13 Conversations About One Thing on DVD |
I'm a movie kind of a guy and I live in New
York, a movie kind of a town if ever there was one, but somehow 13 Conversations About
One Thing totally escaped my notice during its theatrical release. Never having heard
of it, I probably would have ignored its DVD release as well, except that Amazon.com's
clever little marketing 'bot flagged it for my consideration during one of my visits.
Golly, that's a clever piece of programming -- I wish I had friends who could
predict my tastes half as well.
13 Conversations is the brainchild of writers
Jill and Karen Sprecher and is directed by Jill Sprecher. They also collaborated on Clockwatchers,
which was quite good but hardly prepared me for this film's perfect pitch.
13 Conversations has similarities to Paul Thomas
Anderson's Magnolia and Lawrence Kasden's Grand Canyon in that it uses a
large cast of seemingly unconnected people, whose stories interconnect and cross-pollinate
one another. In tone, it falls precisely between those two other films; it posits neither
Kasden's clockwork universe where everything seems to happen for a reason nor Anderson's
ramshackle one where nothing has much meaning, nor, sometimes, even a reason.
There's Troy (Matthew McConaughey), a cocky young assistant
DA who is celebrating a court victory in a bar with some friends. Spotting a dour schlub,
Gene (Alan Arkin), at the bar, Troy mouths off about happiness with callow bonhomie.
Gene's an aging mid-level executive who knows he's gone as far as he ever will, and he
clearly resents Troy's youthful enthusiasm. In fact, he's not too keen on the whole idea
of happiness and, faced with the need to lay off an employee, he chooses Wade (William
Wise), whose capacity to see the good side of every contingency annoys him.
Then, there's Walker (John Turturro), a physics professor
who is having an affair ("You free my life from routine. See you next Thursday, same
time."), and Beatrice (Clea DuVall), a house cleaner who is struck and left for dead
by a hit-and-run driver.
All of these people are searching for something, but the
Sprechers' brilliance lies in their refusal to actually make it one thing -- people meet,
have intended and unintended effects upon one another, and never realize what their
actions have truly wrought. And when they do, it is never what they thought they were
doing.
In the wrong hands, 13 Conversations About One Thing
could have been heavy-handed or preachy, but instead it is completely low-key. There are
no major revelations, no huge turning points, no grand gestures or heroic soliloquies.
Instead, there are quiet conversations and small revelations of character that linger in
the mind long after grand gestures would have been forgotten.
As good as the script is and as deft as Jill Sprecher's
directorial touch is, she's blessed with a phenomenal cast here. It's beautiful ensemble
work, but Arkin is quietly and convincingly superb. His Gene is deeply cynical and
profoundly weary. His first words in the film are, "I knew a happy man once . .
." -- and he convinces us that that's the closest he's ever come to that state.
Is that the "one thing" -- happiness? Some people
think so, but I think it's an even bigger "thing" -- life. It's random and it
doesn't have a definable form or outcome or moral. It happens to the just and the unjust
and it's the best we can get and the worst we have to endure. And, ultimately, it's
precious, because it's all we have.
Does that sound bleak? I don't think so -- not as long as
life has such delightful epiphanies as 13 Conversations About One Thing in it.
Besides, consider the alternative.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
