Addictive

Rating: 10/10 (13 July 2006)

Closer is a movie chamaeleonic in time. The movie changes from viewing to viewing.
And that's all. Love it eventually. Love everything eventually.
The emotional starkness of the film is ravaging in two different ways. When the scenes are being played poorly it is enough to make one literally and audibly wince. When the scenes are being played well the movie is sad enough to bring tears.
The performances are easy to examine because the cast is only four strong. Jude Law is middling. When he is with Clive Owen he is good; the rest of the time he is poor. Natalie Portman is shocking in her compromised delivery of dialogue. It is almost as though she is entirely without emotional empathy at a biological level. Julia Roberts plays a photographer. Whenever she holds a camera it looks like the first time she has ever done so in her life. Her scenes with Natalie Portman are bleak. Clive Owen is awe-inspiring. Whether he is facing off against the absent Portman, struggling Roberts or competent Law, he always seems to be his character and totally immersed in the moment at hand.
There is lots of humour in this film. Some of it comes from the movie being good (mostly scenes with Clive Owen). Most of the humour comes from the agog awfulness with which the other actors handle their roles.
Anyone living anything less than a contented life full of love, preferably also an exciting and cosmopolitan life, will find this movie challenging and uncomfortable and unsettling and polarizing. It will leave you numb from how bad it can be and numb from how good it can be. It will make you laugh in mocking and laugh from being caught up in the moment with the characters. It is melancholy both in its nihilistic view of human existence and in the realist way it was compromised in casting to be brought to the screen. This movie is a sublime contradiction. It is undeniable. Every time one watches this movie there is more to love. It is so bubbling with confusing hot electric energy that one's emotions and thoughts are enlivened like bare skin in a chilly breeze. This movie can get inside your bloodstream. Like all addictive things, it is poisonous and at first your mind will try to reject it. If you can forget this initial unpleasantness, it will be a movie to love.