Closer (2004) - movie review

Closer (2004) – rating (4.5/5)

Cast:    Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts

Direction : Mike Nichols

Writer : Patrick Marber

Review by Zulfiqar

While watching the movie, Closer (2004), you could understand why romance is much more complicated than rocket science. At least, in rocket science, your failed launches have a compensation of repeated trials.         

Based on the play by Patrick Marber, ‘Closer’ boldly and shamelessly make us see inside the turmoil of love and passion and the way it leaves destruction in its wake.

It starts with a man falling for a woman. He is a obituary columnist. She is a waitress (if you don’t count her earlier career of stripping). He moves in with her, but after some duration, he falls for anther woman, a photographer – especially for book-covers. Didn’t know that such career existed, nor did I know an obituary columnist. With his momentary prank on cybersex chat gone wrong, he plays cupid to a dermatologist bringing him close to the photographer. Cupid laments while they get married. And then the dynamics take a real and strong turn. Eventually, there is a winner with losses and losers with memories and compensations.

Patrick Marber’s words are insightful and incisive going directly for the emotion of the characters they are feeling. They and even us, feel they are naked with their feelings out. But they aren’t. The truth behind the feelings is either a lie or a misguided truth. Love and the strong passions, we feel, are as rigid as they are diffuse. One of the characters thinks he/she wins, but when losses come in the way, the person tries to remain in the game hanging with the fingernails.

Veteran director Mike Nichols uses the silent background as a powerful medium in the dialogue. This silence makes the words more crisp and clear and the expressions on the characters’ faces more vivid. He employs Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt’s long and short-shots to convey the emotions without even dialogue too. We perceive the oncoming emotion with the pictures, more than words, sometimes. Look at the 2 breakup scenes, which drives the point with less dialogue from the person who is breaking the relationship. The suffering party discerns everything from the other’s facial expressions. The scenes are elaborate like in the play, probably, but they are indulging with an emotional equivalent.

Jude Law plays his character like a manipulator and a hopeless romantic. His expressions display a fluidity in the way they change and adapt. But Natalie Portman’s character has strong vulnerable moments and her performance is spirited with lot of wild energy inside. Clive Owen’s character is innovative in the way he tries to get acquainted with rejection better by facing it directly rather than hiding from it. The scenes are riveting and as much embarrassing as they are frank. Julia Roberts plays a sensible lady in the mix but in the long run, her sensibility questionable.

The movie has the power to ruminate us with the dynamics of love and sex and passion and envies. The script deals cunningly with the way jealousy is crept by the unknown and unseen. One of the four, a man, divulges the other man about a fact regarding the former’s lady. Nobody knows the validity of the fact, including us. Look how the writing turns this nugget of information so vital to the relationship. It sows doubts and takes roots in the fellow’s brain. He accuses her of concealing it, but then she doesn’t comment. How true is she to him? does her lack of commenting make her unfaithful. The question hangs till the last moment. How the writing answers it is a stroke of genius in itself.

Watch the movie and become a little informative about the ocean called love. But when you think you have seen it all, either you haven’t or didn’t meet the right person. But then, is there a concept called right person? We keep wondering.