Rock, Paper, Scissors

Rating: Null/10 (20 November 2003)

Spoilers herein.
I'm going to recommend against watching this movie, even though I rate it `worth watching' at the end.
It is worth watching because it crisply illustrates a great dialog and linkage in film art, that one between director and actor. I am recommending against it because it
masquerades as relevant drama but is barely more than a collection of TeeVee-inspired shortcuts.
I won't mention the shortcomings other than to remind that there are always two thresholds in film -- or any art. The first involves whether a work is competently shaped and at is at least clever, intelligent or adventurous. This film certainly is that. In fact, all the principles in this project are famous in the industry for no-nonsense
professionalism, especially Clintywood.
But the other threshold is whether the matter of the art is something you can use in your life. Naturally, that varies from life to life depending on how they are designed -- or more likely were accidentally accreted. In my case at least, the thing that saps usefulness in this for me is the notion that problems in life are explicable. Everything here has an explanation, in each case a repetitive bludgeon of "sense." This is Rush Limbaugh hits drama and is repellant in form.
So much for that. What makes this fit my `worth watching' category is the way we can see the battle royale for control over how images work in our imagination. Two of the primary forces in conflict are those of actor and director, each with entirely different motives. Actors provide the stuff we see, like ink and letters provide the stuff of books. Directors (and often the supporting `designer' arts) provide the physics of the world of the story.
Between them is a mystical river, a collaborative tussle that sometimes results in an effective narrative. Here we have three of the most interesting actor-directors alive: Eastwood, Penn and Robbins. Each of these has radically different notions about what the nature of this collaboration is.
Penn is the most interesting to me. He works with multiple parallel dimensions. He feels that the only films worth making are `folded,' at the level of the physics of the world. He has created two masterpieces with this: one as a director in collaboration with Jack Nicholson (`The Pledge'), and another as an actor in collaboration with Woody Allen, also someone interesting in this space (`Sweet and Lowdown').
Robbins is interesting as well. He made a terrifically intelligent film in `Rock the Cradle' that uses a writer/director's vision to deliver an Altman-inspired physics to an ensemble, allowing them a means to collaborate among themselves using the same director-actor vocabulary. Interestingly, he has also directed Penn in a project designed to work around his wife's inadequacies. Even in this, the collaboration was with Penn.
Eastwood has more confidence in personal style and less tolerance for metaphysics. He grew up in an environment where the stylistic intuition of the director was all. Deliberations and introspective design are a waste. The actors work with you on style or they get fired.
Three radically different views about how films work. All of these three ways are visible here because Eastwood seemingly doesn't care about anything beyond the style, and allows private collaborations so long as they don't step on his territory or schedule.
Watch here as Penn and Robbins form a director-actor collaboration, a mystic connection outside of Eastwood's physics. It peaks toward the end as Penn -- as director in the character -- literally destroys Robbins' character as a character and diffuses him into the mystic.
Watch earlier as Robbins bends all the actors around him not only as an actor, but as a surrogate director. We may never see Marcia Gay Harden be more layered. (She came close in the similarly structured `Gaudi Afternoon.')
As the story progresses, we have these three directors each given play, like a jazz trio of sorts. (Eastwood's score seems to give three themes accordingly.) Rock, paper, scissors.
The end is jarring, Linney's speech let's us know that Eastwood is aware of hidden manipulation.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.