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Tuesday, December 21, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Somewhere
He's Not There, But
They...Are Everywhere
Stephen Dorff as Johnny Marco and Elle Fanning as Cleo in Sofia Coppola's new
film "Somewhere".
Focus Features
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Tuesday,
December 21, 2010
Sofia Coppola's
captivating and addictive "Somewhere" floats in your mind, its absorptive power
staying with you long after the end credits roll. Ms. Coppola's dead-on
satire about Hollywood celebrity and its cultish trappings is the best film
she's directed by far. "Somewhere" opens in several cities tomorrow and in
many other U.S. cities next month. It's one of the very best films of
2010.
Actor-stuntman Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff), staying at L.A.'s famous Chateau
Marmont Hotel, "does all my own stunts." One of several unintended stunts
is his driving round and round in a black Ferrari in circles, on an empty
stretch of road, rudderless, without direction. He does this in two very
different environs, chasing his own tail like a playful dog. He's nothing
in a land of nothingness.
Johnny, despite his movements, is a remarkably static character. He's
moving but he doesn't move; he's going through the motions, living a waking
nightmare freak show, only this kind isn't the serious, high-art waking dream of
"Eyes Wide Shut", it's a sunny, sanguine nightmarish trance that has "hollow"
and "fake" bored deep within it. (Instead of cell phones interrupting Bill
Harford's sexual curiosities, text messages amusingly pose questions Johnny
can't answer.) Johnny is shuttled from one pretentious, staged event to
another, and everyone is performing for him. It's often
exaggerated of course, from the plastic, robotic entertaining twins to perhaps
even his eleven-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning). Spectator Johnny is
a coat hanger or maypole that people dance around, a phallic symbol everyone
strokes. But he isn't there. He's impotent. He lacks
a true voice. Even his request for no drink is repeatedly ignored by an
eager publicist.
On the surface "Somewhere" is a very obvious and unremarkable film, but its
depth appears in its subtlety and style. Look at the way the film is shot.
There are long, unbroken takes, some lasting a minute or more, reminiscent of
1960s and 70s European and American films, specifically some of Stanley
Kubrick's work, including his final film. Particularly unsettling is a
near-two-minute shot of Johnny sitting alone in a make-up chair, a blank slate.
Note the way Johnny is shot driving his car. The camera angles are
atypical for most scenes filmed in a car. Johnny is forever confined,
encased in steel (a car), or in a cast (on his arm), or has a cast of characters
around him. Also, note the amount of white -- white sheets, white
t-shirts, white towels, white walls, white space, white cast and white people --
Johnny is surrounded by or immersed in. He's metaphorically framed in a
colorless fantasy world without definition or meaning. The white-hot
lights of stardom may shine brightly on him but there's nobody home.
There's a brief scene where Johnny watches television and sees the pacifist
Mahatma Gandhi. Listen carefully to the voice coming from the TV.
Among other things, the voice mentions that Gandhi only wore white linen cloth,
symbolizing self-reliance. Johnny wears white. Johnny however, is
anything but self-reliant. Arguably, this scene, which many will barely
notice, is important to the film. Johnny hardly behaves as if he has the
world at his feet, and doesn't appear to express any level of self-satisfaction
about it.
Elle Fanning as Cleo and Stephen Dorff as Johnny Marco in Sofia Coppola's new
film "Somewhere". Focus Features
Ms. Coppola has done work on privileged entertainers or the pampered famous
before (the unbearable "Lost In Translation", "Marie Antoinette") but there's
less wink-wink and more contemplation here. The director isn't skewering
celebrity or fame as much as she is lampooning the way people react to or
accommodate it. The non-famous or wannabe famous project their own ideas,
expectations and insecurities onto the famous (i.e. Johnny). Ms. Coppola's
point isn't that the world of fame is necessarily an empty one (though it may be
much of the time); it's that what accompanies fame is amorphous, lacking
definition and meaning, which in turn shapes the perceptions of the famous
person being pedestaled. There's a person somewhere underneath
the heaps of phony praise, overdone gyrations and the otherwise banal. But where?
One of the most telling moments of "Somewhere" comes when a reporter asks
Johnny: "Who is Johnny Marco?" How does Johnny define himself? Is it
through his occupation? Through his daughter? Through the number of
women who throw themselves at him? Through his box-office hit film "Berlin
Agenda"? It's tempting to think anyone could direct a film like this, or
that Ms. Coppola is drawing the bulk of "Somewhere" from her own experiences as
a young child being on many a movie set and its surroundings with her legendary
father, but the director herself has mentioned that a friend's young daughter
was the inspiration for the Cleo character. And there's more nuance here
than one may appreciate.
A shrewd move is the casting of Johnny. Stephen Dorff's ordinariness is
perfect. He looks like Ryan Reynolds or Thomas Jane, or a young Dennis
Quaid or a younger Kiefer Sutherland. He could be any white male
actor, and that's the point. Mr. Dorff's face is interchangeable.
Unlike George Simmons (Adam Sandler's character in
"Funny People") or even Norma
Desmond, Johnny is likable. He's just wrapped in inertia and the drug
of celebrity. When he
realizes he can no longer breathe into the suffocating lens of Hollywood it's
anti-climatic, but it's also the first time we see Johnny understand that the
bloom has long come off the rose called fame. By this time the performances
around Johnny have become more innocent and genuine.
"Somewhere" succeeds where documentaries like "I'm Still Here" fail. Ms.
Coppola is careful to keep viewers at just enough of a distance not to get too
close to Johnny, yet maintains a definite closeness where we can empathize and endure his
solace and isolation. Those surrounding Johnny
are far more pathetic than he. Ms. Coppola's film, full of spaces and
silences, is likely a takeoff of Joaquin Phoenix, whose staged "I'm Still Here"
brought viewers too close for comfort to an egotistical and relentlessly
self-indulgent lonely soul who desperately craved the very spotlight he claimed
he was shunning. (In "Somewhere" a character cites "another actor's failed
transition into music", perhaps a jab at Mr. Phoenix's post-acting, floundering
rap star metamorphosis.)
Ms. Coppola concentrates on the vast spaces surrounding these characters.
Her screenplay is a skeletal template. Words are economy and ephemeral,
but they dangle in the air. In prior work, Ms. Coppola has appeared to go
for the profound with her minimalist approach, but "Somewhere" isn't profound or
even new so much as it is just different. (Make sense?) The director gets a great performance from Miss
Fanning, whose charm and smarts as an actress enhance this quiet, simple yet
layered character tragicomedy. She and Mr. Dorff has a steady, believable
rapport as daughter and father. Cleo is a key fixture in Johnny's life.
And music is again a key in Ms. Coppola's film work, the distinctive score of
the band Phoenix (the lead member is the director's boyfriend.) Music from
The Strokes ("I'll Try Anything Once") and Bryan Ferry ("Smoke Gets In Your
Eyes", closing credits) is effective, capturing an internal mood secreted deep
within the main player. The more you watch this excellent and understated
film, the more you realize it's alive with feeling and meaning.
"Somewhere", one of the best films of its kind, is fun, flavorful and fantastic.
Opens tomorrow in New York, San Francisco, Hollywood, Cambridge, Chicago and
Bethesda.
With: Chris Pontius, Kristina Shannon, Karissa Shannon, Laura Chiatti, Lala
Sloatman, Ellie Kemper, Nunzio Alfredo "Pupi" D'Angieri, Randa Walker, Michelle
Monaghan.
"Somewhere" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of
America for sexual content, nudity and language. The
film's running time is one hour and 38 minutes.
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