Wolf

Casual readers of these pages may assume that the numerous entries on the horrible and supernatural betoken an unhealthy obsession, but this is not the case. What we perceive in our world, the mundane simplicity of money and biological needs, is only a fraction of what might actually exist. That doesn't mean, of course, that the monsters stalking us when darkness falls are any realer, cached away in some corner that conspiracies and good luck prevent us from ever detecting (not impossible, but very unlikely). Nor do they express, as pseudo-science has put forth in their computerized mumbo-jumbo, unconscious desires to kill or enslave; those urges are nothing more than the products of very sick minds whom reason, love, and charity might never reach. No, all of this has nothing to do with reality because it has to do with the greatest mystery of our world, that of the human soul. We neither rightly know whether we possess souls, nor, if we do, what on or beyond earth might happen to them when our bodies twitch and exhale for the last time. Some faiths are convinced that our souls move on somewhere – to another body, another plane of existence, even perhaps another dimension – and those bodies are not limited to fellow humans. And although this review's title is also a translation of my surname, it actually refers to this diverting film.

Our protagonist is Will Randall (Jack Nicholson, in a last hurrah before age triumphed), a literary editor and loyal employee of publishing magnate Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer). Randall's rapport with his staff, who obviously care about his well-being, perhaps extended his long and generally productive time at the publishing house – exactly enough time for Alden to take Randall's steady work for granted. As it were, the fiftysomething Randall with his soft reserve, mild manners, and inability to come up with new ideas almost obliges Alden to look towards a future with someone not a few years from social security as the house's steward. The future turns out to be a smarmy and revolting fannycushion by the name of Stewart Swinton (James Spader), who also happens to be Randall's protégé and in every way his foil. While Randall is good-natured, dull, unimaginative, and sensitive, Swinton's boisterous creativity is devoted utterly and completely to his selfish advancement regardless of the obstacles or societal conventions. Alden breaks the news to Randall with the smug cowardice of someone who thinks that he's being kind to lower creatures ("Will, you should really consider working for our East European section" – contempt that only the rich and merciless can think of as honesty). Despite booming political interest in the region, East European books were more popular when they weren't allowed to be published in their home countries; there also lingers the unsubtle hint that a second-rate editor should be handling the "second world." Randall is shattered; Swinton's blinking claims of innocence are undermined by his greasy, almost fanged grin; and the new East European editor retreats to the childless house he shares with his indifferent wife (Kate Nelligan) – a physician who often looks at him as if he had just been pulled out of a morgue drawer – and, exhausted, he falls right asleep.

It is still dark when he awakes. His wife returns home and informs him that it's eight o'clock – in the evening. How tired does someone have to be to sleep twenty-two hours? A good question that Randall does not immediately answer because he's too preoccupied with a weird realization: not only does he feel completely rejuvenated, his five senses have been heightened to superhuman levels. He walks through his office building and distinctly perceives the details of phone conversations a few hundred feet away; he can smell the vodka on his coworker's breath from across the floor; and, much more pertinent to his work, he can speed through manuscripts without the pharmacy rack spectacles he's relied on for years. Randall is not a particularly brilliant man, but he knows intervention when he sees it and consults an Indian mystic (the late Om Puri) on the nature of his ailment – if that's really the right word. The mystic weaves him a tale around the curse of that old fiend, the canis lupis, one of the most feared and misunderstood of the earth's predators. "One doesn't need to be bitten by a wolf to turn into a wolf," avers the mystic, "some people can become wolves because of their souls," or something to that effect. But Randall has already stopped listening: he was, in fact, bitten by a wolf (one evening after slamming into the animal on a snowy deserted road at the film's very beginning) although the fur trade made them extinct in upstate New York centuries ago. The mystic concludes his briefing with a strange request with which Randall probably does not comply, and the plot devolves in very entertaining fashion into a love triangle with Swinton, Randall, and Alden's stunning and rebellious daughter (Michelle Pfeiffer). First-rate acting (especially from Spader, who is stupendous) and a wealth of amusing detail separate this story from many others with similar themes, structure, and violent revelations. And the ending, apparently refilmed many times, will remind you of an old phrase: homo homini lupus – man is wolf to man, or in this case a whole pack of beasts.

