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Rating: Country: USA Release Date: December 3, 2004 Distributor: Columbia Pictures Director: · Mike Nichols Cast: · Jude Law · Natalie Portman · Julia Roberts · Clive Owen Related Sites: · IMDb Grade: A

An interesting paradox presents itself in acclaimed Director Mike Nichol's new film about human relationships and their emotional intricacies. While "Closer" is a film that delves into the inherent primal and emotional nature of our sexual relationships, the themes are universal in that they resonate for all relationships, calling into question our behaviour and what drives/motivates our actions. There's a line that Jude Law's character, Dan, says to lover Anna (Julia Roberts) that's been reverberating in my own head for a few days now. I saw the movie twice, you see, because of lines like these, so smooth and well delivered that you don't always feel their impact till well after the film is over. Films of a higher caliber aspire to do this, but very few actually accomplish the feat.

The scene that "did it for me," made me a willing captive to this movie's hypnotic charrm was Dan accusing Anna of betraying him. "You didn't have the courage to let him hate you," he spits at her full of self-loathing. She retorts that it was kindness that drove her to act the way she did and furthermore, had Dan's former lover, Alice, begged him to make love to her, Anna would excuse Dan for doing so. Whether or not this would have transpired is beyond the point for in doing, Anna is absolved of blame; in fact she becomes a martyr, a compelling insight into people's rationalizations and our level of honor and responsibility to one another. Why do we bother with all the guilt, forethought, and petty rivalries when in the end, we act purely on instinct and out of our own selfish needs and moreover, what prevents us from becoming "animals" with no ethical boundaries?

While none of the four characters: Dan, Anna, Alice, or Larry are truly sympathetic or likeable, 3/4 struggle with these issues. Larry, (Clive Owen in his finest form) may be crass and lack kindness, but in contrast to the other three, he's self assured and scarily intuitive about human nature. He knows how to separate emotion from logic and how to use people's weaknesses to his own advantage. He is vengeful and slightly hard, but you end up finding the most satisfaction in his character because while possessing a lot of unwholesome traits, Larry is not without a sense of justice and honesty. Of the four, he is the only one who doesn't openly lie in the film- a peculiar detail in and of itself. Why is it that the female characters lie so easily? Another societal insight emerges from this and that is that the concept or rationalization of kindness acts a barrier for both Anna and Alice to be entirely honest with themselves or their lovers.

In the end, Dan comes to the conclusion that truth is what "separates us from being animals," but the truth that he worships ultimately destroys him and leaves him none the happier. Truth acts in opposition to kindness and as the movie shows us, the former can be as brutal and hurtful in physical manifestation as it is at its emotional core. One would never figure the archetypal sensitive artist Dan to be capable of brutality, yet he's the impetus for all the pain and deception in the film. As Alice says to Dan in reference to his dalliances with Anna, "When was your moment? The moment when you said to yourself, 'I can resist this. I can walk away." She is assuming that we all are capable of such moments. For some (as is the case with Anna) that moment seems to last much longer, but doesn't ultimately affect her unsavory, duplicitous behaviour. She admits to "being disgusting," but also appears (underneath her cold armor) to be the neediest, emotionally, aside from Dan. When Dan tells Alice why he loves Anna and not her, he believes it is because "She doesn't need me." When in fact, he is deceived or foolishly mistaken. It wasn't that Anna "didn't need him" thus making her MORE desirable. It was quite the opposite in fact, it was the she DID need him, more so than Alice. She needed him to desire her, to make her feel wanted and she needed this validation not only from Dan, but from Larry as well. In contrast, Alice, while on the surface, seeming needy, was actually the opposite. All she wanted was to love Dan and to care for him. "I'll be happier with her," he tells Alice as he's breaking up with her. Alice's reply: "No one can make you happier than me. No one will ever love you as much."

She's right of course, but do we all really want to be happy? Anna doesn't. As Larry says, "Anna's a depressive. Depressives don't wanna be happy. If they were happy then they would have to live." Larry understands Anna's nature, while Dan projects his romantic idealisms onto his heroine. Dan is never fully capable of seeing his women as they are and appreciating them as such. Perhaps what makes Larry and Anna's relationship survive is that Dr. Larry, the pragmatist isn't living with any grandeur of illusions about life. He never hesitates in telling Anna about his indiscretion and when questioned about why he told her, he says "Because I love you and you don't lie to someone you love." We come to admire Larry because he lives by a code of conduct and he's astute, much sharper and more capable than Dan. While it isn't clear what drives Anna back to him, it's quite conceivable that she reached the same logical conclusion as the rest of us.

The wild card in all this is of course Alice. She's a Lolita-esque character, so beholden to her nubile sexuality and so hyper aware of her magnetism that she is incapable of owning her identity. She's a modern-day Holly Go Lightly, but with cunning and a little malice in her heart. She's vulnerable, yet closed off. Alice was another of the reasons I revisited the film because I couldn't fathom if it was the character or Natalie Portman's portrayal that felt off the mark to me. Maybe it's because she stars with Clive Owen, someone who owns his character and hones his craft so well that her portrayal seems a bit shallow and underdeveloped. Jude Law does an above average job of convincing us that he can play the tragic hero and Julia Roberts is satisfactory as Anna.

I was admittedly disappointed that there was no soundtrack for the film as I had planned on reviewing it, in lieu of the film. I had high expectations after all. Mike Nichols did "The Graduate" which catapulted Simon & Garfunkel from obscurity in the 60s. In the end, I liked the approach Nichols took with Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter." The song accompanies the beginning and end of the film and bears relevance to one of the characters. I won't give it up yet. As I've disclosed much of the plot of the film already, this is a goody I think you need to figure out on your own, even if that means revisiting the film. Again and again.