Summary: Dazzlingly Brilliant: Nichols Takes the Relationship Flick to a New Level of Raw Honesty

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2004)

Director Mike Nichols took playwright and scriptwriter Patrick Marber's dissection of romantic entanglements affecting and forever altering the lives of two couples to a deep dimension of compelling complexity. Taking as a theme the devastating role jealously and lies play in peoples' love lives, Nichols crafted a drama that asks many questions including one most lovers face at one point or another - how much does a man or woman really want to know about a partner? And...can the price of forcing disclosure bring unwanted and uncontrollable relationship immolation? This is a four-character film as befits its origin in the theater. Set in London, it starts with a happenstance that by itself might augur a fairly ordinary, predictable plot. Alice (Natalie Portman) arrives from New York without so much as a carry-on bag. Unaware of the direction in which traffic move, she steps off a curb and is knocked down by a cab, fortunately receiving only minor injuries.
Rushing to her rescue is Dan (the so very-ubiquitous-on-screen-these-days Jude Law). Dan is an aspiring novelist whose first book will soon be out. To pay for tea and crumpets he pens obituaries for a newspaper. Off-handedly gallant, he takes the young woman, formerly a Big Apple stripper she later announces, to a very crowded casualty ward (as they call the E.R. in Old Blighty). Alice tells him she's left her previous boyfriend with just a few simple words, "I don't love you anymore." Her appearance reflects youth, her words suggest a lot of experience.
For the jacket of his book and publicity Dan needs his picture taken and Anna (Julia Roberts) is the society shutterbug with whom he falls instantly and deeply in lust in her studio. Never mind that Alice, now his live-in lover, will soon arrive at the studio after washing up from her waitress job.
Dan plays an asinine, juvenile prank on dermatologist Larry (Clive Owen, who played the same part on stage) to bring the doctor and the photographer together at an aquarium. It's the sort of stupid and also thoughtless "joke" now made easier and anonymous by the weapon of choice of many - the Internet. It's probably not even clear to Dan why he does this. A lot of things aren't clear to Dan.
What follows is complex interaction between the four as affections and genitals exchange places. Not casual lover swapping but rather emotion-laden experimentation with unpredictable outcomes. Very sharp cinematography and quick closeups do much to heighten tension and insure momentum. Momentum to what? This very adult, very affecting drama coheres largely because of the splendid acting of the outstanding quartet. Julia Roberts gives the most psychologically deep portrayal of her career. With a contract always short-stopping any nude scenes, Ms. Roberts' Anna is rawly naked emotionally. Dismissed by one lover as a "depressive," her divorced Anna is more uncertain about what she wants than she is clinically depressed. She's successful and yet her face mirrors the too common fear of attractive, successful women that at heart they are frauds on the verge of being unveiled as such.
Engagingly quirky and fun as the photographer in "Road to Perdition" and more recently as the amoral, predatory Alfie in the re-make of the Michael Caine classic, Jude Law's Dan is a man who doesn't know when to stop asking the wrong questions, demanding answers he shouldn't seek. Sly and seductive at times, consumed by jealousy at other points, both too sure and very unsure, Law spins Dan to near chaotic life. Perhaps he's a cad, maybe he's simply in too deep with precious little introspection - Nichols and Law give Dan a flawed character who is viewed as a curiosity but without censure.
Larry, as projected by Clive Owen, is capable of psychological cruelty, a mask for his own needs. His relationship with the other three characters resembles a well-driven car that at unexpected moments threatens to career off the road because of the driver's lapse of control.
And that leaves the truly remarkable Natalie Portman who, intentionally or not, is the central character. Ms. Portman showed the depth of her acting range in a short scene in "Cold Mountain" which signaled she was ready for major roles in other than near sitcom flicks. Her breadth of emotions in "Closer" is powerful and gripping. From ingÃ©nue in London without apparently a change of clothes to a woman grappling with love won and possibly lost, she's alternately achingly vulnerable and surprisingly - almost brutally - steely. This is an Oscar worthy performance by a young actress who will be around, impressively so, for a long time.
What makes Closer" so much more than the average relationship story is the questions Nichols poses but declines to answer. Trust, jealousy, commitment, lust, expectations, betrayal - all are interwoven in the four characters' interaction. And the unifying mystery is the question of questions. How much should any lover ask his/her partner about past relationships and even present moral if not legal infidelities? Not since the powerful Indie flick, "Chasing Amy," has that very real and often destructive but sometimes uncontrollable need to know about a lover's past been so transparently pursued.
Reactions, including comments on this board, to "Closer" are highly polarized. There isn't much of a middle ground unlike for another recent superlative relationship movie, "Sideways," where consensus seems to clump together at the high end. I suspect one reason why some viewers have hated this movie, including a few very vocal folks at the close of the screening in Manhattan today, is that Nichols makes a number of moviegoers genuinely uncomfortable seeing what so many of us, at one time or another, have endured in the quest for love. In a way, people who have never felt the heartbreak played out here, the unstoppable collision with the future, have missed something important albeit terribly hard.
Absolutely Mick Nichols's finest film but he couldn't have done it with a less gifted cast.
Fine cinematography and the score, ranging from pop to Mozart and Rossini, subtly but effectively supports the story line.
10/10