The other night, my daughter, Megan, and I saw The Words, a rather intriguing film about a writer, played by Bradley Cooper (Limitless). The fact that Cooper was in nearly every scene, that he carried the character of the writer, Rory Jansen, says a lot about his talent. This guy is good, convincing, and those baby blue eyes of his are so expressive you fall into them and forget about everything questionable thing in life. Only those eyes exist.
Okay, so maybe the shade of blue is the result of contacts. But, whatever. Cooper plays the perfect aspiring, duplicitous writer who is so desperate to be published and recognized that he plagiarizes a manuscript he finds in an old briefcase that his wife buys for him. The brief case bit is a bit over the top in this digital age – until you realize the manuscript he found was written after World War II, typed on an old Remington.
I loved the historical layers of this story, how we are led through the strange and erratic and often tragic lives of the people who are somehow involved and connected to this old manuscript. Jeremy Irons plays the old man who actually wrote the manuscript that Cooper found, a true account of his love for a French woman he met during the war, their subsequent marriage, the birth and death of their young daughter. He’s brilliant in this role. Then there’s Dennis Quaid, who plays the character of Clay Hammond who has written a bio about Cooper. Except…well, I won’t add a spoiler here.The movie is riveting – until the end. The ending is so unsatisfying that it’s hard to believe it was written by the screenwriter who conceived the film. This ending felt like a committee had the final say.
And yet, I think The Words is worth your time, if only for a retrospective. The publishing world depicted in this film is brutal, ugly. It’s the world that prompted Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America) to commit suicide. It’s the world where legends were made – Hemingway, Kesey, Fitzgerald, Rawlings. It’s the publishing world before Steve Jobs came along and leveled the playing field. You get a real sense of how publishing has changed.
I saw a movie today called “Beasts of the Southern Wild”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA6FFnjvvmg
It was pretty good,I’d give it two thumbs up.
“Cloud Atlas” looks like it will be a movie worth seeing.
I can’t wait for this one.
https://copycateffect.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/cloudatlas.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TwilightLanguage+%28Twilight+Language%29
“An epic story of humankind in which the actions and consequences of our lives impact one another throughout the past, present, and future as one soul is shaped from a murderer into a savior and a single act of kindness ripples out for centuries to inspire a revolution.” ~ Cloud Atlas summary.
Cloud atlas is also on my radar!
I saw “The Words” on opening day and enjoyed it…though I agree that the ending was odd. I didn’t get Dennis Quaid’s storyline at all. I did like that no issue was made of the relationship between Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana. It was treated as it should be: two people who love each other and no one making an issue of their interracial relationship. I hope that is the norm in movies now.
I also saw “The Master” on opening day last weekend and I was very disappointed. It was not what I had hoped and expected it to be. The film rests entirely on Joaquin Phoenix’s character and he is so thoroughly unlikable that it just made the film uncomfortable and unbearable to watch. I wanted to see more of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character and how he came to develop his religious views / religious movement, but the movie is not really about him. He’s just a supporting character in Joaquin Phoenix’s drama. All in all, I thought it was the same kind of boring as last year’s “J. Edgar.” Now, I’m eagerly anticipating Spielberg’s “Lincoln” film. I hope this one is a home run masterpiece.
I will have to see this one, Trish. Thanks for the review. If you see “The Master,” can you let me know what you think of it? 🙂
Someone said The Master is a fantastic movie – well acted, but a crazy story!
i’ve been following the blurbs on this film and have it on my must must see list – of course, anything with jeremy irons is on that list – which is a very short list of his films as i’ve seen nearly everything he’s ever done – and this will be no exception – thanks so much for the review – too bad about the ending – but it’s all about the journey anyway, and not the destination, right??? 🙂
Irons is terrific in this film, Gypsy.
I actually have a free double pass to this movie and was wondering if it was a good film to see.
Sync.