Much Ado About Nothing

Rating: 4/10 (19 February 2006)

Do you ever watch a movie wishing all the main players could just take a cold shower and get over themselves? That's the way I feel watching "Quiz Show."
As a depiction of the famous 1950s scandal that revealed contestants of the NBC quiz show "21" were being fed answers, "Quiz Show" brims with pretentious portentousness, from the opening scene where a car radio is switched on just as a report about the new Sputnik satellite is broadcast (an excuse for someone to actually say "All is not well with America") to the end credits where we hear a way overwrought performance of "Mack The Knife."
Many of the acting performances are very good, especially Ralph Fiennes as Charles Van Doren, the golden boy of "21" whose erudition is enhanced by pre-show prepping; Paul Scofield as his proud father Mark, who travels the lofty circles of intellectual society with admirable rectitude and the privilege of not having to worry about how to earn a living; and David Paymer as Dan Enright, the producer of "21" who justifies his shell game by talking about how his program advances "the cause of education."
There are some terrific scenes in "Quiz Show," most involving two of the three actors mentioned above, like when Enright first broaches the idea of feeding a shocked Charles the answers to the questions, and a gorgeously shot picnic at the Van Doren home in Cornwall, Connecticut, where the extended Van Doren clan throws obscure Shakespeare quotations at one another, basking in the beauty of their Updike lifestyle. Director Robert Redford displays an engaging subtlety in these and some other moments that reminds you why people were so impressed when he made "Ordinary People."
But there's a reason why Redford made that instead of "The Chosen," which becomes clear with his depiction of the film's Jewish characters. They are actually caricatures, and central to the story as the script puts a lot of weight on their distance from the aristocratic Van Dorens. One caricature, the jealous low-class Herbie Stempel played by John Turturro, rails about his intellectual prowess and the fact he was forced to take a dive as "21"'s top contestant for "Van Moron." More obnoxious still is the assimilated caricature of Richard Goodwin, a congressional investigator of quiz-show corruption as played by Rob Morrow, so pushy he feels the need to tell even the guy selling him a car that he was first in his class in Harvard.
When Goodwin hesitates to put Charles on the stand, his wife, an obnoxious caricature herself played by Mira Sorvino, accuses him of being an "Uncle Tom of the Jews." Actually, it seems an odd moment of understandable mercy from Goodwin, who otherwise ruins lives to improve his own in such a way its no surprise he wound up working for Bobby Kennedy.
The Jewish issue keeps coming up, in the most heavy-handed contexts. When Goodwin tells Van Doren about being first in his class, Van Doren says he's surprised Goodwin doesn't wear it as a tattoo. Shuttered in a glass booth, Stempel wonders when they will drop the cyanide in. I almost wonder what kept "21" host Jack Berry (Christopher McDonald does a nice job with the role) from pressing Stempel with "Is that your final solution?"
It's just a quiz show, folks. Like Enright's assistant (Hank Azaria) tells the committee in the last lines of the film: "We're not exactly hardened criminals here. We're in show business." That Van Doren and others played fast and loose with the public trust is a matter for their own consciences, and hardly merited government interference. Because they were the only victims of their own crimes, the movie seems to implicate NBC and sponsor Geritol of the ultimate crime; frankly I see Goodwin as more blameworthy.
Maybe Redford did, too, which is why Morrow comes off so obnoxiously in his film. But such divided loyalties do not help bring off a complicated story that is already overlong, nor explain why it is we are supposed to feel so sorry at the end for Van Doren and not Stempel. Is it simply because Stempel has bad teeth and a sidewall haircut? Or because Van Doren's ancestors came off the Mayflower rather than Ellis Island?
Even when "Quiz Show" questions such elitism, it doesn't really puncture it, nor does the film explain why I should be so up in arms about what went on here. I just see a group of people on different power trips colliding into each other, and while it makes for some nice fireworks, it doesn't leave much to chew on.