WHAT HAPPENED WAS...
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This is a strong two-person play
filmed for the screen. Two nervous people have a date
and the dialog reveals a the inner turmoil in each of
their lives. This film has won awards, but it covers
territory that has been done before. Rating: high +1
(-4 to +4)
This is a film that already has rally stripes. Tom Noonan wrote, directed and starred in this film which he made for only $300,000 and took only eleven days to shoot it. They finished editing the film just hours short of the deadline for entering it in the Sundance Film Festival. But the effort to get the film done in time was repaid. At Sundance it won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award and Grand Jury prize. Samuel Goldwyn snapped it up for an immediate profit. Noonan's face may be familiar to filmgoers for other films in which he has acted. He has played psychopathic killers in films like MANHUNTER (the earlier of the two "Hannibal Lector films") and THE LAST ACTION HERO. It is good to see him in a more normal role.
WHAT HAPPENED WAS... is basically a one-act play for two people produced as a film. But for a few scenes at the beginning, the film is all one scene taking place as it happens in front of the camera. This, however, is not to imply the film was made in a single take but it does give the film a certain immediacy. A woman has invited a co-worker to her Manhattan apartment for dinner. Both work in a legal office, Jackie as a secretary, Michael as a paralegal. She has been impressed by his sense of humor and is intrigued by his apparent working on some secret project of his own. She has invited him to a candlelight dinner at her apartment. The evening begins very awkwardly. Each has a talent for choosing just the wrong thing to say to the other. The date appears not to be working out at all. But on and off the wine seems to be loosening each other up. They begin trading confidences and dropping defenses. Eventually each will know more about the other than either of them really want.
Tom Noonan's Michael is controlled and systematic. Karen Sillas's Jackie lives with emotional tides that Michael has been able to suppress in himself. He is mechanical and she is disturbed. Noonan's script gives hints as to how each has gotten that way, but in the end much is left to conjecture. Both performances have impressive authenticity. My one complaint would be that film is not really the proper medium for this script. More appropriate would be the live stage. Noonan's direction intentionally makes little use of the advantages that cinema has over the live stage while it certainly could benefit from the additional intensity and immediacy that live performances would have given it. Making the film more cinematic would probably have further sacrificed the immediacy. Noonan at least does not repeat Hitchcock's error in ROPE of trying to create immediacy by simulating a single take. In ROPE Hitchcock apparently realized the technique became a distraction and he did not repeat his error in DIAL M FOR MURDER. Occasionally Noonan misjudges the pacing of his material, but his direction was usually on-target.
In spite of the critical acclaim this film is getting, it is not nearly as original as the rumor mill would have it. It was reminiscent of other dramatic works and very similar to a play produced on PBS in the 60s called, if memory serves, "Birdbath." While falling short of my expectations for the film, I would still give it a respectable high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. You won't see much else like it in the theaters soon.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
.
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