Dead Man

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men.
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.

                                                                             Blake, "Auguries of Innocence"

When I began graduate school twenty autumns ago I enrolled in a rather promising class with the simple name of "Literature and Film." Unfortunately, a large chunk of that literature turned out to be the yawn-inducing theories of the trendy; even more unfortunate were some of the cinematic selections that ranged from dull to mindlessly pretentious – but these are the wages of academe. Still, among these wax figures roamed works of tantalizing genius (such as this fantastic film) and a few others that engendered little more than indifference, including this film heralded as a landmark in independent cinema. The best thing I can say about Stranger than Paradise is that the foreign destination is Hungary. Studying Jarmusch's works, apart from a couple of more recent and commercial releases, one notices a curious and recurrent decision to portray the outsider against the basic plot conceit of flight or travel (Jarmusch's characters always seem to be fleeing). Another structural method is his unorthodox use of literary texts as motifs, with one author in particular being featured in this film.

Our premise is most unusual: a Native American takes William Blake the late nineteenth-century accountant and aspiring apiarist (Johnny Depp) for the long-dead poet of the same name. Yet before their fateful encounter, Blake must commit the crime that will justify the film's title; and since the setting is a Western, there are crimes aplenty to be had. Blake – who goes by Bill and hasn't a clue about poetry much less his glorious eponym – is first seen on one of those endless trains that seemed to travel for days through the American West. The other passengers smile at him with some pity because he, by all indications, is nothing if a mild-mannered gentleman quite out of his element in this Darwinistic morass. Responding timidly to the questions of a coal-charred fellow (Crispin Glover), Blake reveals that he hails from Cleveland, near Lake Erie, his parents are deceased and his fiancée is with someone else – in other words, he is absolutely alone. He arrives at the office of his prospective employer, the despotic John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum, in his last role), is mocked and almost killed, and leaves without the job he was promised two months before. Broke and friendless, Blake wanders into a saloon. He is a boy in a man's world (he cannot even afford a large bottle), and we suspect that his only way out of this fix is to meet a girl. Not the right girl, mind you, but a girl (this is a Western and not a romantic comedy). He does indeed meet a girl; and he meets her the way you're supposed to meet a girl in Westerns – through a random act of cruelty or misfortune. The girl he finds, Thel (Mili Avital), is a very pretty former prostitute with the requisite organ donor requirements (including the heart of gold) who has become a "paper flower girl." More importantly, she has a crazy ex-boyfriend (Gabriel Byrne). The boyfriend walks in on the couple in bed, tries to shoot Blake but kills Thel, and is then shot by a reluctant Blake, quite obviously a first-time gun handler. When we learn that the ex-boyfriend was called Charles Dickinson and was the son of Blake's near-employer, a price is put on the accountant's head and our bumbling story devolves into a chase.

The Native American in this Cowboys-and-Indians tale is Xebeche or, as he prefers, Nobody (Gary Farmer). Spurred on as a young boy to hunt elk by tribal elders, Xebeche is captured by British soldiers and eventually makes his way to London as a circus sideshow. His enthusiasm for British ways – he perceives assimilation as his only hope of freedom – leads to his education in the finest of British literature, including Blake, whom he rightly deems a visionary. These two lonely men (Xebeche has been shunned by his people for his foreign manners) meet by chance, decide that they can only delay death for so long, and wander as the requisite odd couple through the American West. Xebeche explains his mores, his ways, and the ways of nature that are afflicted upon the "stupid whites" who continue to destroy his culture and land. But his description of his captivity is even more elegant:

And each time I arrived in another city, somehow the white men had moved all their people there ahead of me. Each new city contained the same white people as the last, and I could not understand how a whole city of people could be moved so quickly.

