THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS (1997) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge
Writer/Director: Bart Freundlich Starring: Rod Scheider, Blythe Danner, Julianne Moore, Noah Wyle, Michael Vartan, Laurel Holloman, Brian Kerwin, Hope Davis, James LeGros, Arija Bareikis
"The Myth of Fingerprints" is the "art house" version of every Thanksgiving film you've ever seen, complete with a large disfunctional family, long lost loves, new love found, bickering, sex, and even two parents who aren't sure what to make of their grown-up kids. It has everything that other Thanksgiving films have except a sense of realism, a way of communicating these fears to the audience, and even a bit of originality. Hell, I even swear I saw the house in every other Thanksgiving movie as well.
The story concerns itself with a New England family coming together for Thanksgiving, and spending a couple of days at the big house with the parents, and sadly, every child is either a cliche or a stereotype (or sometimes neither, and not even a person). There's Mia (Julianne Moore), who's "the bitch who begins to wisen up thanks to someone else;" Warren (Noah Wyle), who's "the disaffected guy who doesn't really get along well with his parents and has a long lost love who's in town for awhile;" Jake (Michael Vartan), who's just, like, there; and Leigh (Laurel Holloman, from "The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love"), who's the "wacky child."
And three of them have romances or significant others with outsiders. Jake has a girlfriend, Margaret (Hope Davis), who's basically just horny and a tad too honest. Warren's long lost love (Arija Bareikis) comes to see him and they hit it off again. And Mia has a boyfriend or husband, Elliot (Brian Kerwin), who spends the entirety of the flick pissed of at Mia's bitchiness, but ends up falling for an old school chum named Cezanne (James LeGros), who starts off as being compeltely annoying and overbearing but takes a 180 degree turn and becomes the intelligent guy she always wanted, who's willing to discuss a book she tried to read but couldn't finish because her father used the last 300 pages as kinling.
And last but not least, there's the parents, Hal and Lena (Roy Scheider and Blythe Danner, respectively), who come out as the reason this film works even slightly, partly because they're given a shade of mystery, and we never completely understand them. The film was obviously written from the point of view of the younger generation, who are so young they don't yet understand their parents, and this lack of knowledge actually works because deep down, our parents are complex and shadowy figures who we will probably never figure out completely. Why did Hal kiss Warren's girlfriend when she began sort of flirting with him? And why does Lena still love him if not more than she did before?
It's the parents that I was really intrigued with, partly because the children were given such shallow roles. Why should we really care if Mia, a bitch, finds new love when we could be more intrigued with the parents who act strangely but still love eachother? Why should we really be fascinated with a cliched story like the one about Warren getting aquainted again with his ex-girlfriend when we see a mother and father dealing with their kids growing up, and feeling more human instead of god-like beings?
If "The Myth of Fingerprints" had stuck with the concept of parents becoming equals with their kids yet still remaining mysterious people, it may have been a really amazing film. Instead, we get cheap subplots that were probably chalked up in a second to bulk up the storyline, and we end up being distracted by them in the long run. What saves the film from being terrible is the concepts of the parents, and a good amount of acting from the entire cast, with special mention going to Moore, Holloman, Wyle, LeGros, Davis, and Danner. Roy Scheider actually does amazing, as he's being kind of bad as of late in films (did you see "Romeo is Bleeding?" okay, no one did). He's actually given a scene where he sits on the edge of one of his son's beds in the middle of the night, singing a song, and looking more pathetic than crazy. Not many actors can pull that off.
The film's final shot is something which makes this film seem more special than it actually is: it's poetic, unnerving, sad, and realistic, all at the same time. When you see it, you'll understand. If it had not tried to be so much like a "families suck" picture and instead become a reflection on kids growing up and parents just getting older, then this final shot would have been even more meaningful, and probably worthy of the film it's now stuck in.
MY RATING (out of 4): **
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