A drama through and through--dense, fast, extraordinary, and made cinematic and large

Rating: 10/10 (6 September 2010)

Closer (2004)
Mike Nichols made clear in his first film, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966) that he was going to make intense, inter-personal films that carried over the best of serious theater and that were photographically cinematic. He's succeeded like few, if any directors, have. And he's a comic actor, a comedian, at heart, which might explain the humanity and laughs that infuse some gripping situations.
"Closer" is based on a play, and like "Virginia Woolf" it has four principle actors whose lives and actions interweave and collide in the most disturbing and believable ways. This core is essential to getting somewhere gutsy. In less than two hours, the nature of this kind of liberal contemporary relationship is plumbed more convincingly that you would think possible.
Not that this is exactly a realistic film. It's too extreme, too perfect, too glitzy, too fast to quite accept as "true." But it's convincing the way great drama is, and all four actors, amazingly, rise to the occasion. Clive Owen stands out for his charming and very masculine intensity, and Natalie Portman for her self-destructive and angry neediness, yes. But equally important are Julia Roberts in a role where she uses her simpler complexion to open up to a fragile interior, and Jude Law in a role where his tenderness and lack of inner strength are in the end his undoing.
Everyone here is flawed, and everyone is admirable. And for a movie to make this clear, and to make a workable, fast plot unfold, in such a compact and beautiful way is a marvel. Nichols is really at the top of his form. If the visual tapestry isn't as mind boggling as "The Graduate" and if the plot is not as politically savage as some other earlier films ("Silkwood" and even the flawed "Catch-22" are two), it makes up for it by being really tight. There's not a square inch or a bare second wasted here. In fact, the speeding through a year at a time, from one cut to the next, makes you have to pay attention, though the clues are carefully in place.
A masterpiece.