THE DESIGNATED MOURNER
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1997 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
Remember back in your college days when your English literature professor would assign novels so dense with prose that it took five readings to get through the paragraph-long sentences? After many late night sessions of reading and rereading the text, you were finally able to decode the sentences and begin to glean the book's complex messages.
THE DESIGNATED MOURNER is the film equivalent of that assignment. Since it was written by Wallace Shawn, who also wrote the famous and successful MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, his latest film comes with impressive credentials. MY DINNER WITH ANDRE set the gold standard for film talkfests with its imaginative and enlightening dinnertime conversation between two friends, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory.
With perhaps three viewings, one might be able to decipher some of THE DESIGNATED MOURNER's nuances. With only one, understanding it, and more importantly caring about it, becomes a challenge. Whether the material is worth the effort is problematic. Like the college assignment, one must decide whether its mastery has sufficient payoff.
The film opens with three talking heads, whose fidgety bodies rest most uncomfortably in straight back chairs. Jack (Mike Nichols) and Judy (Miranda Richardson) are a frequently warring married couple, and Howard (David De Keyser) is Judy's revered father. Although Judy is married to Jack, the bond with her father is much stronger.
Filmed by Oliver Stapleton in harsh lights and shadows, the lighting has the same standoffish effect as the dialog, which is univitingly cold. Behind the chairs are blurry lights so that the attention is drawn to the large heads that fill the screen.
Nichols gets most of the lines so the film's success rests mostly on his shoulders. In short, he is no Spalding Gray. Whereas Spalding Gray (SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA, MONSTER IN A BOX, and GRAY'S ANATOMY) can mesmerize an audience with his monologues, Nichols just talks fast. Gray has a compelling storytelling ability that Nichols lacks.
Although snippets of the dialog have power, most serve only to obscure and befuddle. ("The past and the future don't actually exist. I mean where are they?") Jack tells us, "Stories are as necessary as food." Well, if that is so, then this movie will leave many starving.
The film, based on a play by Wallace Shawn, does have a story or at least the brief sketches of one. However, the story is little more than a plot device to let Jack babble along at a breakneck pace. Whereas Gray talks to us, Jack ramblings seem more directed to himself.
Howard, the father, is an intellectual who switched in his 20s from prose to poetry. This helped protect him from the unnamed totalitarian government under which they live, government officials being unable to realize that his poetry might be subversive.
A recurring subtheme revolves around the trials and tribulations of the male sexual organ, with its name used frequently for shock effect.
"I guess, I've always been a low-brow at heart," reflects Jack in his big conclusion scene. He never did fit in with Judy, Howard, and their literati friends. There is a good chance that you may feel similarly left out.
THE DESIGNATED MOURNER runs 1:35, which might seems short but it was long enough to put one of the four critics in our private screening to sleep. He snored through some of it, but missed little -- it's that sort of a movie. I cannot recommend this inaccessible film, but I do give it ** for its risk taking and a valiant effort.
**** = A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = Totally and painfully unbearable picture.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: July 15, 1997
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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