Category: Culture

In 1981, Steve Martin took on his second starring role in a motion picture in Pennies From Heaven. It was not exactly what was expected from the guy who’d just starred in The Jerk. People went in looking for broad slapstick, and found themselves in the middle of a deeply cynical musical. Instead of using the musical numbers as uplifting emotional high points, Pennies From Heaven recasts the musical number as an unhealthy fantasy. This goes beyond the musical work of Sondheim, who broadened the emotions depicted by the musicial number to include angst and despair, and subverts the entire concept of the musical. Pennies From Heaven uses the musical form to critique the musical form. It is unclear to me how this ever got greenlit; I suspect MGM was just caught up by the idea of reviving the musical.

Regardless of that, however, Herbert Ross managed to get himself a 22 million dollar budget (in 1981) and made a hell of a movie with it. The art direction is stylized and passionately beautiful; the dance numbers are lush, as they must be in order to effectively subvert themselves. Steve Martin’s Arthur Parker needs to believe utterly and completely that he can escape his drab Depression-era life by entering the musicals of the period; he needs to really think that the homeless accordion player can alleviate his poverty by launching into the title song. Without the contrast, the movie would fail.

At the same time, the grim needs to be properly grim. It is. Steve Martin is perhaps the weakest link here; he was young, and at times his comedic persona got in the way of his acting. Jessica Harper, playing his wife, had primary responsibility for embodying the reality of the Depression; she’s the only main character who never gets to escape. They were good together, but not great, and that for me was the only real weakness of the movie. There wasn’t quite enough tension; we never saw the possibility that Arthur Parker would find his feet on real ground as opposed to the dance floor. He had no reason to come back to his wife.

Then again, maybe that’s just Dennis Potter — the screenwriter — being Dennis Potter.

Anyway, it’s a fairly challenging movie and it’s an angry movie, although I’m not certain who it’s angry with. Everyone, maybe: Arthur and his fantasies, his wife and her inability to indulge desire, Christopher Walken and his slick corruptive influence, and Bernadette Peters for falling into whatever path is the most exciting. A lot of people find it worth watching just for Walken’s dance routine and striptease, and I think I’d have enjoyed that even if I wasn’t fascinated by the rest of the movie. It’s definitely a cult movie and perhaps an acquired taste, but the cast and crew knew just what they wanted to do and they more than accomplished it.

It would be unkind to assume that the choice of water as a metaphor for magic in Constantine was made so as to enable multiple shots of Rachel Weisz preparing for a wet dress shirt contest. Unkind, but probably accurate. On the other hand, the cheesecake was balanced by the way the movie handled the sexual dynamic between her and Keanu. You win some and you lose some, which rather summarizes the entire experience.

The script was a lose: it took a little from Hellblazer and a little from Prophecy and whenever the screenwriter struck out on his own he fell flat on his face. The directing was a win — flashy and assured and with a good sense of visual style. I don’t know who to credit for the production design, but I note that David Lazan (the art director) and Naomi Shohan (production designer) worked together on Training Day and American Beauty, and Lazan in particular has a bunch more good-looking movies under his belt. You won’t find a better visualization of Hell anywhere.

I don’t have any complaints about any of the acting. Keanu goes deep and pulls up about as much affect as we can expect from him; I thought it worked very well for Constantine. The character is understated and unflappable by choice: Keanu is up to that, plus he puts a nice desperation in his eyes when necessary. Weisz is OK. The supporting characters are, for the most part, supportive — Shia LaBeouf wasn’t much to write home about, but his character (Chas) was brutally short-changed by the script, so it’s hard to blame him.

Tilda Swinton is superb, of course. Christopher Walken’s Gabriel could beat up her Gabriel in a fist-fight, but I wouldn’t want to bet against either of them in a battle of supercilious wit.

Man, though, the script. I mentioned poor Chas and how the script did him wrong. It was kind of as if the writer had heard of the subplot where the sidekick is eager but unready and wanted to put one of those in the movie, but wasn’t quite sure how to make the pacing work. Thus, Chas vanishes after a few minutes of showing no promise whatsoever, and doesn’t come back until the end of the movie. Plus his lines suck.

I had no objection to the Americanization of the movie. It’s not the comic book; while I’d like to see a movie of the comic book someday, this isn’t that movie. If it had sucked, I’d be more annoyed (which doesn’t entirely make sense, I know). Since it was a decent movie, I had no objection. Hey: sometimes inspiration is enough.

I did object to the random interjection of psychic powers into the movie. Possibly this is just me, but I think that it’s unwise to mess up the perfectly serviceable Catholic mythology with a whole bunch of ESP and clairvoyance and so on. What they’re trying to say is that some of the characters have the ability to see demons. Such powers arise from magick, often involving Thelemic sigils and the like. Insert a cursed bloodline or two and you’ve completely obviated the need for this talk of psychics.

There were a few nice tricks involving a flattened mise en scene. Once or twice, a conversation begins in one set and teleports without interruption to a set several miles across Los Angeles. It accentuated the general sense that Los Angeles — all of Earth, in fact — was just a backdrop as far as Heaven and Hell were concerned. One might also consider the journey of Jesse Ramirez’ scavenger from somewhere in Mexico to Los Angeles: he has no purpose other than to carry a certain item from there to here, his journey is told in snapshots, and he does not have a name.

I’m glad I saw it, because on the whole it was enjoyable and I’m glad it made enough money this weekend to make a sequel fairly likely. Possibly next time they’ll hire a real screenwriter as opposed to a fanboy.