OH! THE PLEASURES OF MASOCHISM! Frears comes up with much more than you might think.

Rating: Null/10 (30 August 2000)

HIGH FIDELITY-a very funny film and yet quite complex if you're inclined to dig deeper. Go rent it if you haven't seen it people
These comments were written in part while listening to Zeni Geva's `Autopsy Love,' Paper Lace's `The Night Chicago Died,' Maria Muldaur's `Midnight at the Oasis,' `Soothing Sounds For Baby: 1 to 6 months' by Raymond Scott, and, of course, `Broken Hearts are for A--holes' by Frank Zappa.
'SPOILERS' AHEAD
Stephen Frears' `High Fidelity' is a multi-faceted analysis through narration (often directly into the camera) of John Cusack's character (Rob Gordon). Cusack confides to the audience (and not anyone else in the film) certain soul-baring confessions of heartbreak and disappointments suffered with girlfriends over the years, and also how these events evolved in an odd symbiosis with his one all-consuming passion in life: pop music. Every event in his life is directly accessible to his memory through some pop song he happened to be listening to when it happened.
Rob is not untypical of a certain male type in American society: self-styled, middle-class rebels who create more problems than they solve by rejecting traditional 'straight' alternatives but who are compulsively driven to this behavior by the frustrated 'artist inside' struggling to get out. These are guys who, ideally would like to be artists (Rob considers his dream job to be any kind of musician except for classical or rap), but barring that would still like to live as close to their ideal as possible--for instance, by owning a record store, writing a music column, or producing a band (as Rob tries to do with the two skateboard-punks who steal from his store).
Rob's relationship with his latest girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) is coming to an end. Rob is very much afraid of commitment and traditional marriage and rightly so. The end of freedom to grow (which includes the freedom to associate with members of the opposite sex who could be a source of growth) is the end of creative impulse. Rob's whole life is a struggle to keep this impulse alive. This type of person can never be cured by something as anachronistic as traditional marriage or anything of that sort. It's 'open marriage' or nothing; the freedom to cheat if it comes to that but not wanting to cheat because the main relationship is strong enough. And where does it get this strength? Well, to a large degree from being 'open,' in the first place, as a matter of fact.
The fact that Rob's cheated and 'gotten it out of his system' during the 'living together' phase will mean very little once the burden of traditional marriage and its prescribed roles falls like a yoke around his neck. Frears implies this throughout the film and, at the end, ONE of the conclusions possible is that for someone like Rob the traditional marriage he's about to get sucked into will have to be modified into an 'open' one; otherwise it will lead to: at best a quick divorce and return to old ways, and at worst: a dull, long, monotonous life of petty bourgeois pleasures, dishonest and manipulative CHEATING, and, of course, creative mediocrity. Other conclusions are also possible, of course, because Frears left things ambiguous on purpose. However, the semi-tragic, end-of-Rob-as-we-know-him, marriage-trap, one-way ticket-to-sterile-yuppie-hell conclusion cannot be avoided just as much as the so-called 'happy ending.'
`High Fidelity' is far from 'square.' It does not advocate a return to long discredited 'traditional' values as a refuge from insecurity. It shows the pressures that MAY lead even a relatively nonconformist 'rock 'n' roll' bonehead to become 'square' or consent to living the 'square' or 'straight' life. Frears PUT MORE THAN ONE OVER on the Hollywood geniuses who financed his venture by giving them their superficial 'happy' ending but very subtly undermining it to create an ambiguous ending. CASE IN POINT: The final Stevie Wonder song played during the end credits 'If I ever fall in love I want it to be forever.' Its lyrics are just as nauseatingly symbolic of conformity as 'I just called to say I love you' which Jack Black so savagely and hilariously criticizes as the symbol of everything he hates. This song choice is a subtle warning that Rob may be about to embark on a dangerous journey to the land of what he's always hated: a traditionally restrictive marriage. Frears in no way implies that Rob's marriage will be successful in the traditional sense; on the contrary, if success is implied at all, it is that Rob's marriage will succeed and 'be forever' only if its terms are kept 'open' as experience has warranted and as Rob and Laura are currently practicing in their relationship.