The duo are soon followed by three Dickinson-commissioned hitmen (in a great scene, we see them pointing guns at the huge portrait of Dickinson in his office before he arrives), one of whom is perversely deranged in a very modern way. And here I must permit myself an aside: there is a certain charm to Westerns that appeals most notably to teenage boys but which has always been lost on me and I mentioned before what some people think of rebels and rulebreakers. Perhaps I care little for them because they evince Darwinism at its worst, the predatory, vulturine methods of squatting, hunting, defending and not caring about anyone else except themselves. Dickinson, the embodiment of survivalist thuggery and greed, is a bully who likes fine clothes, a ruffian who likes fine wine, someone who will never forgive a wrong, whose grudges and vendettas extend through generations, someone who is sexist, chauvinistic, peevish, and childish in every sense, someone who will live and die by violence. In other words, he is nothing more than the gangster of today. That Blake misses his opportunity to work for him should be seen as kismet, especially given the events that ensue.

Yet something happens to Blake along the way, and it may be on account of the strange war paint that Xebeche leaves on his face while sleeping. He does not become the poet Blake so much as a modern interpretation of the poet, part decadent dandy and part vigilante murderer. Not that Blake has much to do with killers or any type of violence; but his poetry, glorious and beautiful and wonderfully prophetic has a scourge-like quality to it much in keeping with a Biblical avenger (mentioned in passing, as it were, by three loathsome fur trappers). The accountant Blake's last visions suggest hell, with the strangeness of pagan faces and their unholy rituals, garb and language. Perhaps the poet Blake might have lamented the crimes against the poor by alleged Christians in the New World as he lamented them in London. Whatever the case, some are indeed born without the faintest sliver of light or hope, and we who do not count ourselves among them must remember our privileges before we trespass against those of others. Not, admittedly, a very Western epithet. But the poet Blake was as far removed from such bedlam as anyone else, which brings us back to those sagacious auguries:

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

There Will Be Blood

There is an adage about moneymaking that suggests it's not that hard if that's all you want to do with your life; in other words, if you are willing to trample anyone or anything in your way. In many countries around the world, citizens are no longer allowed to exploit their compatriots, charge whatever outrageous sum they'd like for their goods or destroy competitors' supplies in order to jack up their own profits. America is not, however, one of them. For all the freedoms it offers – and freedoms are privileges – America remains an immigrant land of financial opportunity, the paragon of Darwinian capitalism where demand and supply regulate one another in constant evolution and erosion of everything else. Its vast natural resources, enterprising spirit, and lack of anything resembling a common history allow it to do whatever it takes to get ahead (some will call history the conscience of a people or nation, but such a generalization becomes silly the moment it is uttered). However one feels about the American path to riches, no other country stands aside so passively to permit the tireless verve of the businessman to maximize its productivity; no other country protects those with ambition and resources against those who lack the same drive and material capacity; and no other country tacitly hints at unlimited power and unlimited wealth to those strong enough to want it. Perhaps "strong" is not quite the right word here; but nowhere else on our lonely planet could this great film have taken place.

Our film has the simplest of plots: a poor, unconnected, unloved man of Faustian ambition changes nothing about himself except the size of his bank accounts and what actually happens is far less important than how it happens. In films of such scope, the first scene will often be a metaphor for the entire work. And sure enough, before a word is uttered, we see a lean and hungry man, muscled and dirty, hammering away at a large chunk of rock, switching his blows from his right arm to his left, the peen of his hammer as sharp as the diamond of his gimlet eye. This man is Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his one aim in life is to make money. His dedication to the ground and the forces beneath it will remind even the casual observer of devil worship. So will, as it were, his raising of a black hand when he finds petrol or when his son is dabbed on the forehead with petrol by a colleague. A close observer of these first, mostly wordless scenes, will detect the true relationship between Plainview and his son, H.W., so that the revelation at the film's end will shock only H.W., who perhaps, upon reflection, isn't that shocked at all. 

