Farther

Rating: 5/10 (4 December 2004)

I couldn't wait to see this movie. Now, I realize I should have waited to see this movie until it could be rented.
This is a very cold film about some very unpleasant people who don't seem to be able to make up their minds about much. I liked the way it was done, I loved the acting, and I loved the use of "Cosi Fan Tutte" throughout the film. Yet it left me feeling empty. I never saw the play, but I imagine it was quite powerful. As a film, it had a deadly detachment.
Certainly when one looks at a film like Virginia Woolf, also based on a play, also directed by Mike Nichols, also about some unpleasant people, one wonders why Woolf came off so well and this one didn't (for me, anyway). I think it's because Virginia Woolf is an incredible love story - at the end, when George explains that they're childless, and Martha says "We couldn't" [have a baby], one realizes what's underneath all of the unpleasantness. In "Closer," there's just no payoff. Four people change partners, hurt one another, are seemingly incapable of doing anything else, but no one tells us why. Only the Natalie Portman character shows some humanity. But some isn't enough.
Mike Nichols is a fabulous director, but the direction wasn't the problem here. It's the characterizations. I can't agree with some of the other posters that the film was fascinating. I didn't find it so. The theater was packed because of good reviews. I suppose the critics are hungry for something intelligent, and obviously the ticket-buying audience is, and who can blame them? But don't tell me this is the best you can come up with. When everybody walks out of the theater complaining, as they did after the showing I attended, there's a problem.