In Praise of Guy Pearce (Let's Have A Toast For The Assholes)

Did you realize that Guy Pearce is in THE KING'S SPEECH?


I certainly didn't. When I finally got around to seeing The Best Movie of the Year last week, the veteran English actor's presence was the most surprising thing in it. I had heard all about noble "king Colin", expected Geoffrey Rush to kill it as he always does, and was eagerly looking forward to seeing Ms. Bonham Carter trying to fit her crazy hair into period-authentic demure hats, but I had no advance word about Mr. Pearce.

Which is a shame, because if I had known that he was in THE KING'S SPEECH, I would have been far more excited to see it. I think he's one of the most interesting character actors we've had in recent years, from his star-making turn in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, to his Count Mondego in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, to his most-recognized work, MEMENTO. All of these roles, even his protagonists, have a similarity: they're all assholes.

But not straight-up assholes. Pearce brings an interesting quality to these dicks; they're all principled dicks. His character in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL might be an overly ambitious, sexually loathsome little prick, but he's an overly ambitious, sexually loathsome little prick that genuinely wants to solve the case and find out the truth. MEMENTO's Leonard is as convoluted and twisted a character as the film's narrative; you're constantly judging what you believe about what he believes, but at the root, his quest for vengeance is entirely sympathetic (at least if we believe what he believes). Vengeance and justice are at the heart of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, where his Mondego simply takes what he thinks should rightly be his, but comes out on the wrong side of class struggle.

He's playing an interesting mirror to the Count in THE KING'S SPEECH, once again a man of nobility, but this time at odds with the values of his class. Inasmuch as the film has a villain, he is it, but once again his villainy is based in principle, which makes him a much more interesting antagonist. He never does anything particularly reprehensible (as long as we ignore that hint of Nazi sympathies), and in fact, his position on love could easily make him the romantic hero of a different story.

As I wrote this, and realized just how much I like Mr. Pearce as an actor, I started wondering why he isn't in more films. Taking a quick look at his IMDb page, it's clear where the break occurred: the ill-fated remake of Jules Verne's THE TIME MACHINE. I briefly considered re-watching it, but there's limits to what I'm prepared to expose myself to for the betterment of a blog entry.

So, Mr. Pearce: stick to the interesting assholes.

CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN makes me feel dumb ... and I like it.

An instructor of mine once criticized a script I had written by saying that it was a play, that there was "nothing cinematic about it." That comment has stuck with me a long time, and I think it's because some of my favourite movies could be described the same way. WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. DINER. BEFORE SUNRISE and BEFORE SUNSET. The visuals aren't what do it for you in those movies, it's the characters and dialogue that keep you on the edge of your seat. In that spirit, I present you with CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN.

CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN is basically a 90-minute two-hander between Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter over one night. You could see it staged as a play very easily. But CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN dances neatly around that theatrical complaint with its use of split-screen. The entire film is done in split-screen, with each half of the frame focused on one of the characters, and occasionally showing their mindsets. For example, there are scenes where one of the characters tells a story, and in the other frame, a filmed version of that story plays out. There are also times when the frames nearly synch, usually at moments of extreme intimacy.

Sound gimmicky? It is, but it's also occasionally brilliant, especially when the film allows the characters to breathe and forgets about dazzling your eyes and over-stimulating your brain. Aaron Eckhart is tremendous in this film, emotionally devastated and barely keeping it together, childishly selfish and lashing out from beneath a suave exterior. It makes those memories of when they showed you THE CORE in science class (at the end of term, of course) seem like a bad dream. Helena Bonham Carter is also extremely impressive, playing suitably mysterious and vague, alternatively cold and fragile, deeply sad and world-weary with flashes of charm and wit.

There's some great ideas in the film that the split-screen format perfectly exploits, like when the characters imagine alternate reactions within scenes that play out into alternate futures, or when a character says a line and we see how the other hears it (with a different inflection and emphasis). The film starts to layer these sorts of experiments with increasing frequency as the film plays out, to the film's detriment. Just when you're starting to really engage with the characters and their past, the film starts jumping all over the place trying to get you deeper into the psyche of the characters in the moment and showing off cool new uses of the split-screen.

I hate to say it, but it might just be too dense for me - and I mean that in the sense that there's so much to process. It feels unfair to criticize a movie for having too much going on, but that's how I feel sometimes. I'm still trying to process what Eckhart's multiple reactions mean - and which one Bonham Carter is reacting to - while the film has moved on and is showing Bonham Carter's version of their past and is asking me to compare it to Eckhart's version from twenty minutes ago. It gets to be a little much.

Overall, though, CONVERSATIONS WITH OTHER WOMEN is a fantastically unique film with some great performances that I'd highly recommend you check out. I'll gladly lend you my copy. But still, I never had these problems with a play.