Today I am so happy to welcome one of Moon in the Gutter's oldest friends and greatest inspirations back, the incredible
Derek Hill, author of the essential
Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters. This guest post is a particular treat as Derek's book, which included a large section on Sofia Coppola, was published before the release of her
Somewhere so finally getting to read Derek's thoughts on the film is really exciting. Enough of my rambling though...let's get to the good stuff!
Nowhere Man by Derek Hill, 2013
An actor aimlessly roams through
the affluent, insular rooms and hallways of an upscale hotel, searching for any
kind of stimulus to relieve him of his emotional stasis, some kind of diversion
to occupy his time before he is whisked away to yet another press junket,
another photo shoot, another interview that he glides through with practiced
charm and ease. The actor is bored. Although comfortable within his cocoon of
luxury and unreality, he is starving for a real emotional connection with
someone. Anyone.
You wouldn't be reprimanded for
thinking I was talking about Bill Murray's character from Sofia Coppola's extraordinary
second feature
Lost in Translation
(2003). Coppola's underrated fourth movie,
Somewhere
(2010), also contains a similar character, action star Johnny Marco, played by
Stephen Dorff. Stylistically and thematically, both movies are fascinating
compliments to one another, although the earlier movie is more incisive about
human nature, dreamy, and quietly poignant.
Lost
in Translation also contains one of Murray's finest moments on screen and a
(so far) career-best performance by Scarlett Johansson, two difficult acts to
follow. But regardless of the similarities between the two movies, and there
are many important ones,
Somewhere is
its own distinctive, vital creation and not an artistic regression. It's also
the first time that Coppola attempts to burrow into the male psyche for the
majority of the movie, establishing the story's point of view through Marco's eyes.
For a director whose movies tend to billow with images and emotional states
that can conveniently be contextualized as delicately feminine, this change is
significant.
Viewers invested in the three-act
structure, clearly delineated plot points, and in characters that must undergo
some form of dramatic change, will only be frustrated with Coppola's movies.
That's not to suggest that Coppola's methodology is superior to classic
Hollywood storytelling (it's not), but for her, the rudiments of commercial
screenwriting 101 don't interest her. Not all movies need to chart a direct
path through the wilderness of narrative. For some adventurous filmmakers, the
detours from narrative are the most worthwhile moments of the trip, and it's in
those strange, seemingly unnecessary deviations from the throughline and
tyranny of plot when the cinematic poet blossoms. It's when the cinematic poet
relates how the world really appears through their eyes, offering us a moment of reality beyond the
artificiality of the screen.
Coppola, so unlike her father
Francis, doesn't approach story in broad strokes. She is interested in the
subtle nuances of character and visually lyrical epiphanies, allowing her
actors to reveal the nature of their roles through the slow accretion of
significant details. In Somewhere, we
go roughly 15 minutes before any real dialogue is spoken, and even then, what
is heard is banal and hardly illuminating. However, what we see is provocative
and precisely revelatory. It's in the visual where Coppola and her
cinematographer, the late Harris Savides, get down to business.
Although still gruffly
attractive, movie star Marco wanders through the legendary Chateau Marmont like
a hollowed-out relic of his better days. He's still on top of the Hollywood
food chain, but only for the moment. Age is slowly settling in and it doesn't
take a fortune teller to point out that the golden boy is going to show signs
of rust within a year or two. But he still goes through the motions for his
fans, colleagues, and entourage. Marco the party boy lazily roams through a
late-night party, lazily flirts with women (his pickup lines consist of either
"Hi" or "Hi, I'm Johnny"), and lazily watches two twin pole
dancers listlessly perform their routine for his arousal. He falls asleep and
they in turn pack up their gear and exit to entertain another happy customer.
Later, Marco pathetically (and hilariously) conks out with his face buried
between the thighs of his latest conquest. The man is psychologically and
physically spent. He's an emotional zombie.
It would be easy for Coppola to
eviscerate her characters, lampooning them for their absurdities and plunging
the venomous blade of satire deeply, then twisting it for maximum audience ridicule.
This world of hermetic affluence is one Coppola knows well, but she holds off
tormenting her characters. She is not filled with self-hate. Instead, she
observes her characters and their milieu with a sharp, cool perspective, but
never at the expense of their humanity. Humor undercuts many scenes,
particularly when examining celebrity culture, and there is a strong sense that
Marco's inner life is non-existent, or at least deadened, from his steady diet
of nothing. Coppola, however, is not a moralist. Her observations aren't jaundiced,
even when she does poke at the pretensions of celebrity.
Although their approach to
filmmaking and storytelling are very different, she does share with Antonioni
and Fellini that ability to dissect the world of privilege without murdering
it. It's no accident that Coppola has referenced Fellini's brilliant La Dolce Vita twice. In Lost in Translation, Murray and
Johansson watch the movie on television. In Somewhere,
Marco puts his daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) on a plane after their night in Las
Vegas and yells to her that he's sorry he's been absent from her life, she
unable to hear his confession because of the roar of the plane's engine. The
scene is reminiscent of the finale of La
Dolce Vita, when a haggard Marcello Mastroianni slumps on a beach in the
morning sun after a long night of debauchery and engages a young girl he met
earlier in the movie. Her agonizingly touching expression of love for him goes
unacknowledged because he can't understand what she's saying over the crashing
waves and he's too bleary-eyed to comprehend the look on her face.
Coppola does not elevate the
scene between Marco and Cleo to the profound emotional heights that Fellini went
for, instead opting for her usual low-key preciseness. Later, when Marco self-pityingly
calls up a woman and cries on the phone to her, she cuts him off and our
wonderboy is literally left spending the night floating in a pool alone.
But Coppola does opt for a happy
ending of sorts, albeit tinged with ambiguity and a trickle of Hollywood
sentimentality. Marco has the hotel pack up his belongings and he hops into his
sports car, taking off for the open road. What gives some advantage to reading
this moment as optimistic for Marco, is that stylistically Coppola and Savides shoot
Marco's car rigidly in the center of the frame as he drives further away from
Los Angeles, our perspective always moving in a straight line… forward,
forward, forward. Jump cuts accelerate the passage of time as Marco heads out
into the desert. This is in direct opposition to the provocative opening shot
of the movie, which is a long uninterrupted take observing Marco driving his
car in a loop at a desert racetrack for several minutes, the camera stationary
and only picking up a portion of the roadway. The shot selection at the end, with
Marco breaking free from that interminable endless circle, and his life in
Hollywood, feels exhilarating.
The question remaining, however,
is whether Marco is truly up for the challenge. Marko finally pulls his car
over to the side of the road. The desert surrounds him. He looks tentatively
aware walking away from his abandoned car. But it feels like a movie moment, as
the music slowly gains piercing urgency. It feels like a moment from a Johnny
Marko movie, instead of the dead end it really is.
***Thanks again Derek!***
