High Fidelity ****
Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by Buena Vista International on July 21, 2000; certificate 15; 120 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Stephen Frears; produced by Tim Bevan, Rudd Simmons. Written by John Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, Scott Rosenberg; based on the novel by Nick Hornby. Photographed by Seamus McGarvey; edited by Mick Audsley.
CAST..... John Cusack..... Rob Iben Hjejle..... Laura Jack Black..... Barry Todd Louiso..... Dick Lisa Bonet..... Marie Catherine Zeta-Jones..... Charlie Joan Cusack..... Liz Tim Robbins..... Ian
"He's in love with rock 'n' roll, whoa... he's in love with gettin' stoned, whoa... he's in love with Janie Jones, whoa... he don't like his boring job, no!"
It's unsurprising that the song containing those lyrics is on one of Rob's Top Five Lists. Rob drinks and smokes too much, listens to too much loud music, obsesses over too many women, and isn't exactly going places career-wise. This hardly makes him original, but he's easy to identify with.
"High Fidelity" is his story -- that of a pop fan-boy constantly making lists, rearranging LPs and thinking of love songs that relate to his own romantic misadventures. "Never mind what people ARE like, what DO they like?" he philosophises at one point. "Books, movies, music... these things matter." He runs a big but only moderately successful store called Championship Vinyl, and employs two guys called Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black), who he has nicknamed "the musical moron twins". Dick is a shy kid whose main act of friendship is copying tapes. Barry is one of those know-alls who rams his taste down other guys' throats -- which is annoying most of the time, but also great for business, when he intimidates guys into buying stacks of albums they can barely carry. "What do you mean, you don't have 'Blonde on Blonde'??" he asks one man, making him feel guilty enough to empty his wallet and rebuild his collection.
This is a film about shift work, beer, being hung over on a Monday morning, listening to good tunes, and dating. In the opening scene, Rob's girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) is leaving him for the hippie who used to live next door, which sets off the movie's tone of romantic longing, reminiscing and scheming. There is a plot of sorts -- involving Rob's attempts to reunite with Laura, and his visiting of old girlfriends in a goofy attempt to achieve catharsis with the past -- but "High Fidelity" is not a complicated story, and exists for Rob's musings about relationships, his lists of Top Five Worst Breakups, his silly ways of dealing with heartache. The style of the narration is inspired by another single man's cinema classic, the Michael Caine vehicle "Alfie" (1966), as the protagonist looks straight into the camera to address the audience directly. It's a good device because it's intimate, informal and quirky, and announces that this is a frank and unconventional picture, uncluttered by the usual dumb distractions of romantic comedies, like mistaken identities and aggravated misunderstandings.
Everything is handled so well that we almost forget how badly it could have been done. Rob has a heart-to-heart with Laura's best friend, and she doesn't offer the embarrassing pseudo-psychoanalysis that would be spoken in such typical Hollywood flicks as "Hanging Up". She lays things out in real terms: "There's two of them, there's one of you, and you're all in this mess together -- so sort it out." Later, when Rob lists the worst screw-ups he's perpetrated against Laura, he is able to explain away some of them, but not all, and that rings of absolute truth. Women generally think men are insensitive pigs, men generally think women are nagging, hypocritical and paranoid -- the actuality lies somewhere in between, and "High Fidelity" is brilliant at presenting that middle ground. Its ending is similarly realistic -- Rob and Laura get back together, and Rob's explanation is not an entirely convincing piece of resolution... but don't we all make weird decisions, settle into realities that may not be permanent, and justify situations to ourselves instead of weighing them up?
Cusack, my favourite actor, is perhaps the only man who could have played Rob. His boyish wide eyes and sardonic tone of voice have more of the required bittersweet aura than anyone I can picture. The "High Fidelity" screenwriting team were also behind "Grosse Pointe Blank", one of the best films of 1997, and Stephen Frears, who directed the picture, is a great filmmaker whose credits include "Dangerous Liaisons", "The Snapper" and "Prick Up Your Ears". Yet so many danger signals suggested that this was going to be a disaster. It's based on a wonderful novel -- those usually translate into lousy movies. It's an American adaptation of an English story, which usually results in examples of bland ineptitude like "Thomas and the Magic Railroad". Also, its blunt world view and obsession with pop culture would have easily allowed it to become another obnoxiously hip and cynical rip-off of "Scream" or "Pulp Fiction".
All of those pitfalls have been avoided. This is a wonderful movie about real people, real problems and real fixations, that beautifully captures the texture of alternative culture. It will probably be a modest box-office success, then a huge cult hit on video, where it will be embraced by vinyl junkies, comic book fans, wearers of leather jackets, people who know the 70s were the best decade for American movies, tattoo and body piercing aficionados, twentysomethings who still have their "Star Wars" toys and everyone who loves the Krazy House club on Wood Street. I saw it on the first day of summer, and could really feel the sun come out.
COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani http://members.aol.com/ukcritic
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