The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order, by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 307 Days to go: 295
Movie #66: Closer
“Plain. Jane. Jones.”
Closer is a beautiful, painful, raw, uncomfortable, wonderful film that explores the natures of truth, love, happiness and identity. Is it enough just to love someone? Or just to say you do? Is it enough to know someone? Even if they don’t know themselves? Is it better to know the thing that will hurt you, or to let it fade away and just follow your heart? Is that even possible?
Alice Ayers (Natalie Portman) is a lie. A fabrication. She’s a woman who reinvents herself as a barrier to being vulnerable, and so when she meets Dan (Jude Law), she becomes the woman he wants her to be. It’s not the woman she is, not technically, but it doesn’t mean she loves him less. Indeed, I think Alice is the one whose love is truest, most devoted, unconditional. She accepts Dan and loves him. She would have loved him forever, if he could’ve accepted it.
When Alice (and we) meet Dan, he is a schlubby, sad obituary writer who is dazzled and enthralled by her. She is worldly and knowing, confident and luminous. He simply wants to bask in her glow, she is so magnetic to him. She is drawn to him as well, perhaps by the way he looks at her, perhaps by what she sees in him, and they instantly fall in love. We don’t see their love story, though. The movie cleverly jumps ahead to the moment Dan meets Anna (Julia Roberts). Alice has changed him now, and he’s more confident. He wrote a book — a good one, according to Anna — and is poised for success. His sadness has been replaced by arrogance, and that arrogance leads him down a path that will overturn the lives of Alice and himself and of Anna and a doctor named Larry (Clive Owen) she has yet to meet.
The movie skips ahead in time at its whim, revealing only the times when there is change or turmoil in these four lives — specifically with regard to these four lives: how Dan’s obsession with Anna brings her to Larry and drives them apart, how Alice lives with the burden of it until she doesn’t, how Larry is vengeful and seeks to destroy them all. It only flashes back twice — to Anna’s anger- and pity-fueled meeting with Larry and to Dan’s discovery of Alice at the club — so even the audience doesn’t know what’s true or what’s not. Did Alice sleep with Larry? Or did Larry say that just to ruin Dan? Does Alice admit to it because she knows that’s what Dan’s fishing for and that he won’t accept the truth that nothing happened? We don’t know. What we do know is that his obsession (and Larry’s obsession, and the hostile, rage-filled competition between them) killed the last of Alice’s love. “I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.” It’s a line she gives him in their first meeting, as the only way to leave someone, so it’s not a surprise when it comes and yet it’s devastating all the same — particularly to Dan, who is so broken and useless at this point. Everything that was good in him was Alice, but he killed it until there was no more Alice anywhere.
Natalie Portman is so perfect in this movie, it’s almost transcendent. She and Clive Owen both deserved Oscars for this. (Not that I have anything against Morgan Freeman or Cate Blanchett or the roles they won their Oscars for, but Morgan Freeman should’ve won for about a half-dozen other things and Cate Blanchett should’ve won for Elizabeth, so in a sense these were just career-recognition Oscars, which are always a tiny bit of a letdown because they detract from truly great performances by, perhaps, less-accomplished, less-known, less-revered actors.) In their ways, they are both so honest about their emotions and their motivations — he, constantly angry and graphic and crude, she, always calm and straightforward, yet sly and seeming evasive even when she’s not. They know Dan and Anna better than either Dan or Anna know themselves or each other. Larry uses it to his advantage, however he can. Alice accepts it for what it is and abandons it when it’s pushed too far.
Larry gets what he thinks he wants. Does he feel better about himself? Probably not, given his admission of as much when he offers a malicious trade to Anna. Is he happy? Is Anna? Do they pretend they are?
What about Dan? He’s back to being a miserable wretch of an obituary writer, smiling maybe his truest smile in the longest time when he happens upon the truth about Alice.
And where is Alice? Gone. Back to who she was before she met Dan, but different from who she was too — older, more mature, a little harder, and even more sure of herself. Is she better off? Probably. Is she happy? We don’t know, but I hope she is. Out of all of them, she deserves it the most.
Viable Option 