Hey folks, Harry here... I seem to remember that the first person to tell me this movie blew was Mr Beaks about a zillion years ago it feels like. Well, here's an opinion of the finished product, from everybody's favorite skateboarder (coming to a wonderful DVD box-set soon!) Marty McFly....
Hey Harry. Marty McFly here. Pluto Nash isn't the only long delayed film set to open on the sixteenth. Neil LaBute's Possession has shifted dates many times since it's original Fall 2001 release. It has supposedly went through drastic re-edits and changes. Knowing only that I have liked all of LaBute's past films (In The Company Of Men, Nurse Betty, Your Friends and Neighbors), I went in with my fingers crossed.
Based on A.S. Byatt's novel Possession: A Romance, the film follows two literary scholars (Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart) who discover a secret affair between two poets from the Victorian era (Jeremy Northam and Jenifer Elhe). By reading previously undiscovered love letters, Paltrow and Eckhart uncover many details about the doomed romance and find themselves falling in love with each other. The movie jumps back and forth in time to depict both relationships as they progress.
Eckhart and Paltrow's discoveries have the potential to carry the entire film, but the mechanics of the plot don't allow enough screentime for their romance to develop and it ends up seeming forced. LaBute is working from source material and surely felt the need to stay faithful to the book but the movie would work better without any flashbacks at all. Northam and Ehle play poets who used words to express themselves and the film relies heavily on voiceover readings of their letters to convey their passion for each other. We are supposed to believe that Paltrow and Eckhart are so captivated by these old love letters that they fall for each other. Yet the movie doesn't give the audience the same credit and so the flashbacks spell it out for us.
The performances bring mixed results. Jeremy "I'll do a period piece if you buy me lunch" Northam fails to create the adequate sparks with Ehle, who looks like she could be his mother. Northam looks like he wants to fall asleep. My suggestion: If your agent comes to you with one more script set in the 19th century, kick his ass. Ehle's character is portrayed as nothing more than a lesbian who suddenly decides she still likes men and has a quickie affair with Northam. Their love is supposed to be sooooooo strong that it transceneds time. Whatever. I am not a hopeless cynic. I can be a sucker for these movies but I don't buy it.
Until now, Eckhart has gotten juicy roles in all of Labute's films. He makes a charasmatic, funny leading man but you can't help but feel he is bored by the material. He certainly injects some much needed vitality and humor into the movie. Paltrow does her snobby thing perfectly nut is unconvincing when her character is suppossed to be warming up to her Eckhart. I couldn't help but feel she would be repulsed by him in reality.
This is fairly routine material for LaBute, the same man who wrote a monologue for Jason Patric about the pleasures of male anal sex. He parallels the two romances with no subtlety whatsoever. There's Northam and Ehle standing in front of a waterfall. The camera pans, and, seamlessly, we see Paltrow and Eckhart standing in front of the same waterfall. The addition of ridiculous, one-dimensional villains who want to claim Paltrow and Eckhart's discovery as their own doesn't help matters. The villains' own investigation leads to a laughable climax that belongs in a kids cartoon.
This review has been fairly negative although this movie was not torturous by any means. I liked the whole idea and I did care about Eckhart and Paltrow's characters. The cynicism that is prevalent in LaBute's films is there underneath the surface of this shameless love story. Thier relationship is not typically sappy so it's a shame that a great deal of their story seems to have been left on the cutting room floor. This is a slight misstep for LaBute but from what I've heard The Shape Of Things is more like Neil's previous work. I'll see ya in the future!
Marty McFly
