Nice
Press!
This
article by Christopher Smith appeared in the September 30th, 2002
issue of the BANGOR DAILY NEWS—Thanks Chris! Independent
films return to Bangor
Movie City now showing bleak but honest 'Thirteen Conversations'
THIRTEEN
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING, directed by Jill Sprecher,
written by Sprecher and Karen Sprecher, 102 minutes, rated
R.
One of the better-kept secrets in Bangor is Movie City 8's decision to tap
a long-overlooked niche and bring independent and foreign films to the
area, a shrewd and welcome move inspired by the River City Cinema
Society, a nonprofit organization that has been working for months
to bring overlooked films to the Bangor market.
The society's principals—Barbara Clark, David Clark, Kathy
Tenga-Gonzalez, Jorge Gonzalez, Michael Grillo and Sandra Johnson—deserve
recognition and thanks for realizing what for many will be a boon.
The Society's Web site, www.rivercitycinema.com,
designed by the Gonzalezes, is updated Thursdays and will help to promote the
alternative film selections shown at Movie City as well as listings and links
to other area venues running similar films.
For those seeking a shift away from mainstream movies, look for Movie
City to show The Kid Stays in the Picture, The Good Girl, My
Wife Is an Actress, Happy Times, Baran and Kandahar in
the near future.
The latest independent feature to be shown at the theater is Jill
Sprecher's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, a terrific film based
in part on Sprecher's own experiences in the early 1990s, when she was mugged
in New York City and left for dead.
Sprecher survived the attack, but not without developing a new perspective
on the world that some will find uncomfortably dark—and others, refreshingly
honest.
Her last film, 1997's Clockwatchers, a biting commentary
on the gross mistreatment of four temporary office workers, seemed to indicate
that she might join director Todd Solondz in pursuing a career that presented
bleak, yet occasionally comic views of a world in which happiness is a luxury
bestowed upon only a random few.
But Thirteen Conversations About One Thing finds the director
cultivating a deeper cynicism and embracing it, suggesting most people never
find true happiness and, worse, for those who do, they'll almost always have
it stolen away.
The film, which Sprecher co-wrote with her sister Karen, follows
several interrelated New York stories and the people barely existing within them.
There's Gene (Alan Arkin), an insurance claim adjuster so miserable with his
botched life, he seeks to ruin a perpetually cheerful co-worker named Dick (Frankie
Faison), a middle-aged man who seems to have lived a charmed life.
There's Troy (Matthew McConaughey), a successful lawyer whose life
looks golden until the night he climbs into his car and accidentally mows down
Beatrice (Clea DuVall), a sweet-hearted maid whose soul hardens after she's left
broken and bleeding in the street, a direct parallel to Sprecher's own life.
Consumed by guilt, Troy gradually falls apart.
There's Walker (John Turturro), a physics professor at Columbia University
who claims he has never felt happier or more alive since he began cheating
on his wife (Amy Irving), a woman whose devastation at the loss of her marriage
is matched only by Walker's own devastation when he's faced with the potential
loss of his mistress (Barbara Sukowa).
As the film unwinds, reeling back and forward in time for dramatic
effect, the characters launch into 13 telling, often heated conversations that
reveal all that's right and wrong with the world through Sprecher's knowing gaze.
In one scene, a character notes how strange it is to live in a city where everyone
goes out of their way not to look at each other. "Human beings need 18
inches of space," he states. In another scene, Turturro's professor challenges
a failing student on why he wants to become a doctor. "So you can prolong
their misery into tomorrow?" he asks cruelly, unaware that the ramifications
of that statement will prove haunting.
Unlike Solondz's 1998 film, Happiness, which he once described
to me as "a comedy of this horror show that we live in," Conversations has
no room for black humor and no time for a light moment. That's not to say that
it's without hope - hope underscores everything here—but there's no denying
that it's one of the grimmest films of the year.
With its superb performances and provocative script, it's also one
of the year's best and bravest, a film that finds Sprecher using her characters
to explore her own questions about the state of the world and her concerns for
the human condition.
Grade: A
Christopher Smith is the
Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays
and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor
and
WCSH 6 Portland,
and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.
©2002-2005
Christopher Smith. Used with permission.
|
Christopher
Smith is
the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and
Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment's E! News
Weekend, Tuesdays on NEWS CENTER at 5 and Thursdays
on NEWS CENTER at 5:30 on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6. Many of his
reviews are archived at
www.rottentomatoes.com.
He can be reached
at BDNFilm1@aol.com. |
|
