I don't want to get closer or why did not they ask Helen?

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2005)

My three favorite films from last year "Sideways", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", and "Before Sunset" have a lot in common; they all deal with ability to connect with other people, with meeting one's true love and losing it, with memories that will not go away, and with possibilities of second chances.
There are more similarities in three my favorite films  they all have characters I liked, I care about; often, weak and certainly not perfect; sometimes, confused and immature but sympathetic, and real.
This is not the case with "Closer". My problem is that none of its four main characters was at least slightly interesting, appealing, likable or just realistic. And it is not the biggest problem that they were not likable  I can live with that and still love and enjoy the film. Examples  Nichols's own fascinating debut, "Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf". George and Martha (Liz Taylor and Richard Burton) were a couple from hell but like a theme song in "Closer" goes, "I could not take my eyes off them". I still remember Taylor saying in the end of the film, "George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad" and it was sad. I'd learned something about the characters that were deep and complex, troubled and disturbed. They were persons, the human beings, not the caricatures. Another example, Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from the marriage":
"Bergman and his leading actors Liv Ullmann and Arland Josephson give one of the most truthful, honest, heartbreaking and credible portraits of a couple, one of the most intense character studies ever done on film. For five hours, we share twenty years from the lives of Johan and Marianne as well as their love, hate, misunderstandings, insecurities, anger, jealousy, denial, sadness, pain, despair, and loss. We witness the moments of incredible tenderness and unexpected and shocking violence, both physical and mental. There are no depth that they have not descended in the search of themselves and the meaning of their relationship."
As far as a film about the selfish, self-obsessed, unsympathetic characters goes, "Faithless", directed by Liv Ullmann and written by Ingmar Bergman could be the most similar in its theme to "Closer" and they both have almost identical twist plot toward the end. The difference is huge, though. "Faithless" has a high and unbearable tragedy that characters brought upon themselves, "Closer" is smug, full of itself and tries to hide its emptiness behind often disgusting and unnecessary dirty language. Did I learn something about four beautiful people in "Closer"? Sure. Dan's sperm tastes like Larry's but sweeter; Alice's c*** tastes like heaven, and Anna does not kiss strange men and does not understand why sex is so important. I don't want to get closer to learn all this; instead, I'd like to respond like Helen Sinclair, "No, no, don't speak. Don't speak. Please don't speak. Please don't speak. No. No. No. Go. Go Don't speak."
Enormously talented and famous (and rightly so) Mike Nichols made an elegantly looking, well acted (Natalie Portman and Clive Owen are very good) and quite amusing film which is a screen adaptation of a popular play of the same title. Popular or not, the play was not a great work of writing and its problems are very obvious after adaptation to the big screen.