How
far would you go to keep a roof over your family’s head and food on their
plates? Would you sell a kidney? Would you work at McDonald’s? How about taking
experimental medication, or having sex for money? Some of us might resort to
extreme measures (just admit it already, Scott Peterson), but not Byron Tiller,
our protagonist in the predictable, yet entertaining,
neo-noir-drama-slash-quasi-tragedy, The Man From Elysian Fields.
Byron (Andy Garcia) is a former
advertising executive who gave up that line of work to become an author. His
first book, which took seven years to write, was a hit with the critics, but
failed to catch on with the public. This is evidenced by Fields‘ first scene, which depicts Byron’s horror upon seeing Hitler’s Child languishing in the
remainder bin at an LA bookstore. Byron has plenty of things to be thankful
for, however: He has a hot wife named Dena (Julianna Margulies), a cute little
kid, and a second novel he’s sure will knock the socks off the literary world.
But Byron’s world comes crashing
down around him when every publisher he approaches gives him the bum’s rush.
Dead broke and completely miserable, Byron lies to Dena to make her think his
latest work has been purchased. This happens right around the same time he
befriends a distinguished-looking gentleman named Luther Fox (Mick Jagger), who
has space on the same floor as Byron in the Barton
Fink-y building they both call office (why a guy this worried about money
insists on having a separate place of business is something Fields never explains).
Fox, we learn, is the owner of the
titular business Elysian Fields, which is named after that mythological
paradise found in the afterlife. It’s a fitting name, since Fox’s business is
male prostitution. Byron eventually swallows his pride, succumbs to Fox’s
intriguing proposition, and — wouldn’t you know it — his first Jane turns
out to be a looker (Olivia Williams) with a dying husband who has won three
Pulitzer Prizes (James Coburn doing Hemingway with diabetes). If you’ve seen
more than five movies in your life, you can pretty much figure out how the
second and third acts play out in Fields.
As flawed and foreseeable as Fields‘ conclusion is (how the heck can
a writer not see it coming, by the way?), there are still quite a few things to
like about the film. Most importantly, it gives us a much better final
impression of the late Coburn than Snow
Dogs did, though it’s still pretty heartbreaking to watch him playing a
dying man when you know he’s already gone (a la Jason Robards in Magnolia). The wonderfully cast Jagger,
who also narrates Fields, is nearly a
revelation as a career gigolo who has fallen for a Jane (Anjelica Huston) —
he’s able to act circles around other musicians-turned-wannabe-movie-stars. But
best of all is Garcia, who perfectly portrays the desperation of a very
insecure man.
If
you feel as though there’s something missing in your life, there’s a pretty
good chance that aching, gaping void is caused by a complete lack of 19th
century slasher movies. Friday night (February 28) is your big chance to see if
A
Chronicle of Corpses can serve as spackle for your soul. The film,
which is Night of the Living Dead for
kids who cut their teeth on Ken Russell, is screening at the Dryden Theatre.
Set in 1807, Corpses is much more concerned with weird camera angles and shadows
than it is the spattering of blood. The action centers around a bizarre,
wealthy family and their plantation — and I do mean “action.” Dad
has a thing going with his brother-in-law, Mom does it with a stable boy… oh,
and family members keep getting bumped off, one at a time, by this mysterious
thing that’s supposed to be a metaphor for their own decaying lives and lack of
place in history (Hence the title and tagline: “What will our new history
be but a chronicle of corpses?”).
I think my favorite part was when I
was nearly lulled to sleep by a very pedestrian scene depicting the delivery of
communion wafers to the tongues of the Elliot clan, only to be startled awake
by a shot of a Fat Bastard lookalike toting a body. Other sections of Corpses feature the kind of editing that
makes you wonder if any of the actors could remember more than one line at a
time.
The cast is comprised mostly of
stage actors from Philadelphia, which is where writer-director Andrew Repasky
McElhinney (he was 21 when he made this flick) hangs his hat. Think fellow
Philadelphian M. Night Shyamalan funneled through Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, and you’re in the right
neighborhood, despite the fact that Corpses probably would have been better if its running time hovered somewhere near the
60-minute mark, instead of the 83.
Bookending Corpses at the Dryden are Derrida,
a Kirby Dick-directed documentary about French philosopher Jacques Derrida
(Thursday night); and the Japanamation spectacular Metropolis, the surprise non-Oscar nominee for Best Animated
Feature, which is based on an Osamu Tezuka comic book. Don’t confuse it with
Fritz Lang’s 1927 film of the same name, like I did when it played at the
Little a couple of months ago.
Interested
in raw, unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com), or listen to him on WBER’s Friday
Morning Show.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2003.
