By Dan Mackie
For the Valley News
We have recently seen a couple of movies made for grown-ups. It was nice to watch films that weren’t directed at frat boys, slackers, rowdies, girl gangs, etc.
Not that I didn’t enjoy the misspent hours of my youth, but they are so far behind me that I’ve been co-opted by the Old Fart Film Society. I’m no prude. I just think that movies with adult material should have adult things to say. Drinking and Vomiting are Fun! That doesn’t qualify.
With the harrumphing out of the way, let’s go to the movies. Up in the Air with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga (Confession: I had to look her name up), was so good that I left the theater dazed. Was it 1975 again? Had I entered a time warp and major directors other than Steven Spielberg were allowed to make serious movies?
I know that my wife Dede liked it. At one moment I looked over and saw her beaming at the Mt. Rushmore handsomeness of Clooney. Graying and classy, he’s made for black and white ads shot in Paris for expensive magazines that people look at, but don’t read.
My wife looked transfixed. It made me think of Jennifer Jones, who died last year and whom readers of a certain age will recall in The Song of Bernadette, a movie about being swept away by visions larger than George Clooney. I told Dede that I’d caught her, and immediately began razzing her. “Don’t write this in your column,’’ she said.
What is outstanding about Up in the Air isn’t the mug of Clooney, who on screen is so confident and relaxed that he seems to have been sent from the otherworld with a message from Cary Grant. (If my wife’s reaction is any indication, after Clooney filled the screen the Nugget should have passed out dark chocolate to all the lady patrons.) No, the movie is about serious stuff. Clooney plays a hired gun who fires people for a living. He flies from place to place, north, south, east, west, making almost no human connections. He organizes his life for peak efficiency, and discards sobbing and desperate workers with slick dispatch. He is the corporation’s smiling smarmy face.
Vera Farmiga, of whom I could only say, umm, she looks slightly familiar, manages to match him in a mano-a-mano (she acts pretty mano) suave smack-down. They speak and duel with wit! WIT! The word used to refer to humor that reflected intelligence, and not just stains or body parts, or both.
For a short stretch the movie veers toward a Julia Roberts fantasy of reconnecting with home, finding out what really matters, and marrying a rich guy even though you’re a hooker (oops, wrong movie), but reality rattles like a dropped box of Malted Milk Whoppers. Clooney is showing signs of nascent humanity by the end, but corporations still chew people up and spit them out, and he helps wipe away the crumbs.
It was four thumbs up from the Mackies, but something about Clooney’s looks and my wife’s reaction made me uneasy. It’s been a long time since she’s gazed at me like that, unless we were so far apart that she was having trouble focusing.
It’s Complicated assuaged my angst. It stars Meryl Streep, who has become so utterly good at acting that we should just name her queen and be done with it. She is Meryl, and we are commoners, and that’s that. Last year she portrayed Julia Child, which I thought impossible without parody, but she infused the character with warmth, blood and spirit.
It’s Complicated looked like it might be total chick flick, but it has been my policy to take my significant chick to one or two of them a year as a gift, or penance, depending on the season.
Meryl was Meryl-ous, but Alec Baldwin carried the day for me. Baldwin once aspired to leading man status, but he has let himself get out of shape and is known for the eccentric TV executive he plays on 30 Rock, a critically acclaimed television comedy (how often can you type that?)
In Complicated, Baldwin is a certified hoot. He plays Streep’s ex-husband, who has married a younger woman and suddenly finds himself attracted to Streep and their shared history. Can he go home again?
This has the makings of a woman’s revenge movie (the young wife with perfect abs is not portrayed kindly), but Baldwin will not be utterly humiliated. He is a Little Rascal grown older. He’s in on the joke that has become his life. As for physical humor, he puts his dignity — and his gut and backside — on the line.
One of the things they got right is Baldwin’s rapture at walking into a house and finding a spread of delicious leftovers. This is a small detail, but it rings true. At some point in middle age many men lose their zest for the hunt, but leftovers are glorious reminders of another day.
Baldwin’s young wife would deny him sugar and fat to keep his arteries clean, but what he really wants is comfort food and lassitude, a pint of laughter, and someone to sip it with. He’s a guy. It’s simple as that.
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.