Reel Life

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2003)

Spoilers herein.
Here we have a folded project: a story about storytelling where life is defined in part by fiction. It is by a one time master of folding, peaking with `Ed Wood.' It has key actors who understand folding: Lange (`Titus' and mate of folder Shepard), McGregor (started with `Pillow Book,' then `Moulin Rouge') and DeVito, the purveyor of comic folding in the tradition of Nabokov, most recently in `Death to Smoochy.'
Heaviweights all. The story is a common edition, something between `Baron ` and `Guinevere,' with more than a dollop of Redford's slick, dumb flyfishing-as-life mentality.
The intent was surely to have the `stories' and `real life' overlap, affect each other, and merge like the conjoined twins. If this worked, the labored metaphors would have been fine  we could even have tolerated more. After all, we are dealing with Proust here, the notion that a life is defined by memory  an elaborate life by an elaborate `story.'
But it doesn't work. I think that is because in film we have such a strong tradition of a framing device. That expectation is so strong that when we have two overlapping stories and one `generates' the other, you have to pull some fancy tricks to avoid it falling into a static frame, like Falk in `Princess Bride.'
Burton didn't do this well at all here. This same week, I saw a nearly identically structured project, `Conceiving Ada.' It failed in exactly the same way. The `past' story was interesting and fantastic, where the `present' story was lifeless. This lack of equivalence prevented their intended overlapping.
A real shame. Probably Depp would have helped.
Ted's evaluation: 2 of 3  Has some interesting elements.