In Another Body

Rating: Null/10 (9 March 2002)

Spoilers herein.
This film really surprised me because it drew me in, and I'm a pretty hard case. Plus, I really hate heavyhanded direction; Brest and Pacino in `Scent of a Woman' was a sledgehammer.
What happened here was a sweet spot in casting. Hopkins is a selfish internal actor. When he acts, he acts alone, working the words not the other actors, the story or the environment. Pitt is the opposite: he works the other actors, tries to extend into the space around him, tries to work the multilayered angle. That multilayering is written into the part: he gets to play Brad Pitt (to get the opening boxoffice) playing an angel, playing a dead guy, playing the original inhabitant of the body. Actors love this stuff, at least the intelligent ones do.
So the combo of Hopkins and Pitt works. Everything else is scenery, so much so that when we have the sex scene, the camera stays on Pitt's face! Brad is still not up to the task (as are Penn, Moore, Blanchett) but he is getting there, and taking lots of chances.
This risk maps well onto the risk that the angel of death is taking. And the soul-in-body play maps well to us entering the emotional space of the story. That the family was so storybook appealing helped this pull. Also the story being about one film entity "taking over" another is a clever extra.
Any film worth watching is worth watching for a least three hours, so I did not at all mind the meditative approach to watching this develop. All the laborious mechanics of tying up plot ends at the end were a little trying. But I thought the staging was very good, if overly static.
The ending was particularly visual and apt. The idea of the presentation up til then is that Pitt's presence is like one of those starbursts -- all tendrils. So the multiply-accelerating explosions were a very effective climax -- possibly the best fireworks display in all filmdom (though there was one firework in `Lord of the Rings' that was tops in that category).
Nothing (except perhaps water) is more cinematic than fireworks.