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Hollywood romanticism
May. 27th, 2006 06:31 amSome of you may remember what I said about Hollywood's attitude to sex, which is a part of the ideology and structure of that particular social group. I was reminded of it when reading a description of an astonishingly unsatisfactory movie: Rumor Has It, a PG-13 item featuring two specialists in failed projects, Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston. (Honestly, when was the last time that either of them had a real hit?) The plot? Jennifer Aniston is engaged but has cold feet. She wonders whether her father is really her father, since her mother had had sex with the Kevin Costner character 9 months before her birth. And in a development that would count as stupendously gratuitous and pandering, were it not that it is an evident attempt to raise the ghost of sixties classic The Graduate, he has had sex with Aniston's mother's mother in his time, too.
The attempt to raise the ghost of Mike Nichols' masterpiece is clear, committed, and entirely hopeless. What kills it stone dead, of course, is the evidence that director, scriptwriter and actors absolutely do not understand what The Graduate was about. Start with the choice of romantic hero: Dustin Hoffman, is a bumbling, barely formed young man who blunders into Mrs.Robinson's bed pretty much because he is told to, and is surrounded by a mass of complete hypocrites, of which Mr. and Mrs.Robinson are the worst. The moral of the story is that his final elopement with the daughter is pretty much the only thing he does right after allowing himself to be led up and down and all around and humiliated and as near as possible ruined by a gaggle of self-regarding, hollow suburbanites whose vanity takes the place of healthy self-respect. When Dustin Hoffman runs away with Katharine Ross, he is regaining his own individuality, self-respect, even liberty. Although the movie ends with a realistically doubtful tone, as the lovebirds look on a whole crowd of old folks and wonder whether their own life will be like that, nevertheless the clear implication is that they have committed themselves to each other for life.
Now see how every one of these premises is perverted by Rumor has it. First, in place of bumbling, big-nosed Hoffman, we have handsome Kevin Costner - who is super-rich too, a billionaire, well above the modest bourgeois affluence of The Graduate's suburbia, and has made his money in the ultra-cool world of Silicon Valley. Second, both his relationships have been passing fancies. Then we have it laid on us that this super-successful capitalist is in awe of Che Guevara - another attempt to reconnect to the sixties and get them wrong. And there is the fact that the odious two-faced witch Mrs. Robinson, a monster - and a very credible monster - in the original movie, is played by Shirley MacLaine as a loveable old eccentric, and everything she has done is justified; which completely overturns the point of The Graduate. Final cherry on the cake, Costner is sterile and cannot be Anniston's father: a development not only typical of this film's total lack of understanding of The Graduate, but also suggestive of its own spiritual death. The story in The Graduate was that of a couple of young people deciding, in the face of all the world, to face the responsibilities of life together, to marry and presumably have babies; Rumor has it informs us that said commitment did not exist, could not exist, and that the romantic protagonist is incapable of procreation. At least, he tells Anniston, his possible daughter, so.
Next scene: they have sex. Climax of the movie. Anniston's big romantic love moment. Big satisfaction. Much better than her pointless fiance' Mark Ruffalo. Are we impressed? We are supposed to be impressed.
The overtones of spiritual incest - Anniston has spent a long time wondering whether Costner is her physical father - are scarcely more disgusting than the clear implication that male sterility is an advantage, that allows the handsome romantic lead to have sex with his a woman young enough to be his daughter and feel no regret. Because, of course, if you do not put your partner in danger of having babies (such an unwelcome thing, babies), then sex does not count; or rather, is only and wholly positive. We need not bother that this overwhelming Lothario Costner has had sex with grandma, mom and daughter, since daughter Anniston finds the whole thing so very romantic. And this, if you please, is a PG-13. "In praise of having no balls." (Incidentally, Anniston's real father character did once kick the Costner character between the legs in high school - a thought that has a somewhat satisfying quality.)
As one critic pointed out, the film - which is generally and shamelessly made of quotations - has a Quentin Tarantino moment when a few peripheral characters begin discussing movies, classic movies--Chinatown, Casablanca, the Graduate. One asks, "why don't movies like this get made anymore?" However, when Tarantino pulled this sort of stunt, he was much too clever to do it in such a way as to expose the breathtaking emptiness of his movies.
The attempt to raise the ghost of Mike Nichols' masterpiece is clear, committed, and entirely hopeless. What kills it stone dead, of course, is the evidence that director, scriptwriter and actors absolutely do not understand what The Graduate was about. Start with the choice of romantic hero: Dustin Hoffman, is a bumbling, barely formed young man who blunders into Mrs.Robinson's bed pretty much because he is told to, and is surrounded by a mass of complete hypocrites, of which Mr. and Mrs.Robinson are the worst. The moral of the story is that his final elopement with the daughter is pretty much the only thing he does right after allowing himself to be led up and down and all around and humiliated and as near as possible ruined by a gaggle of self-regarding, hollow suburbanites whose vanity takes the place of healthy self-respect. When Dustin Hoffman runs away with Katharine Ross, he is regaining his own individuality, self-respect, even liberty. Although the movie ends with a realistically doubtful tone, as the lovebirds look on a whole crowd of old folks and wonder whether their own life will be like that, nevertheless the clear implication is that they have committed themselves to each other for life.
Now see how every one of these premises is perverted by Rumor has it. First, in place of bumbling, big-nosed Hoffman, we have handsome Kevin Costner - who is super-rich too, a billionaire, well above the modest bourgeois affluence of The Graduate's suburbia, and has made his money in the ultra-cool world of Silicon Valley. Second, both his relationships have been passing fancies. Then we have it laid on us that this super-successful capitalist is in awe of Che Guevara - another attempt to reconnect to the sixties and get them wrong. And there is the fact that the odious two-faced witch Mrs. Robinson, a monster - and a very credible monster - in the original movie, is played by Shirley MacLaine as a loveable old eccentric, and everything she has done is justified; which completely overturns the point of The Graduate. Final cherry on the cake, Costner is sterile and cannot be Anniston's father: a development not only typical of this film's total lack of understanding of The Graduate, but also suggestive of its own spiritual death. The story in The Graduate was that of a couple of young people deciding, in the face of all the world, to face the responsibilities of life together, to marry and presumably have babies; Rumor has it informs us that said commitment did not exist, could not exist, and that the romantic protagonist is incapable of procreation. At least, he tells Anniston, his possible daughter, so.
Next scene: they have sex. Climax of the movie. Anniston's big romantic love moment. Big satisfaction. Much better than her pointless fiance' Mark Ruffalo. Are we impressed? We are supposed to be impressed.
The overtones of spiritual incest - Anniston has spent a long time wondering whether Costner is her physical father - are scarcely more disgusting than the clear implication that male sterility is an advantage, that allows the handsome romantic lead to have sex with his a woman young enough to be his daughter and feel no regret. Because, of course, if you do not put your partner in danger of having babies (such an unwelcome thing, babies), then sex does not count; or rather, is only and wholly positive. We need not bother that this overwhelming Lothario Costner has had sex with grandma, mom and daughter, since daughter Anniston finds the whole thing so very romantic. And this, if you please, is a PG-13. "In praise of having no balls." (Incidentally, Anniston's real father character did once kick the Costner character between the legs in high school - a thought that has a somewhat satisfying quality.)
As one critic pointed out, the film - which is generally and shamelessly made of quotations - has a Quentin Tarantino moment when a few peripheral characters begin discussing movies, classic movies--Chinatown, Casablanca, the Graduate. One asks, "why don't movies like this get made anymore?" However, when Tarantino pulled this sort of stunt, he was much too clever to do it in such a way as to expose the breathtaking emptiness of his movies.