In the course of thirteen years (1898-1911) of toil and trouble, Plainview finds countless barrels of petroleum and no longer needs to bear the burden of his wealth. But as he finds more and more oil, oil comes to find him. He is approached by a young man called Paul Sunday (Paul Dano, in an extraordinary performance) who claims that his familial territory has black gold, and he wishes to strike a deal. What is remarkable about this first exchange is how quickly both Plainview and Sunday sense the fraudulence in each other's mannerisms, as if they were two animals sniffing in disgust at stuffed ringers. Plainview's first statement, "What can I do for you?" is as great a lie as any line in the film and the exact opposite of his purpose in every human interaction (later, at a weak moment, he would admit that he wants "no one else to succeed," that he hates most people, and that he wants to "earn enough money so that he can get away from everyone"). Sunday then asks Plainview to what church he belongs, to which Plainview answers – substituting in his mind "source of income" for "church," you can almost see the pause needed to change vocabulary – he "likes them all." Plainview eyes up the boy in that way some people have of looking at food or available women and determining the risk of satisfaction, then agrees to an advance. Sunday is only to be paid in full upon retrieval of the petrol. And what if there is no petrol, is the question hanging in the air. Then, adds Plainview, "I will take much more from you than my five hundred dollars," at which point Sunday should have run out that door as quickly as he could and never looked back. 

But Sunday does no such thing. When Plainview and H.W. arrive on his family's property, Paul is nowhere to be found; in his stead is his identical twin, Eli. Is Eli really a twin or the same person? Plainview looks at his son to see whether a child, unwise to the world, can tell and the camera gradually wraps around H.W. as Plainview watches him closely – but the matter is never explicitly resolved. Plainview charms the Sundays, and soon has his drills ripping up their riches. He has other suitors, and his method of selling his services to them bears an uncanny resemblance to that of a surgeon: "We have to act quickly," "the extraction," "These are men I know," all suggest some kind of miracle operation, when in reality he is offering nothing more than affordable exploitation for himself and himself alone. In the meantime Eli has become a preacher for the ridiculously named "Church of the Third Revelation," delivering his sermons with the raucous gusto of what we have come to expect from certain American sects although without losing his characteristic snicker, a method of smiling without really smiling that will remind the viewer of this actor. The awesome casting out of an old woman's arthritis, one of the more magnificent scenes in recent memory, is witnessed by Plainview against his will, and this is where his face tells us that Sunday's talk is as false and preposterous as his own rustling and hustling. What separates them, at least in Plainview's mind, is the oilman's directness and brutal (in the literal sense of the word) honesty. But the gulf between them is more than the difference between hypocrisy and ruthlessness. Sunday is always on the verge of implosion, of collapsing either under the weight of his sins or that of the world (importantly, we are never persuaded, even in the famous final scene, as to whether or not Sunday believes in his own preaching; the matter is left purely to our speculation), while Plainview, like the oil wells that explode and burn on repeated occasions during the film, is a walking volcano. He is capable of anything and he knows it, which makes him one of the most dangerous men alive.

Careful directors and writers will invariably place an image or motif of great significance at the halfway point of their work, and at the center of There Will Be Blood, Plainview stares at an alternative reality of himself. He is greeted at his doorstep by his long-lost half-brother Henry (Kevin J. O'Connor). Henry has failed as much as Daniel has triumphed: his moustache and hair are far thinner than Daniel's, he possesses none of his brother's athleticism or energy, and he appears as passive and armed with as little foresight as Daniel is aggressive and conniving. Needless to say, Henry is also unemployed and penniless. Through his half-brother, who was conceived with their father's mistress Mary Branch, Daniel learns the details of his past again, from a slightly different perspective and, for a brief time, Daniel becomes confessional and sentimental. He talks about the house he loved when he was a child, his struggles to make it as an oilman, and dismisses his initial failure with the words: "I went to Kansas. I couldn't stay there. I don't like to explain myself." Apart from the very real threats that Plainview makes and often carries out, this admission might be the truest statement in the entire film. Plainview wants his actions to explain everything – his insatiable lust for money, his misanthropy, his hatred of the Church, and his soothing, intoxicating way of making people do exactly what he wants by being utterly unpredictable. This modus operandi is maintained until the bitter end of the film and Plainview's bottomless glasses of bottomless moonshine; and in the end, however off-kilter it has been accused of being, there is nothing that we could put past him.

