FINDING FORRESTER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Gus Van Sant returns to the
familiar territory of GOOD WILL HUNTING with a
retread of that concept. This time the genius
is a ghetto boy and basketball star who hides
the fact he is one of America's best writers.
While there are a few nice moments the film
reeks of a filmmaker who is desperate to have a
successful film. Sean Connery stars as J. D.
Salinger type who helps the hero develop his
talent. Van Sant respects great writers but
desperately needs one himself. Rating: 4 (0 to
10), 0 (-4 to +4)
Two films back Gus Van Sant had a large success with GOOD WILL HUNTING. The public seemed to go in a big way for this story of a blue collar mathematics genius. (Mine was one of the few dissenting opinions and mostly for the unlikelihood of the premise.) Van Sant's follow-up made a definite thud with an almost scene-for-scene remake of the classic PSYCHO. PSYCHO is one of those films that one ought not to remake. Van Sant needs another success to show that GOOD WILL HUNTING was not just a fluke. He really has to have another GOOD WILL HUNTING. Sadly that is rather transparently what he was trying a little too hard to make. He took the premise of his former success and doctored it to be an even surer success. First he plays the race card. This time his hero is not just a blue collar worker, he is a really deserving sixteen-year-old black writer who is trying to succeed in an academic world dominated by white males, some of them nasty. Coming to a new and posh school a rich white girl takes an interest in our young writer, and you know immediately they are going to hit it off. Why? Van Sant is taking no chances. If they fight the script will have to make one of them right. It can not make a white right in a conflict with a black or a man right in a conflict with a woman. Neither would be safe filmmaking, so the clearly can be no conflict between the two of them. Then to make the film even safer there is a big part for Sean Connery as a great writer who takes our deserving lad under his wing. Connery makes few films that do not succeed and here he even was one of the producers. Retread concept, political correctness, and Sean Connery: this is Van Sant playing it super-safe. Oh, yes, and did I mention there is also a "big game"?
Outwardly, Jamal Wallace (played by Robert Brown) seems like just about any other ghetto kid. Well, he is great at basketball. But privately Jamal likes to read the great works of Western literature. And then he has his notebooks where he writes his thoughts that he does not want to share with the world. In this Bronx neighborhood there is a strange old man who never leaves his apartment. He just stares out the window at the passing parade and does who knows what else. He just looms as a presence over the neighborhood.
On a dare Jamal breaks into the strange apartment and is about to steal something small to prove he was there but is frightened off leaving behind his backpack with his writings. The old man eventually gives the backpack back, but the notebooks have been marked up with the critical comments that could only come from a great writer. It is the kind of tutelage that Jamal desperately wants. The recluse turns out to be the great William Forrester (Sean Connery), the J. D. Salinger-like writer who wrote one great novel and then never published again.
Meanwhile Jamal has attracted the attention of a prestigious school who wants the students for his basketball skills and only secondarily for the potential that his test scores show he has. But there is pressure in the new school to push Jamal into the basketball track while his writing teacher Professor Crawford (F. Murray Abraham) finding his writing getting better and better bigotedly suspects Jamal of cheating.
There is not doubt that the best part of the film is the writing lessons which are written with insight. Suggestions like writing first from the heart and then rewriting from the mind sound useful, though they may be a little obvious. And they are a special treat delivered by the charismatic Connery who, though not known for his writing ability, has the hypnotic style that would make even toilet repair sound enthralling.
This is the second film I have seen this year photographed by Harris Savides, the other being THE YARDS. I definitely see a pattern forming. Both are films in film noir style with overuse of dimly lit scenes. Many of the scenes really seem to be carved from the darkness. In Forrester's apartment the lighting is so muted that shadows on Connery join with the background darkness. Crawford's classroom is also filmed in dim and downbeat style. Scenes are frequently washed out. It feels to me like this is manipulation, though in a better film it might more sympathetically be called style. In any case there seems to be an excess of it here.
By trying too hard to be successful, this film rarely rises above mediocrity. I rate it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. I did like the writing lesson, but with that exception everything I ever needed to know about FINDING FORRESTER I got from watching the trailer.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@abaya.com
Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper
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