Gyllenhaal and Hathaway's love affair is the main thing. Hathaway's Maggie is coping with stage one of Parkinson's -- a very intense and interesting charatcer, well versed in her sickness. And Jake is trying to sell Viagra, and they meet and are attracted and end up having an affair.
The script take pains to paint the Gyllenhaal character as a rake, a ladies' man. Zwick doesn't do that good a job in some respects. There's a lot of bullshit Eloi humor and basically shitty schtick. Mostly about the younger brother being a fat-ass. There's some lame orgy in the middle of it with Jake accidentally overdosing on Viagra...girls at a party cause him to swallow too much of it, and he won't go down, resulting in priapism.
The most exciting part of the film is their relationship. A lot of nudity, a lot of really well done lovemaking stuff, and some of it that isn't so good. It's hard to explain. But Hathaway really knocks it out of the park...she's amazing, wonderful. Gyllenhaal is not as impressive, in my view. He's good in this but he can be a cypher. He's got a pretty narrow range. His character is a really smart guy with no drive...he could have been a doctor but he didn't do it. He's a good salesman but also a ladies' man. But Hathaway dominates.
So the relationship part is good, the pharmaceutical stuff is good. And like I said, Platt has a great speech at the end.
Hathaway is so great she's almost in a different movie. They movie spends some time on the Parkinson's effects. She and Jake go to a big drug fair, and there's an alternative convention across the street focusing on organic Parkinson's remedies, and she goes over to this event. We see some real Parkinson's people talking up their personal stuff the way the unemployed talked for Up In The Air. At one point she's shown taking senior citizens across the border to get cheaper drugs in Canada.
Hathaway is a hard case, in a sense. She doesn't want a real love affair with anyone because she knows it's not going to last because she's fucked. The symptoms of stage one Parkinson's are intermittent jitters and losing physical ability, hands shaking...she's in that stage, and taking drugs to control that. But you're feeling all through it that this is a must-happen relationship.
The core of the romance is Jake's overcoming his shallow relationship history, and Anne overcoming her emotionally aloof thing. And she's really wonderful, absolutely wonderful."
Check out more of the article here.
No comments:
Post a Comment