While Dano is consistently superb, Day-Lewis exceeds all expectations: his performance is simply one of the greatest in the history of cinema. Although allegedly molded on the affectations of this famous director, Plainview's persona throbs with vibrant authenticity without being an imprint of anyone in particular. Many actors have won accolades for channeling historical figures through assiduous study, physical resemblance, and, of course, a great deal of talent, but Day-Lewis creates a stunning, complete, and yet mystical figure. We understand his general motivations but not the small, distant reasons behind them, and, despite his volatility, his actions correspond perfectly to his intentions. During his unwanted baptism in Sunday's Church, Plainview famously mutters "there's my pipeline" as he is declared a new member, and his sparkling, half-drunk diatribes to H.W. and Sunday towards the end of the film will be quoted for years. And what should we make of the blood in the title? Considering the heartless drilling methods Plainview employs regardless of the welfare of his workers, we immediately think of indentured servitude, of the exploited labor force that begot some very misbegotten ideas about class structure, and the weak and poor who died so that Daniel Plainview could live out his days in luxury. But the blood is also the earth's blood, oil itself; it is the watchword featured in Sunday's Church; it is the lineage passed on to H.W., who might harbor some doubts about his father's love after a freak derrick explosion renders him deaf; it is the bloodline of Henry and Daniel, the Plainview brothers who couldn't be more plainly opposite. Perhaps in a universe of frauds, impostors, and changelings, Daniel Plainview is the realest of them all. He hasn't the faintest inhibition about anything in this world, which he considers a sham, and the next world which, his rhetoric notwithstanding, he seems to fear. Yes, he fears death because in death, unlike in life, there is no inequality. Except, of course, for those who will be damned. And some people know precisely what's coming to them.

The Elephant Man

It is rare among reviews of this film to find something negative or dissuading about the affective power of the title character's plight. There are such opinions; yet the dissent voiced inevitably comes off as captious. For whatever reason – the biographical discrepancies, the poverty of London, the dim, piebald tenements, the elephants and the nightmares they trample through at the film's beginning – some element rings false, as if we were not watching a tragedy with its necessary melodrama and instead scrutinizing the real life and times of Joseph Merrick. This approach is fundamentally incorrect yet, as we shall see, no impediment to enjoying the film. 

The fictionalized version of the story is better known than the truth: rambling around late Victorian London, a celebrated physician, Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), comes across a circus sideshow featuring a being known only as the Elephant Man (John Hurt). What or who this man could be is not immediately apparent; whether he is even fully human can be termed dubious by the superstitious soul. In any case Treves, a man both of science and faith, pays his way to a viewing and discovers a sad, horribly misshapen being that he hopes secretly is an ament. The sentiment behind such a whispered wish is clear: should this poor creature actually be able to recognize his hideous separation from the majority of mankind, his fate would be all the more intolerable. Treves's medical interest in the Elephant Man may be likened rather coldly to a philologist's interest in an undeciphered manuscript: he does indeed pity this being, the origin of whose malady is at once both fantastic and terrifying, but is not so much interested in attempting to cure him as in availing himself of the obscure knowledge that might explain his disease. Treves mentions his credentials and prestigious jobs at the London Hospital and Medical College, is summarily dismissed by the wicked handler Bytes (Freddie Jones), and retreats to his offices with his imagination racing. We understand that the Elephant Man will find Treves and continue the conversation they never had, but we cannot possibly foresee the subjects of their discourse.  

Shortly thereafter Treves's offices are visited, to the great chagrin of the nursing staff, by a man with his head under a makeshift mask that makes him resemble a mummy, although he may be more accurately compared to this fictional character. Treves ultimately finds him crouching alone in the shadows, asks for names, how long he has been in this state, and, as a medical precaution, about his parents. But the masked man does not answer and stares like a ghost waiting for its victim to guess the reason for its spectral visit. We next see some of him in a lecture hall full of, one supposes, London's most renowned physicians and anatomists. Against a light and curtain with his silhouette now resembling that of this famous movie monster, he is subjected to objective comments on his affliction as well as a few pseudo-comforting asides ("entirely intact genitals; perfectly normal left arm"). He eventually identifies himself as John Merrick, a twenty-one-year-old Englishman of humble birth but some learning; this latter detail is not made evident until Merrick recites the twenty-third psalm, again recalling the cultured and sensitive Frankenstein's monster. In many ways the film hitherto has proceeded as such films are supposed to proceed: the misunderstood creature is discovered by chance by a scientist who has both a kindly and self-aggrandizing side; numerous peripheral characters deride him and suggest that making him a patient is pointless; and the scientist is in turn protective and frustrated with his creature as if it were an impudent child. It is also quite typical that the cruelty everyone inflicts upon him is due to the notion that he is somehow not quite human, a bestial hybrid of heavy breathing and mummy wraps, a degradation and insult to the human condition itself.  

