Two “genre” movies arrived in the mail together, purely by chance. They are so different from each other, yet similar, that I thought it would be fun to compare and contrast. One is “Me and Mrs. Jones” (2003) a piece of Robson Green fluff from Britain in which a Prime Minister (more like Hilary than Margaret) is romanced by a gossip columnist who is so deep in disguise that he pretends to be female and so deep in paralysis that he works for his former wife and lives in an undecorated loft with no bed.
The other is “Revenge” (1990) a vehicle for both Kevin Costner and the cinematographer Jeffrey Kimball, spring-boarding off Jim Harrison’s novella and the success of “Top Gun.” It was published in the same volume as and shares themes with “Legends of the Fall” and was supposed to have been directed by John Huston, who resisted the casting of Costner. Costner had enough clout to replace Huston with himself, which changed the balance of the film enough to offend a lot of people. The reviews are heavy with criticism of Costner. The film, which begins with extraordinary jet flying over the Mexican desert, then goes to dusty/smoky/foggy soft focus scenes of places draped with curtain sheers (sometimes rendered as tattered gauze), always with a banal TV set muttering in the background and a cage of finches twittering.
Both stories are about falling in love and the ensuing difficulties and consequences.
Harrison made enough money off his Hollywood sojourn to keep him comfortable the rest of his life, but it’s clear that someone who knew movies had a firm hand here. The number and kind of characters are severely pruned, maybe moved around (The gay nurse moves from the Mennonite healer’s place -- which is cut -- to the whorehouse.), and pushed towards stereotypes. The storyline works much better. Unfortunately, the texture and much of the point of the novella (forces and context of nature -- the written version begins with the barely living body of the man under a circling vulture) is lost. For instance, the elegant feathered English setter named “Doll,” is replaced by a sturdy golden lab named “Rock.”
Harrison was clearly doing a riff on the saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” so his Mennonite saver/healer is clearly into hot foods and tolerance, in contrast to the non-eating egomaniacs (though Quinn eats iced caviar with his fingers) who want revenge. The movie is a romantic pastiche meant to enhance the reputations of the actors. Anthony Quinn was to have a quadruple heart bypass just after the shooting of this movie but he is absolutely convincing. Madeleine Stowe, so graceful and porcelain, is a virginal figure of little personality. Her reverse in the movie is a rock star played by Sally Kirkland, comically corrupt. (In the print version the rock singers are movie crew and the woman is a steely actress.) The reversal of Costner is a Texas cowboy, James Gammon, who is meant to be totally repulsive, but to me he is one of the most appealing characters because he is more real. There are echoes of “All the Pretty Horses” or maybe the latter was the later movie, reduced in much the same way.
Both of these movies are send-ups in different ways, one that we are meant to just enjoy and one we are meant to sink into as “deep.” When I checked imdb.com to see what the general public thought, it’s clear that as usual they didn’t. What they want is escapism (the English romance being a female escape and the Western romance being male, thus violent), but the people who liked “Me and Mrs. Jones” didn’t bother to write reviews, I think maybe because they were mostly women. (The typical imdb.com reviewer sometimes seems to be a fourteen-year-old boy in Australia.) The men’s reviews are constantly puzzled by Robson Green’s appeal and Kevin Costner’s LACK of whatever it is. I would identify the quality as intelligence and stage training, especially important for comedy. Even when Green is playing an emotionally blunted Asperger’s victim (as in “Wire in the Blood”) or trauma-victim (as in “Touching Evil"), he always shows intelligence. Costner is an overgrown kid, just reacting. Quinn has the same quality as Green. Even as a massive old man he can do a convincing take-off on himself as Zorba the Greek and make us like it.
Neither of these movies is remotely realistic. Both are spectacular: London at night, Mexico in the desert. The cultures portrayed are ritualized: always the bustling support staff for the PM and always the curandera and grubby little kids in Mexico. Try to imagine the plot of “Revenge” played out in England! Impossible! Try to imagine Robson Green playing the Costner part. Nope. Gotta be Harrison Ford, probably. Dunno who Huston wanted. Ford vs. Quinn would have been interesting.
With Costner, the story has got to be Oedipal -- father/son in a world based on male-bonding, which is why the “Top Gun” beginning works to set the tone: guys love each other in a true and pure way -- very Hemingway. Women just make trouble, even when they are most virginal and irreproachable. They still just want sex. The intellectual level is lost -- Stowe hands over one litte book and the quotes she exchanges with Costner are harmless, nothing like the body of work the two share in the story.
