Topsy-Turvy, directed by Mike Leigh. Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson.
Two films, set a century and an ocean apart, address the rebirth of artistic power,
...
BEMUSED
Topsy-Turvy, directed by Mike Leigh. Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson.
Two films, set a century and an ocean apart, address the rebirth of artistic power, just as the fickle muse seems to have fled.
OPENING A VEIN "Writing is easy," declared sports columnist Red Smith, "You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." Any author who ever stared at a blank page or screen, imploring an erratic muse to spark that elusive first sentence -- even a first word -- will recognize the terror implicit in Smith's quip. Like most cases of stage fright, the ordinary writing block passes quickly. Indeed, this type of angst may be integral to the work at hand, comprising the modicum of "healthy" anxiety needed to prime the creative pump.
But full-fledged writer's block can be chronic, even
permanent, a dire financial as well as psychological catastrophe. The
problem
often
takes
a
more
subtle
turn
than
crippling
whimwhams over the prospect of opening a literary vein. Grady Tripp, the nearly played-out author/hero of Wonder Boys, suffers from a baffling inability to finish the job, rather than begin it. Tripp's first novel was a popular and critical success. Seven subsequent
years
have
been
consumed
boozing,
drugging,
and
womanizing, while his second book unwinds endlessly towards no
2 certain
conclusion
--
like
Scherazade's
tales
or
Penelope's
weaving. Tripp may simply fear he won't measure up to his previous achievement.
But
the
origins
of
this
sort
of
awesome
procrastination can be far more obscure. According to various psychoanalytic reads, his unfinished novel might be perceived as a child he can't abandon, lest it be savaged by the outside world. Or it may have become unconsciously "Oedipalized", paradoxically deemed more potent than its creator according to that curious "rivalry with the product" one occasionally encounters in blocked artists. In any case, Tripp's advance money is long spent. He's been reduced to teaching others how to open a vein at a backwater Pittsburgh university. Here he excels, with a fierce ardor he can't direct towards completing his own project. Tripp narrates Wonder Boys; his voiceover is drawn from the biography that one will discover he's writing about the resolution of his writing block after the fact. In less adroit hands, the twisty device would embody a coy, self-reflexive sensibility much prized in second-string English departments like Tripp's. But the enervated writer's picaresque odyssey towards creative redemption is movingly enriched by Curtis Hansen's supple direction; Steve Kloves' finely-honed adaptation
of
Michael
Chabon's
novel;
congenially
shabby
Pittsburgh/college locales, and an exceptionally apt cast. Wonder Boys reads as a tall tale about the traumas and joys
3 endemic to the telling of tales. It's a shaggy dog story, pivoting around the assassination of a dog by a melancholic student of Tripp,
who
turns
confabulating
out
every
to
possess
atom
of
his
an
alarming
identity
propensity
--
his
for
melancholy
included -- except his impressive talent. The canine Maguffin belongs to the starchy chairman of Tripp's department. Tripp has been
uncommitedly
if
lovingly
bedding
his
wife,
the
college
chancellor. Now she's carrying his child, and his acerb Manhattan agent needs Tripp's sprawling manuscript yesterday to resurrect both of their moribund careers. Francis
McDormand
plays
Tripp's
lover
with
customary
delightful freshness; Tobey Maquire's laidback young impostor is simultaneously wonderfully
amusing
captures
and
unsettling;
the
gay
Robert
agent's
Downey,
louche
Jr.
metropolitan
flamboyance -- and an authentic passion for good literature. But Wonder Boys' triumph is Michael Douglas' grizzled, shambling Grady Tripp. For much of his career, Douglas has submerged his talent in facile
depictions
untrustworthy luminous
surprise:
character's intimacy;
Wall
mordant
hidden
of
disenfranchised
Street the
types.
actor
Douglas'
registers
self-disparagement;
grief
over
yuppies
his
Tripp
every cool
abandoned
or
sleek,
comes
nuance
as of
distancing
craft;
and
a his
from
Tripp's
ironic compassion for his aspiring students. Douglas merited an Academy Award nomination for this fine work. It never happened. From a modest movie about a blocked
4 writer marooned in the halls of academe, comes neither boffo box office nor Oscar gold.
Insubstantial Pageant Director
Mike
Leigh
is
esteemed
for
shrewdly
observed
pictures about the harsh realities of English working class life (High Hopes, Life Is Sweet,Naked, Sorrows and Lies, inter alia). Leigh's gritty subject material and leftist sensibility would seem to make him an unlikely candidate for crafting a film about the conjoined
careers
Sullivan,
whose
of
Sirs
tuneful
William
operettas
Schwenk
Gilbert
satirized,
while
and
Arthur
implicitly
endorsing Victorian estabishment values. Happily, Leigh's visceral grasp of British class mores, formidable knowledge of stagecraft, and
pure
love
of
theater
make
Topsy-Turvy
the most trenchant
cinematic essay on the performing arts since Sir Michael Powell's The Red Shoes. Well served by extensive research into G&S and their age by Leigh's
production
team,
Topsy-Turvy
redresses
the
bowdlerized
bathos of a l952 Gilbert and Sullivan bio-pic. The earlier movie egregiously trivialized a profound creative crisis which almost destroyed the famous partnership. It's the mainspring of Leigh's thoughtful screenplay. A decade of collaboration, hallmarked by successes like HMS Pinafore Gilbert
and and
The
Pirates
composer
of
Sullivan
Penzance, wealth
had and
brought fame.
