High Fidelity (2000)
It's been several days since we saw HIGH FIDELITY - longer than I usually take to write about a film - but its feel is still with me. Director Stephen Frears has put together an engaging piece about two big subjects, love and music, and the result is the best film released yet this year.
John Cusack gets credit as a screenwriter, along with D. V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and Scott Rosenberg. Cusack is also the film's star; his character, Rob Gordon, owns Championship Vinyl, a quirky and eclectic music store in a Chicago neighborhood you wouldn't want to be caught in after dark. This set is by far the most fun in the story; when the script locates us here, we watch the characters' true selves emerge. Perhaps the film's success is ensured by the store and everything surrounding it. It functions both as a meeting place and as a source of a surefire premise: theme and variations on romance.
Rob Gordon takes center stage by giving us a top-five list of breakups that gnaw at him the most. Hence we watch clever flashbacks of Rob from the time he is fourteen and kissing a girl in the school playground, to the time of his most recent heartbreak, the present, his lover Laura (Iben Hjejle) having just left. It takes Rob awhile to admit that Laura's moving her things to the upstairs apartment of an aging New Ager - Ian Raymond, who's played by Tim Robbins - is devastating enough to belong on this short list. But quickly we realize Rob's preoccupation with the topic emphasizes that this is the worst his heart has felt, ever.
When Cusack addresses the camera, it's a cool form of authorial intrusion, dear reader. His character comes off as endlessly self-reflexive, the post-modern malaise dripping from his monologues and casual clothes. His various sundered relationships come off as funny and touching, and you know things really get moving when he gets to the just-out number five on the list of all-time heartaches, the lissome Laura. Really Cusack is brilliant in his nonchalance. Whether talking to his audience or to his eccentric cadre of friends, he flashes wit and humanity, and we end up liking him, even if he seems the eternal child-man.
Cusack's acting is matched by the acting of Jack Black and Todd Louiso, who play Barry and Dick, clerks in Championship Vinyl. They began as part-timers and now Rob can't get them to stop coming in every day. Clearly, they need lives, and what's neat is that by the end of the story, they are closer to getting lives. Louiso, a Cincinnati native, is especially good: low-key and slow-talking, he exudes a deep compassion belied by shyness. I would tune in every week if there were a show starring these two music geeks.
Iben Hjejle is fine as Laura, perhaps overly calm is spots, but sympathetic and smooth. The script treats her well, calling for a peak of emotions late in the story.
Frears uses a strong supporting cast. Besides Black and Louiso, there's Cusack's sister Joan, who plays Liz, a friend of Laura and odd confidante of Rob. Though Joan Cusack has a hard time not being funny, her role here calls for a more serious turn, a sort of go-between in the edgy romance between Rob and Laura.
As one of Rob's former girlfriends, Charlie, Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a bright but very superficial woman. And Lisa Bonet ably helps the story achieve another of its points about love: there is an incredible amount of amorality out there.
Another main character is the music. The songs played in the store, Rob's apartment, bars and other locales serve not only as background but as characterization. When Barry is not allowed to play the tape of Monday-morning songs he's compiled, he takes it as a serious offense. Even the title plays off the theme of fidelity - or faithfulness - making the piece directly about love and the loyal that is a clear sign of it.
HIGH FIDELITY is rated R for language and sexuality, essentially unnecessary tidbits of sex scenes. I wouldn't take anyone under 16. I suspect the film will have a wide audience, as the musical styles appeal to many generations of taste, and of course the love themes engage the owners of hearts of any age.
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