I love movies. Really, I do. Unfortunately, I would never be much good at reviewing them, because I have the kind of uncritical love for
Hollywood spectacle that makes it difficult for me to judge the
good ones from the
bad, or even to stay away from the
really awful ones when there's absolutely nothing else to see. (Of course, uncritical love hasn't stopped
some people from making their living that way.)
This is not to say, though, that I can't appreciate a film that accomplishes something more than
disposable entertainment. Certain films, starting out with low expectations, just seem to get
everything right -- they fire on all cylinders, don't take any wrong turns or strike any false notes, and somehow add up to more than the sum of their parts. Other films achieve greatness as watersheds,
artistic or
technical landmarks, that set a new bar for everything that comes after. In skillful hands -- with the right alchemy of writing, direction, performance and technical merits -- it is even possible to make trash into a kind of
art. FInally, there are those films that simply succeed so
brilliantly at telling their stories that they become unforgettable.
Paul Schrader, who has
succeeded at this kind of thing more than once, has done it again with the movie I saw tonight:
Auto Focus. For those of you who aren't familiar, this is the story of the strangely sordid life and ugly death of
Bob Crane. Immortally remembered as the title character of one of the more bizarre success stories in television history, a
sitcom set in a WWII German
prison camp, Bob Crane was also a pioneer in erotic self-absorption. From modest beginnings, aided by his fame as a sitcom star and abetted by early home video technology that allowed him to record his exploits, Crane followed his obsessions wherever they would lead him -- regardless of the damage to his career, his family, or his soul. With his deceptively bland good looks and hollow-man charm,
Greg Kinnear is an excellent choice for the lead role -- particularly later in the film, as an increasingly out-of-touch Crane is just beginning to face up to the monstrous damage his obsession has caused to his life, almost without his noticing. And
Willem Dafoe is eerily convincing as his equally desparate, not to mention lovesick, partner and enabler in crime, John Carpenter (no relation to the
director).
At first glance, it's hard to image that a film as stuffed with wall-to-wall sex as this one could be so thoroughly unarousing. (When I left the theater and returned to my car, there was a flyer for some massage place under the windshield wiper. After what I had just seen, the very thought of physical contact with another person at that moment had about as much appeal as licking a cinder block.) But then again, this often seems to be the case with seriously-intended movies that take the viewer on a tour through other people's
sexual obsessions. If the brain truly is the most erotic organ of them all, it's sad to see what can happen when, given the right set of circumstances, a technological fix allows someone to take other people out of the equation entirely and plug their own desires right back into themselves. As the
murder of Bob Crane, and its fictional depiction, show, the results can be both pathetic and tragic.