Yet the twist comes when Merrick is accepted as an intelligent and righteous Christian who has been dealt one of the hardest of lots. For a while our black-and-white pictures come alive with color: Merrick has been redeemed; Merrick is one of us. After a letter from Victoria carried by Alexandra, the Princess of Denmark, establishes Merrick as a permanent resident of the London Hospital (overriding the barbarous rant of an allegedly beneficent doctor who claims he only wishes to help the poor), we know that this bliss will not last the entirety of the film and not only because we know something of the real Joseph Merrick (mistakenly called John in the film following the error in Treves's memoirs). Merrick is constantly harangued by the mobs wishing him no real harm apart from the mockery to which they believe that he, as the circus sideshow freak, must be relegated. In a strange way, he goes along with it; one can tell when they show him his mirror and he waits a few seconds before uttering a histrionic howl. He is both appalled at such ridicule and playing along in a role he cannot avoid, a fate not dissimilar to that of the bullied child tired of denying his tormentors. And alas, despite the differences between the life of the real Joseph Merrick and the slightly Romanticized screen version, we are well aware of how matters will end.  

About those few who did not admire the film: dissent against The Elephant Man has been uniform, which means there is at stake a philosophical not an aesthetic argument. Critics seem to believe that the extremity of Merrick's condition coupled with the smoothing over of a couple of important facts – most notably, that the real Merrick required several jaw operations before being able to speak – point to a schmaltzy attempt to win hearts and minds. As it were, this could not be further from the truth. Apart from the unnecessary opening nightmare scene (repeated much later with factory workers or stokers, a mob with a mirror, the long trunk of an elephant, the boot of a lyncher, and swirling, ominous clouds as if he were born from God's turmoil), the film does not veer from a straight dramatic plot. It does less to tug on our heartstrings than present a situation whose every facet could easily be deemed tragic. Merrick's favorite words are "my friend," on which he lingers, relishing them like the name of the person he will always adore. When a well-known actress (Anne Bancroft) invites him to the theater, he states as plainly as in a police report: "I am happy every hour of the day. My life is full because I know that I am loved. I have gained myself. I could not say that were it not for you." At that same production Merrick sees the woman in the cage, the fairy, the swans, the whole atmosphere of discovery and wonder, and understands that he must always view this world from the outside. And indeed, each scene of The Elephant Man is ended so abruptly we are allowed but a moment to mull it over; ripostes are not provided, simply the mood is broached and left as that, a shift of mood. The brevity of these vignettes suggests that we are leafing through a photo album, the last remains of a tired existence. So Treves is quite right when he admits to his spouse that, "I'm beginning to believe that Mr. Bytes and I are very much alike." For him and most everyone else, the life of Joseph Merrick will always be a spectacle he can watch in a comfortable seat from afar.

Sideways

The history of art is generously peppered with odd couples, a conceit that in the cinema of more recent years has engendered the label “buddy movie.” Whether the twosome actually has to get along is unimportant provided they gain a better understanding of one another – and, one hopes, of themselves – by the end of their journey. Without disparaging the happy endings required of many popular films, the odd couple may be considered happy because they are not alone. In fact, the old adage about opposites attracting has much to do with each member of that couple embodying the qualities that the other lacks. The most visceral evidence of such a phenomenon can be found in high school and colleges around the world: the good-looking girl and her ill-favored best friend; the interethnic couple misunderstood in different ways by society at large; the quiet nerdy guy who cannot procure bathroom directions from a female yet somehow gets along with his ebullient, rambunctious stud of a roommate. One cannot help but notice that such strange pairings are fewer over time, perhaps because most people who age and survive in this world become more complete. They develop aspects of both odd couple members, making themselves less of a caricature and more into a genuine human being. And it is a textbook example of the last duo and a certain level of immaturity that drive this acclaimed film.

