GRAY'S ANATOMY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Northern Arts) Starring: Spalding Gray. Screenplay: Spalding Gray. Producer: John Hardy. Director: Steven Soderbergh. MPAA Rating: PG (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
The first five minutes of GRAY'S ANATOMY are as squirm-inducing as any five minutes of film you'll see this year. In a series of black-and-white talking head interviews, people describe every possible horror which could befall the human eye, including close calls with Super Glue, aneurisms and inch-long shards of metal. Though nothing is graphically depicted, the descriptions are detailed enough to give a surgeon chills. It's a sensational set-up for an examination of the fragility of vision; if you've never worried about going blind before, you may be inspired to start.
Spalding Gray had to worry about it, and for all I know it was very traumatic. That's certainly not the impression you get from GRAY'S ANATOMY, however. GRAY'S ANATOMY is a staged monologue about Gray's experience dealing with a retinal disorder called a macular pucker, particularly the various alternative treatments he explores in an attempt to avoid surgery. Gray is one of America's finest story-tellers, and some of the stories about Native American sweat lodges and obsessive nutritionists are quite entertaining. But the story-telling is very detached; Gray's milieu is the ironic observation, not the soul-baring revelation. It's true that plenty of frightening things seem ridiculous with hindsight, but Gray shows us all the ridiculousness with little of the fear. The whole ordeal seems more like an amusing inconvenience than an existential crisis.
GRAY'S ANATOMY feels even more detached because of the way director Steven Soderbergh has chosen to stage it. This is the third of Gray's monologues to receive a film treatment, but it is the first to be filmed without a live audience. The advantage of that choice is that Soderbergh is free to create a surreal mood with arresting visuals. The disadvantage is that Gray seems adrift without an audience. He becomes a story-teller trying to be an actor, playing things too broadly in an attempt to generate the energy he can't draw from audience reaction. Like fellow story-teller Garrison Keillor, Gray's strength is a straightforward delivery which makes you laugh without _signaling_ you to laugh. GRAY'S ANATOMY is like "A Prairie Home Companion" turned into a performance art piece.
Soderbergh is a gifted director (SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE; KING OF THE HILL); Gray is a gifted monologist (SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA). They're just not a very good match for the creation of a film. Soderbergh's direction creates an intensity of mood which Gray's stoic demeanor can't sustain, and Gray's ability to wow an audience while sitting in front of a microphone is undercut by Soderbergh's visual theatrics. The absurdity of some of the stories in GRAY'S ANATOMY is bound to generate some laughs, but while you're chuckling at the stories you may feel there's something missing, something the opening five minutes promises but doesn't deliver. In this case, the eyes just don't have it.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 eye messages: 5.
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