My one little quibble with Robson Green’s story is at the end. The conceit is that he’s a blocked novelist (and no wonder with an ex-wife like his, and no wonder he only slugs his replacement without vowing deathly revenge) and yet when he gets his book done it’s a kid’s book about a frog prince. Not much insight there. The two most clear-eyed people in this tale are the PM’s daughter and Max, the female bodyguard who makes Sigourney Weaver look petite.
There’s no paper equivalent for “Me and Mrs. Jones.” It’s a script, probably figured out by several people. I’m not quite sure why there needed to be a novella origin for “Revenge.” Creds, I guess. It’s interesting to consider what Huston might have done with the tale.
In the story, Cochran and Tiby are united in burying Miryea, who has been destroyed by their competitive passion for her. Cochran digs the grave, noting the striations of the soil; Tiby sits with his face in his hands. Amador, who is far more Mexican than in the movie, watches from under his sombrero. The religious (priest and nun) and the insane (the convent is an asylum) crowd close to watch.
4 comments:
Harrison is among my five favourite living writers, so I usually hold my nose whenever I watch a movie that's been "inspired" by his work. The Harrison-related films aren't a large body, but they are remarkable, often for the ways they work around or completely avoid Harrison's chief concerns. Revenge, like Legends, was noteworthy because whoever did the treatment hewed fairly closely to the plotlines laid out by Harrison. Yet both movies were "stylish exercises in style" (to borrow David Edelstein's mock quote) and seemed bereft of genuine human content.
If you keep watching, the ouevre gets even stranger. Wolf, with Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer, is downright bizarre - a werewolf love story set in the contemporary publishing world. Even though Harrison admits his capacity for self-indugence inflated beyond measure during his Hollywood tenure, I very much doubt there's much of his hand at work in the final story.
Of the bunch, Carried Away comes closest to communicating what Harrison gets down on the page, and even that is an odd, creaky affair. If you've seen it or any of the others I'd be curious to hear what you think.
Harrison actually worked on the screenplays for "Revenge" and "Legends" which probably explains why the plots stay within "spittin' distance" of the novellas. Still, the change in emphasis -- from funky food and constant animal action to blowing curtains and banks (and banks and banks!) of candles (how did the fire marshall let them get away with that many BTU's? Must not have been there!) -- means that the moral ambiguity, the clash of motives, the blind egoes of the characters get lost.
I've put "Wolf" and "Carried Away" (there are THREE movies with that same title!) on my DVD queue at Netflix, so we'll see about them.
"Legends" I have on tape and rewatch now and then. I think there are parts that are pretty good, but it always irritates me that the women are so one-dimensional unless they are comic prostitutes. But Harrison's real strength, it seems to me, is in the word and not in the plot or the characters. In his real life he has gone from good luck to better luck, always pulled along or pushed along by friends and relatives. He knows that and is quite modest, but no one has really captured what seems to be his major inner struggle to stay clear-headed and productive. In none of these movies do we see a man who must go sit in the wilderness until his internal wars calm down.
Of course, as a female Westerner, my reactions are quite different from yours. I probably enjoy Harrison more than most women, but meet his Michigan side with scepticism.
Why is he such a favorite for you?
Prairie Mary
As Harrison gets older, everything he writes seems to form one long monologue. While that may be off-putting for readers who like some creative variety from their writers, I look forward to every new book because Harrison worries over some of the same psychic grit lodged in my own brain. Actually, now that I've said this, I'm realizing I generally don't hold his plot-driven novellas (Legends, Revenge) in the same esteem as his meandering fictive meditations (I'm especially fond of The Road Home).
His Michigan works as a landscape I can relate to, chiefly because I more or less live there, too. I think, though, that he drifts to the sentimental when he introduces younger narrators. They tend to be sweet losers whose druggy escapades leave them harmlessly baffled. Michigan's (and Ontario's) drug culture doesn't leave anyone harmlessly baffled anymore: crystal meth, carnage-strewn video games and heavy metal music or gangsta rap are a mixed cocktail that takes a much heavier toll on kids than Harrison is prone to acknowledge. As for his women, I generally prefer the older ones - they've got more character.
I also love the food, though I'd probably keel over from a coronary if I were to ever sit at one of his tables.
I quite agree with you, "Whiskey."
BTW I bought Harrison's "foodie" book for one of my excessively aesthetic Hollywood friends as a joke, but I don't think he recognized it as that. I guess he thinks I would actually recommend the intimate parts of a pig boiled in brandy, dosed with the hottest chili, and eaten with rotgut.
Prairie Mary
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