Neo-hippy, new-age types represent another pocket of conformity that establishment America's created in order to pass itself off as 'liberal,' and tolerant of 'fringe activity.' But people know a suck-up when they see one, even and especially if he has long hair and an earring. In 'High Fidelity,' through the character of Ian (Tim Robbins), these 'types' are made the object of as much hatred as 'the middle-aged square guy' wanting to buy the Stevie Wonder song for his daughter. The fact that THIS is the man Laurie's left Rob for only adds insult to injury. The scene where Rob imagines three different ways of violently reacting to Ian's 'let's work out our problems' mumbo-jumbo--two of which include 'aggravated' assault--with his buddies backing him up all the way to loud sounds of belligerent hip-hop in the background, always gets the biggest laughs. It is direct evidence that many people have contemplated delivering 'beatdowns' to just these types of hypocritical, establishment-approved 'non-conformists.'
Jack Black is the John Belushi type actor/singer who plays Barry, one of Rob's two employees. Barry is a plump, suburban, middle-class, pop-music elitist. He has a vast knowledge of pop music down to the most trivial things such as the correct title of songs. He and Rob are in constant competition as to whose taste in music is more non-obvious, original, and hip. I've seen a number of Barry types over the years, enough to know they're quite prevalent. They don't necessarily work in a record store. They just think that they're 'COOLER' than other people in their taste in whatever it may be-- cars, clothes, movies, records, etc., and look down on these others as a way of boosting their own egos. They have a condescending attitude towards anyone who purchases products of any kind that do not belong on their list of what is 'unassailably cool.' Barry is obnoxious and quite demented. He wears overstated, loud clothing. It is his way of flipping the bird to people who follow the rules of 'understated fashion.' At different times he is shown wearing a T-shirt with a huge painting of a tiger and a huge picture of Yanni, the new-age 'composer' whose atrocious music he cannot possibly like, except as something to laugh at. When Jack displays his superb singing voice towards the end of the flick, becoming an instant 'stud,' we are taken by surprise. Frears exposes the folly of being too quick to judge and label someone.
Dick is weird and shy and speaks in a very odd, labored way that irritates Rob. But because he is a nice guy, Rob cannot do much about it, except try to politely cut-short their conversations, before they become long, irritating monologues by Dick. Dick is the kind of guy that most people think would find it hard to get sex. That is why later in the movie when he finds a girlfriend, Barry is taken by surprise and makes fun of him. Barry says what the audience has been thinking for the whole movie. How does this guy ever get banged being that weird and shy? Well the answer is: he finds a weird girl who appreciates his weirdness. When Barry tells him to `smoke that a--' it is hilarious precisely because it is hard to imagine Dick having normal sex, much less the suggestively passionate kind of 'smoking that a--.'
All three white record-store guys (Rob, Barry, and Dick), take a liking to a beautiful black pop singer named Maria De Salle (Lisa Bonet) and lust after her. There's very much a racial tension here of three white guys lusting after a black prize. Later in the movie when Rob sleeps with Maria De Salle very quickly and unexpectedly the tension is nicely and abruptly released. The tension is there because most Hollywood films do not feature any sort of interracial romance and people have been programmed not to expect it without 'complications.' Latino actors like Jennifer Lopez are still the absurd racial middle ground in Hollywood films ( Raquel Welch, another Latino, and not Faye Dunaway had the first interracial scene with Jim Brown in '100 Rifles' some 32 years ago and things haven't changed much). Both George Clooney and Wesley Snipes get to have Lopez , but Wesley Snipes and some lillywhite actress like Michelle Pfeiffer or Sharon Stone? Not likely in good old Tinseltown.
