Movie Box Review

There's a scene in Paul Weitz's new film BEING FLYNN where Jonathan Flynn (Robert DeNiro), the alcoholic, narcissistic, pitiful, self-destructive father of Nick (Paul Dano), reads to his son from a publisher's rejection letter.  Jonathan sees himself as one of the greatest of all American writers--albeit unpublished--his only peers being Mark Twain and J.D.Salinger, and he considers it a great compliment that in rejecting his novel, the publisher termed it a "virtuoso display of personality."  The phrase comes awfully close to describing DeNiro's performance and Being Flynn itself.

Being Flynn is based on Nick Flynn's memoir "Another Bullshit Day In Suck City," and it tells a mostly pathetic and depressing story.  Jonathan was arrested for bad checks when Nick was just a child, and even when he was released from prison, he was never a meaningful part of Nick's life.  He did, however, send his son scores of letters, mostly desperately self-aggrandizing, and his presence overshadowed Nick's youth and the single mother (Julianne Moore) who diligently raised him but ultimately committed suicide.  Nick, passive and rootless, and also an aspiring writer, drifted into a job at a homeless shelter, and it was there that he and his father, who had been sleeping on the streets, truly met, and and the two began a painful, dysfunctional relationship. 

This is extremely difficult material, much of it no picnic to watch, and Weitz, whose work ranges from the lovely About A Boy to the execrable Little Fockers, doesn't find a tone to make it work.  The film's Jonathan is all mannerism with very little substance.  While it's great to see DeNiro stretching to give a real performance, something he's rarely done in the past 15 years (it's hard to avoid the feeling that Weitz and DeNiro felt so mutually disgusted with Little Fockers that they both needed to cleanse themselves afterward with something serious), he never finds Jonathan's center.  His work feels full of effort and yet superficial.  From the actor who gave us indelible portraits in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, it's subpar.  

DeNiro isn't helped by Weitz's script, which while heartfelt never really draws a bead on who Jonathan is.  For all its gritty detail--no recent Hollywood product (even the indie part of Hollywood) has dealt so seriously with homelessness in quite a while--the film sidesteps complications and settles for bland emotion (and toward the end, sentimentality) too often.  

Dano has a more straightforward role:  he's the guy who hits bottom (getting to know his father leads him to some serious drug use) and manages to climb back up, turning out to be terrifically talented to boot.  Yet while his arc is the more simplistic and undeveloped part of the film, Dano's own odd qualities as an actor make Nick more interesting for a while.  Dano doesn't have a lot of gears, at least not that he's shown thus far--his killer app is a sort of intense distraction that can be played for humor or for surprisingly powerful repressed anger--but they serve him well here.  Olivia Thirlby, as the only sane person around, does so much with very little that one wishes she'd been given more of a part, and Moore, only briefly on screen, is her usual expert self.   

Being Flynn is a hard movie to recommend, because the hard truth is that filmmakers who deal with challenging, uncomfortable material have far less margin for error.  The work is transcendent or it's trite, and Weitz's film isn't transcendent.  It's intermittently powerful and worth watching for some strong scenes and interesting performances, without ever quite achieving a satisfying whole.

Impending disaster hangs over every early scene of Chris Weitz's new film A BETTER LIFE.  As soon as we're introduced to Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir) and learn that he's an illegal immigrant, eking out a life as a gardener in Los Angeles as he doggedly tries to support his sullen 14-year old son Luis (Jose Julian), while doing whatever he can to avoid being arrested or deported, we know Something Bad is going to happen.  When Carlos exerts himself to the utmost and uses all his hard-earned resources to buy a used truck that will allow him to have his own small business and, he believes, finally improve his son's life, it's just a matter of time.  Sure enough, Something Bad happens, and then Something Worse, and the movie ends up exactly where we figured it would from the start. 

There's no joy in saying unkind things about a movie like A Better Life, which was made with heartfelt commitment and a fair amount of skill.  Weitz, coming off a hit Twilight movie, no doubt could have chosen to direct any number of big-budget Hollywood projects, but instead he opted to work on a no-frills, no-star, independent film.  Bichir and Julian head a fine ensemble cast, and the movie has been beautifully shot (by Javier Aguirresorobe, whose credits include Vicky Cristina Barcelona and The Road) and scored (by Alexandre Deplat).  The pace is fluid, and there's some excitement in the middle section of the story, when father and son try to cope with the Something Bad.

Ultimately, though, the movie is content to tell a predictable story in a mostly unnuanced way.  Eric Eason's script (from a story by Roger L. Simon), is so strongly influenced by The Bicycle Thief that at times it feels like an unoffical remake, but it falls short even at that when it depicts Carlos as a paragon of paternal goodness and wisdom, with little shading.  Luis is made a kid tempted by the dark side, but only so before the movie ends, he can appreciate the greatness of his dad.  For all the care and serious effort that's gone into A Better Life, it doesn't add up to more than a particularly gritty Hallmark Hall of Fame; it's as though Weitz and Eason feared political incorrectness if they suggested that their characters were merely human.  

A Better Life isn't a great movie, but it has emotional impact, and if properly sold it could reach an audience.  Summit has decided to start its campaign with a very small (4 theatre) art house run, the kind of release that requires better reviews than the film is getting; it's in danger of disappearing entirely if the studio can't forget about its awards-season strategy and rethink its approach.  Otherwise, it'll be the kind of picture people find on cable TV, and wonder why they never heard of it.