librettist
But
in
l884
equivocal reviews of Princess Ida derisively critiqued Gilbert's
5 'topsy-turvy' plotlines, reawakening Sullivan's desire to quit his lucrative contract with Richard D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Opera company. Considered a leading musical talent of his day, Sullivan had grown
grew
thoroughly
persuaded
that
he
was
squandering
his
talents to support a sybaritic lifestyle. Physically ill, mentally dispirited, he ached to redeem himself from the relentless toll of grinding out what he deemed to be slight popular entertainments. He commenced dismissing every new Gilbert scenario out of hand. Gilbert
took
offense
at
Sullivan's
low
opinion
of
their
mutual labors, but secretly worried that his convoluted narratives were indeed becoming formulaic. Despite his wounded pride, Gilbert harbored
little
acknowledged
his
illusion reliance
about upon
his
own
Sullivan's
eminence; music
to
readily
drive
his
verbal pyrotechnics. In fact, each man inspired the other's best efforts. A passion for Japanoiserie seized the Victorian imagination just
as
the
partnership
was
deadlocked
in
genteel
wrangling.
During a visit to a London exposition showcasing Japanese culture, Gilbert became enthralled by the opulent costumes and stylized histrionics of Kabuki theater. A dizzy tale quickly flowed from his pen, featuring a quaint Orientalist town called Titipu, a lovesick prince disguised as a wandering minstrel, and a scalliwag jailbird turned Lord High Executioner. This time, Sullivan found Gilbert's extravagant absurdities congenial. Thus, The Mikado: lavishly witty, divinely tuneful,
6 crowning achievement of the vexed pair whose names now would be even more indissolubly linked. Ironically, Sullivan's plentiful serious compositions, upon which he pinned high hopes for separate artistic legitimacy, contained much ponderous Victorian chordage but little of his memorable Savoyard melodiousness. They have largely gone unperformed with the exception of The Lost Chord -a bathetic account of a C of E haj, occasionally performed by quavering baritones and amateur choirs. The first half of Topsy-Turvy traces the G&S falling out and reconciliation. Leigh's take on the partners is affectionate, but unsentimentally reveals their problematic personalities. Relatives and colleagues -- like the courtly, supremely manipulative D'Oyly Carte
--
are
delineated
with
the
same
astringent
generosity.
Without clumsy psychoanalyzing, it's implied that Gilbert's magisterial propriety and cockeyed wit -- wonderfully personified by actor Jim Broadbent -- may have constituted a complex reaction formation
against,
and
identification
with
his
father's
eccentricity. An overwhelming drive for absolute control over his domestic and artistic spheres also possibly reflected Gilbert's profound fear over being subjected to any reincarnation of his mother's iron will. Leigh intimates that Sullivan often acted the hysteric to Gilbert's obsessive. The composer is presented both as a slave to his work and a charming hedonist; a mercurial prima donna, ever playing genuine physical symptomatology to the balcony. His prim facade also conceals an unrepentant libertine, carrying on a long
7 affair
with
a
married
American
heiress.
Allan
Corduner's
performance exquisitely limns the excesses, vulnerabilities, and virtues of this complicated character. Topsy-Turvey's Mikado's
staging
virtuoso and
second
first
half
performance.
describes It's
native
the
The
to
the
ephemeral charm of Hollywood musicals that intricate production numbers
--
e.g.,
Busby
Berkeley's
extravaganzas
--
seem
to
materialize out of thin air. Any effort expended after a Mickey Rooney
type
proclaims
"Let's
have
a
show!"
is
perfunctory,
exhibiting the simulacrum of sweat with none of its tang. Leigh is one of the few directors to document the meticulous labor and intricate
teamwork
invoved
in
creating
a
superb
exemplar
of
musical theater like the Mikado. Topsy-Turvy takes the viewer on an encylopedic tour of every theatrical emotional enormous bruised
art.
One
witnesses
vicissitudes pressures mega-egos
of
of
cast
with and
production.
abound.
But
one
exhilirating supporting
crew
Narcissistic is
also
immediacy under
hissy-fits
touched
by
the the of the
showpeoples' devotion to the exquisite end at hand; their pride, whatever their craft, in being its means. Reflecting Leigh's leftist sympathies, Topsy-Turvy is never starry-eyed about the toll taken, nor the inequities associated with bringing The Mikado to fruition. Actors sweat profusely in heavy makeup; an actress conceals her agonizing varicose ulcer lest it compromise her glamor and livelihood; an erratic male lead allays his stagefright by mainlining morphine. The Savoy is not
8 only art's crucible, but a stage upon which the paradigms of a class-bound, repressive society are recapitulated. The production depends heavily on the work of women, from actress to seamstress. Most receive low pay, and no great respect. Gilbert as director is patriarchy personified, benevolent despot of a Victorian world writ small, marshalling cast and crew with remote regard for their individuality. Whether Gilbert's gentle tyranny
is
rooted
in
neurotic
conflict
or
prejudicial
social
convention, Leigh also reminds us that without it there would have been no Mikado. At
the
end
of
The
Tempest,
Prospero
calls
the
fabulous
illusions he has conjured up for his guests an 'insubstantial pageant
faded':
the
figure
is
a
quintessential
vision
of
theatrical transience and glory. In Topsy-Turvy's last scenes, the insubstantial pageant of a fully realized, ravishing Mikado is all the
more
glorious
--
and
poignant
--
because
the
film
has
instructed one so skillfully on the artifice behind the art, the skull beneath the smile.