I couldn't care less about any of this racial nonsense, held over as if we were still living in the '50s, but it's the pathetic truth about Hollywood practice; and they constantly impose this racial nonsense on society, preventing enlightenment, causing regression. Art is after all, not just a reflection of society but also the precursor. The drivel that comes out of Hollywood adds up and becomes a precursor of general societal attitudes. The ultimate taboo in racist Hollywood is still the black man sexing the white woman, and they can't claim to be honestly reflecting society since it is not uncommon in society; therefore they're just imposing their biases and creating more tension than what would naturally exist and forcing people to look at interracial romance as 'problematic.' In 'the Bone Collector,' for instance, there is a very poetic scene where Angelina Jolie is very much attracted to the paraplegic Denzel Washington and while he is asleep, feels up his hands and arms. They cannot have sex, of course, because Washington is paraplegic. At the end of the movie it is implied that they have become a couple but it's never made explicit. In 'He Got Game,' the woman played by Milla Jovovich was a hooker and Washington, a newly released prisoner! Always trust Spike Lee to know where his bread is buttered, but to take precautions not to offend too much (knowing that black women have been programmed to be insecure about that sort of thing and that some could be expected to complain, there's no question in my mind that Spike was (c. or u.c.) going exactly for JUST THAT MUCH controversy and no more--what other reason would he have to make the hooker white?). I don't even want to talk about what Spike was trying to stir up with the ridiculous `Jungle Fever.' `Zebra Head' was a much more realistic version of 'Jungle Fever' and 'Angel Heart' had some weird chicken blood subtext about god knows what (Mickey O'Rourke and the same Lisa Bonet?!).
Hollywood is still stuck in that racist 'Love Connection' mentality that gave airhead-central MTV the chance to gain prestige by completely debunking it. Until Tom Cruise recently decided to break the taboo in 'Mission Impossible 2' there wasn't a single Hollywood film I know of that treated interracial romance as an irrelevant, pseudo problem. Frears isn't new to this game, he has featured interracial romance before (Sammie and Rose Get Laid). Frears joins Cruise (the true power was in Cruise's, not Woo's hands) in showing up 'the race barrier' as the psuedo problem that it is. He shows Rob and Maria meeting, finding many things in common, and having sex without giving a single thought as to WHO is going to think WHAT of them. These are the liberated people much more common in society than Hollywood and Spike Lee would like you to believe.
Cusack's subperb portrayal gives us an in-depth tour of the whole phenomenon of guys like Rob. Most guys of his age group have at least a few things in common with him and some more than a lot. Some may even feel the same way about life in general and choose to follow Rob's way. I don't share Rob's views on many things, but I could definitely identify with his situation and understand him as a REAL person. I certainly wouldn't react the way he does, but I do know where he's coming from. The irony is that Rob, of all people, should've known that 'Broken hearts are for a--holes,' as Frank Zappa so aptly put it on `Sheik Yerbouti,' but apparently he still couldn't help being an a--hole and torturing himself! Oh! the pleasures of masochism!
One final note, and I just have to say this--Catherine Zeta-Jones--god damn! She plays a girl who's supposed to be shallow and 'who talks s--t all night,' but there never was a shallowness more intelligent, sexy and soulfully exotic than that which comes out of ZJ's gorgeous lips. It's very easy to see why she is 'the answer to all the world's problems' for any heterosexual man from here to Katmandu; and no matter how much Rob tries to rationalize it away, no male member of the audience is fooled for a second. Stupidity shows through much more than the words a person utters, through body language and tone of voice for instance, and ZJ's are too refined and exquisite to be mistaken for stupid. It should be quite obvious that all this was fully intentional on Frears' part in order to mine for ambiguity and also turn the camera on the audience. Frears' uses ZJ as a demonstration model to emphasize how similar us guys in the audience are to Rob when faced with having to interpret the mysteries of the 'femme fatale.' Our only way out of total bondage is a similarly inane rationalization of her 'superficiality.'
When a little later,the music-critic character played by Natasha Gregson-Wagner is introduced, this rationalization doesn't work. She is almost as good-looking as ZJ but in addition she's 'intelligent' (on the film's own terms anyway) and a seemingly perfect match for Rob. So Rob now being defenseless, has to run back to Laurie and ask for marriage. He sees this as the only way to avoid endless temptations; whereas the real problem lies in the fact that his relationship with Laurie is only beginning to show signs of strength. This strength has been created through the 'open' attitude they've been practicing of late and is much more likely to be destroyed (and create ever stronger temptations to stray) than safeguarded by a traditional 'closed' marriage.