Ironweed. (15.)
Directed by Hector Babenco. 1987
Starring Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe, Diane Vernora, Fred Gwynne, Margaret Whitton, Nathan Lane and Tom Waits. 137 mins. Out on Blu-ray from Eureka Classics.
This film sends drunken bum Nicholson slumming his way through a couple of cold November nights in 1937 Albany, New York, but does it with such pomp and circumstance he might as well be the Sun King reclining at the court of Versaille. His domain is a New York town where every Depression-era period detail looks like it has been lovingly slaved over, buffed down to the just-so degree; it's his stage and he swaggers through it. Early on we learn that his fall into bumdom is rooted in being responsible for the death of his infant child. Wherever he goes a coterie of the ghosts of everybody whose death he was responsible for are in attendance to take care of his every need to feel wracked by guilt. In their pristine white suits, they always look like they are about to burst into some barbershop harmonies.
Ironweed is a classy, literary adaptation Oscar pleader that goes wrong in just about every single, possible way a classy, literary adaptation Oscar pleader can go wrong in. Having won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel three years earlier, author William Kennedy felt more than capable of adapting it for the screen all by himself thank you very much, and in doing so has sucked whatever life the novel had out of it. Usually, in failed literary adaptation you can make a guess at what made the book so damn special, but you really can't fathom it from this. The worse scenes, when Nicholson's Francis Phelan returns to the family home he walked out on two decades previously, are shot like a parody of a Broadway family drama, all the cast member in their positions around the dining table to project their regular, everyday dialogue to the back of the auditorium.
Big stars playing down and outs is always difficult. Streep, looking like a dowdy Olive Oyl gone to seed, has a fair old bash and her rendition of “He's Me Pal,” is a bit of show stopper. Jack is Jack and that's never an entirely bad thing, but his protruding gut doesn't help sell the idea of him being a man who never knows where his next meal is coming from. His best moments are when he shows some humility, admits he's broken, but overall he's too commanding a presence to ever portray desperation. Tom Waits gives the most convincing performance: he looks like he might actually know the way to the bottom of the bottle. But watching all these fine people in their period costume finery is like watching a The Good Old Days audience who got waylaid on their way to the BBC TV centre.
Hector Babenco was an esteemed Brazilian director (Pixote, Kiss Of The Spider Woman) and this is the classic case of the foreign langage director finally making it to Hollywood, the big time, and totally freezing. There must be some element of magic realism to the novel, to justify dropping in the little surreal touches. But all these do is to further clean up a film that already looks like it is shot inside a museum exhibit. The film completely fails to get across any of the unpleasantness of its situation. Ok, you feel that it is cold on those November Albany Street but the desperation, hunger, dirt and scuzziness are entirely theoretical. It's dead, inert and very boring. In comparison, the Bukowski adaptation Barfly with Mickey Rourke, which came out in the same year is packed full of these and is funny and entertaining. That though didn't garner any Oscar nominations, while both Jack and Meryl were nomed for this.
They don't even drink that much. It's a film about alcoholics where you can't even get a drinking game out of it.
Directed by Hector Babenco. 1987
Starring Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe, Diane Vernora, Fred Gwynne, Margaret Whitton, Nathan Lane and Tom Waits. 137 mins. Out on Blu-ray from Eureka Classics.
This film sends drunken bum Nicholson slumming his way through a couple of cold November nights in 1937 Albany, New York, but does it with such pomp and circumstance he might as well be the Sun King reclining at the court of Versaille. His domain is a New York town where every Depression-era period detail looks like it has been lovingly slaved over, buffed down to the just-so degree; it's his stage and he swaggers through it. Early on we learn that his fall into bumdom is rooted in being responsible for the death of his infant child. Wherever he goes a coterie of the ghosts of everybody whose death he was responsible for are in attendance to take care of his every need to feel wracked by guilt. In their pristine white suits, they always look like they are about to burst into some barbershop harmonies.
Ironweed is a classy, literary adaptation Oscar pleader that goes wrong in just about every single, possible way a classy, literary adaptation Oscar pleader can go wrong in. Having won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel three years earlier, author William Kennedy felt more than capable of adapting it for the screen all by himself thank you very much, and in doing so has sucked whatever life the novel had out of it. Usually, in failed literary adaptation you can make a guess at what made the book so damn special, but you really can't fathom it from this. The worse scenes, when Nicholson's Francis Phelan returns to the family home he walked out on two decades previously, are shot like a parody of a Broadway family drama, all the cast member in their positions around the dining table to project their regular, everyday dialogue to the back of the auditorium.
Big stars playing down and outs is always difficult. Streep, looking like a dowdy Olive Oyl gone to seed, has a fair old bash and her rendition of “He's Me Pal,” is a bit of show stopper. Jack is Jack and that's never an entirely bad thing, but his protruding gut doesn't help sell the idea of him being a man who never knows where his next meal is coming from. His best moments are when he shows some humility, admits he's broken, but overall he's too commanding a presence to ever portray desperation. Tom Waits gives the most convincing performance: he looks like he might actually know the way to the bottom of the bottle. But watching all these fine people in their period costume finery is like watching a The Good Old Days audience who got waylaid on their way to the BBC TV centre.
Hector Babenco was an esteemed Brazilian director (Pixote, Kiss Of The Spider Woman) and this is the classic case of the foreign langage director finally making it to Hollywood, the big time, and totally freezing. There must be some element of magic realism to the novel, to justify dropping in the little surreal touches. But all these do is to further clean up a film that already looks like it is shot inside a museum exhibit. The film completely fails to get across any of the unpleasantness of its situation. Ok, you feel that it is cold on those November Albany Street but the desperation, hunger, dirt and scuzziness are entirely theoretical. It's dead, inert and very boring. In comparison, the Bukowski adaptation Barfly with Mickey Rourke, which came out in the same year is packed full of these and is funny and entertaining. That though didn't garner any Oscar nominations, while both Jack and Meryl were nomed for this.
They don't even drink that much. It's a film about alcoholics where you can't even get a drinking game out of it.
