraculous healing, then we can have many other things happen that we can willfully ignore. Like a pharmacist id'ing a drug by the silver blister packaging. Hmmm.
In any case, he's pretty level headed guy. I mean, look--he lost a million and barely cares. But, he got the girl! We knew he would because we recognized her as a character actress--she's not an extra, we've seen her before!
Ahhhh, he loves his daughter anyway. What a guy. Thank you Hollywood--now I know that the road to happiness is found in a 9-5. Wait--didn't he learn that lesson before with Tea Leone? Poor Nick Cage, he obviously wants to give up his wealth and power to live a blue-collar life. When you're ready, Nick--we got your back.
"They learned to read and write for purely practical reasons; but all other forms of education they banned from the country, books and treatises being included in this quite as much as men. All their education was directed toward prompt obedience to authority, stout endurance of hardship, and victory or death in battle."
--Plutarch, The Ancient Customs of the Spartans
The big question to ask with Mamet: is this movie really about what it's about? I mean, here's a guy that loves the con, the puzzle. He's fascinated with the ways that humans fool other humans, and we're supposed to accept at face value everything he says? What if there's a story under the story, or a metaphor under the plot points? Maybe this is a movie only to entertain, but with such strong ties to politics, released in an election year with such a fool-hardy lot pulling the reigns (with whom Mamet has no love lost, belonging to the reality based community, and a "Hollywood" Jew to top it off) and about to pull one of the largest cons in history by being re-elected. Is this movie really about what it's about? Is Mamet really not commenting?
When I saw the movie in the theater I tried to pull the strings together and see if there was something behind the scenes, but whatever impression I had was so fleeting and irrational that I couldn't quite focus on it. Maybe that's the rub right there--I mean, just like great literature that leaves you wondering more after you read than before you started, maybe the subtext of this film isn't packaged as neatly as the text of it. But that aside, this post is an exploration into trying to verbalize what I have a hunch about--that Mamet is trying to say something here, and no critic--and I've read nearly all the reviews--even goes near it. Either that's proof of my my foolishness or my genius, but since my birthday is April 1, I'll let you guess which way I tend to lean. This post also assumes you've seen the movie, and will explore plot points and reveal twists. So, go watch the DVD and then come back to join the exploration. Unless you feel that the film is self contained, and then that is that and I'll see you at my next post where I talk about Spider-Man 2 in a much lighter mood.
Also, a warning that I'm not arguing a position here, but exploring options. Some of the options are a bit in left field, but some make very definite sense to me.
Let's start with the title. Titles often give us a clue to an author's deeper meaning, especially if they seem to be incongruous with the rest of the story. Sure, we get an easy explanation during the following dialogue between Kilmer (Scott) and Bell (Laura Newton):
Laura Newton: Did my father send you?
Scott: That's right.
Laura Newton: Why? Why? He wants me dead.
Scott: He sent me.
Laura Newton: One man.
Scott: "One riot, one Ranger." You ever heard that?
Laura Newton: Leonidas, King of Sparta... when a neighboring state would plead for military aid, would send one man.
Scott: Well, there you go.
Laura Newton: You ever hear that?
Scott: No. I think we went to different schools.
Is that all? Do we buy that the title Spartan comes from the fact that only one man went to rescue the King's daughter (as she is often metaphorically referred to in the picture)? What more do we know about Sparta that we might draw on to explore this--because a guy with a head as big (and to this I mean his brain more than the other) as Mamet's wouldn't be satisfied with such an undergraduate throwaway of a title. I think Mamet, like many great artists, writes to amuse and challenge himself. I don't think he'd be challenged himself by that title (but, then again, he also has said that he makes two kinds of films: films that are art, and films to entertain. Since there is no clear definition of either, who knows which are which, or even whether either are either and maybe he sees both as both. I never trust what the man says in interviews is really what he means, because to a large degree he plays with and off the obsequiousness or obnoxiousness of the interviewer. They either go in with abject worship or attempt to knock his block off, which is dangerous thing to do to a man who's mind is as fast as Mamets is. He tends to spin words so fast the the interviewer doesn't know which is up).
The obvious answer is that there is a double meaning to the title. Spartan has a meaning in modern English, meaning sparse or frugal. That reference is obviously applied to Kilmer's character, who leads a simple life and is ready to go wherever whenever as an elite military something (although we are led to believe that he is an Army Ranger, the water is muddied by the fact that the "One Riot One Ranger" refers to the Texas Rangers). Also, the classical reference to Sparta means more than just referencing our dear King Leonidas. Here's a definition, from our much beloved 1948 copy of The Readers Encyclopedia by William Rose Benét, that describes his character to a fine point.