Our protagonist is the fortyish Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti), but you may know him from your high school or college yearbook as someone else. Nature has not blessed him with looks and he has chosen to go along with that assessment. Little is done in the way of exercise, grooming, or presentability, but drinking and reading are habitual and daily. Miles is shown driving while reading, using the toilet while reading, and stealing money from his mother presumably so that he can consume the expensive wines he values almost as much as books as a source of intoxication. He was married to a woman now with a much more successful husband; he teaches English to schoolchildren immune to subtlety; and he has been writing a novel that keeps getting longer and more preposterous – a lot like life itself. He has not recovered from any of these disasters and believes, as good writers invariably do, that the sum of his failures can be transformed into a fantastic work of art, which is why writers often believe in redemption as strongly as other people of faith. The gaping chasm in Miles’s life is clearly structure, which explains his continued friendship with his former college roommate, Jack Cole (Thomas Hayden Church). 

Jack and Miles have plain, Anglo-Saxon names and in general act their parts well. They communicate through shared memories, not real-time emotions, and the bulk of their conversations involve agreement on the past. Jack is particularly parsimonious when it comes to sympathy or despair, as both of those sentiments could derail his perpetual mirth so handy in his profession as an actor. Now enough has been said about the perils of spending too much time with people paid to be something they are not. But Jack is a real person insofar as his emotions and thoughts suggest a teenage boy who has yet to fulfil his potential – this despite the fact that apart from some soap opera work, Jack’s “acting” consists mainly of voiceovers for commercials. Jack is the back-slapping polyanna that everyone needs from time to time, but who cannot be thought of as a sustained source of comfort. For that reason, when Jack decides to marry an Armenian-American heiress and go beforehand on a week-long bachelor junket through the California wine valley, the project appeals to Miles’s sense of both taste and camaraderie. 

Trips like these have three ostensible aims: debauchery in whatever form fate allows it to assume, reputation among one’s peers, and the rather nebulous activity known as “male bonding.” Jack gladly hands the car keys to Miles who, as a hard-core alcoholic with the vague semblance of a budget, knows the finest places to visit. It is then of small coincidence that the duo ends up in an establishment staffed by Maya (Virginia Madsen), a lovely single woman in her late thirties who, as a server with the vague semblance of a flirt, is the prototypical crush for any barfly. Jack and Miles discuss how nothing has ever happened between them and Jack sets himself the ambitious goal of getting Miles bedded before the week is up. This seems like a nice, best-buddy thing to do, especially considering the penury Miles has experienced since his divorce. But astute observers know that such gambits on the part of vapid lustmuffins such as Jack are usually doubled when applied to themselves. And Jack selects a vulnerable target in Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a single mother working as a pourer who happens to know Maya and is amenable to a harmless little double date. 

What happens on that date and the rest of the week may be inferred with little difficulty. Jack and Miles will imbibe until no iota of reality has been spared; Maya and Stephanie will become increasingly besotted in their own fashion; Miles will have his novel rejected and drown his constantly revived sorrows in the finest grapes that California can offer; and platitudes will be exchanged that gain in relevance as our heroes slip from sobriety. That said, the acting is superb and pleasantly meek (only one member of the quartet explodes, and for very good reason) and what could easily have devolved into hysteria given some poor choices is always restrained. Hayden Church breathes life into a very old mannequin, imbuing Jack with the sort of fragility usually reserved for, well, people like Miles. There will be numerous revelations along the way, a good indication that the film was originally a novel, but we already sense what these "secrets" will involve. The best secrets, you see, are the ones whose general outline you might have guessed but whose details are unexpected. Not unlike those fine wines stored on their sides to keep their corks moist.