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Closer
Directed by Mike Nichols. Story: A love quadrangle. Running Time: 1hr 44 minutes. Certificate 15.
Abandon hope, all ye who believe in the basic goodness of human nature, for here be dragons. There may be romance, there may be comedy, but this is no romantic comedy. To those seeking a fluffy feel-good date movie, I say, "step away, there's nothing to see here."
I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: Natalie Portman's topless scene was cut (or made up for publicity), but she's still pretty racy in the stripper scene without showing any naughty bits. One use of the c-word, extensive gritty dialogue. To enjoy this film you should: Have a healthy disrespect for human nature.
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Cast: Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen.
Dark, callous and ultimately fatalistic, Closer is the malignant study of the voluble relationships
between the four leading characters.
"Malignant," because all the players intentionally cause considerable pain to the others and
"voluble," because none of the characters can decide whose pants they want to be in.
Whilst the characters are superficially different, under the surface they are very much the same,
wont as they are to slip between nice and nasty when events turn against them
while single-mindedly following their own lusts at the considerable cost of the others.
Stripper, photographer, doctor and obituary writer, they are all written with the same pen,
as if they all represent a bitter experience from the author's past.
This venom is most pronounced in Clive Owen, an overtly charming but deeply malicious cat-like man,
who purrs adoration while on the up, only to turn into a spitting, snarling, feral monster when wax turns to wane.
Jude Law plays to his lost-schoolboy strengths - women in the audience audibly sighed when we learned that he
"wakes up calling for his mother".
Julia Roberts is an unusual choice for this kind of role but she pulls it off, and Natalie Portman is
believable as the particularly fragile stripper. And before you ask, yes, she strips, but no, you don't
see the goods.
Closer seems to be about opposites and balance - yin and yang, stasis and flux. Every action has an equal
and opposite reaction, every positive has a corresponding negative. Nothing stays the same, people and
relationships are fluid and in a constant state of movement, yet still we resist changes.
In the movie there's also a hefty chunk of resentment against the nature of humanity -
the suggestion is that people are innately selfish and behave more like animals than
a civilised species, the only difference being the degree to which we try and hide it from each other.
It's a pessimistic but intriguing approach, and as we are accustomed to rooting for the "good" guys, we
consequently don't care very much about the characters in Closer. Curiously though, we still want to see
them get hurt and we take a kind of Daily-Mail-reader self-righteous satisfaction from watching them take
each other apart. Or maybe that's just me.
Closer is an intelligent film, it's well made, well written and well acted and as such I'd recommend it
to anyone with a grounded outlook on life. It's respectful to the audience, too. The viewer is treated as an
attentive adult - the month-long gaps in the story are not heralded with a season change, they are just
dropped in, leaving us to pick up on the clues in the dialogue. Thus it's not a movie to rent and
leave on over the pizza conversation - you need to watch it and let it sink in. At times this isn't easy,
simply because of the malevolent nature of the characters - but it's a side of life that we all face.
If you can't see even a little of yourself in these people, try looking Closer.