Spartan. The inhabitants of ancient Sparta, one of the leading city-states of Greece, were noted for their frugality, courage and stern discipline; hence, one who can bear pain unflinchingly is termed a Spartan, a very frugal diet is a Spartan fare, etc. It was a Spartan mother who, on handing her son the shield he was to carry into battle, said that he must come back either with it or on it.
So, now our title has three meanings--one literal, one one figurative. Could it be more? It could also be a reference to Mamet himself-an in joke to the one thing every damn reviewer has to talk about when it comes to Mamet--his dialogue (can we now just establish mametspeak as a noun, and use it instead of wasting ink on talking about things which are talked about ad infinitum elsewhere? Get on with the teardown, lazy reviewers). Certainly his scripts are paired down, his words well thought and carefully placed. The word itself has been used to describe Mamet many times, why not appropriate it? A wink and a nod...
A bigger stretch might be to guess that Mamet is making a generalization of American culture by comparing us to the peoples of Sparta. In certain views that might hold true, but doesn't hold well under examination, since Americans are hardly little-s spartan about our lives. But, there could be some traction there in certain ways--maybe Mamet is commenting on one faction of Americana--on the desire to pair down life to essential scripts and commandments. Or, on the leadership of our current emperor, who, like Leonides, sent too few men into battle. Unlike Leonides, he didn't go with them. Like Leonides, who went in because an oracle told him that for Sparta to be saved a Spartan king would have to die in battle, Bush may be doing it for partially religious reasons--to bring about the end of days, which some reports have him believing in literally. Unlike Leonides, Bush isn't there to give courage to his troops, with words like at breakfast like "Eat well, for tonight we shall be dining in Hades." But, who can blame him. I mean, Iraq is a dangerous place to be. He's only visited once, right?
In my investigations into Sparta and Leonidas, I couldn't find one reference to him sending one man to a neighboring state. Ironically, since I was using Google among other means as a research tool, I found lots of movie reviewers talking about why Mamet named the movie as he did by quoting or paraphrasing him, and in some way then reinforcing this story. None of them went deeper and found the actual citation from where this story was taken. It's easy to find mention of Leonidas (using Google to search old world texts, which are nearly all online, at Project Gutenberg's site, for instance, just use the term "site:gutenberg.org leonidas"--although a decent summary is at wikipedia). Given that I'm not as well read as I should be to argue these points, is it possible that the legend is apocryphal? I've found fleeting references to the legend on other sites, but none tie it to Leonidas, and absolutely none give a source.
Better clues might be found in some of the names of the characters. If Mamet meant any connection between Bush and the fictional president, it might be interesting that the President's daughter in this movie shares a name with the the real-world president's wife. The name Laura also comes from Laurel, the wreath that Roman's would place on returning victors--that may have more play itself. It's the last name, though, that gives us the greatest connection to the title. In our modern world, when you think of Newton--and since this is the internet it's worth saying that I'm not referring to Apple computer's PDA or figs--you think of gravity and apples. When you think of apples in mythology or stories, you think of Eris. You do, don't you?
Eris, the goddess of discord who was angry having not been invited to a wedding, sought her revenge by creating chaos. She tossed a golden apple into the wedding inscribed with "kallisti" or, "to the prettiest one." When Aphrodite, Hera and Athena wouldn't stop bickering over who the apple belonged to, Zeus fingered Paris to pick one. Athena offered him great battle skills, Hera offered him political power, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world. Smart man, Paris--he gave the apple to Aphrodite, who told him to marry Helen. Problem was, Helen was married to Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and when he went and fetched her that whole damn Trojan War started. So, do we have the emperor's daughter representing chaos here? That's a metaphor that neatly fits into the textual plot--as in, why they would want to get rid of her in the first place.
So--in the end, what do we know? Well, the journey is the destination--the research was the pleasure for me. I certainly didn't find any concrete bunker of meaning below the the action of the film, but maybe it wasn't supposed to be so. Maybe it's supposed to be like the memory of a bad dream you can't quite place. When you wake, you have the fright lingering in your flesh, but only an image or two pops through to your conscious mind. The subtext is like that to me.
I'd like to hear what other people say. Disagree? Agree? Think there is more there? Do share. Don't be a stranger.
Further research:
http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/sparta.html
Mamet interview on Sparta:
http://spartanthemovie.warnerbros.com/mamet.q.a.html