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Wonder Boys By John Pavlus Where did Curtis Hanson come from? The third-string thrillermeister's storming of the A-list with cluster-bomb cop saga L.A. Confidential was a commercial and critical Pearl Harbor: Shit, we weren't expecting that. Now, as his follow-up Wonder Boys--possibly the first great film of the year--blasts like a depth charge in the placid post-holiday waters, one has to wonder: What was he waiting for all those years? Whatever the reasons for his long-standing stasis were, it's veni vidi vici now--though not in the way you'd think. Hanson's latest big-studio feature is so refreshingly left-field that it trounces both expectations and the competition with equal aplomb. (Wonder boy, indeed.) Where Confidential was all taut, twisted plot, Wonder
Boys is mellow ellipsis baked to a turn in the form of dope-driven
novelist Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas). Seven years ago, his deliciously-named
novel The Arsonist's Daughter was the toast of the literary town.
But now, shuffling somewhat listlessly through his damp days and snowy
nights as an Ivy League writing professor, banging out page after
self-indulgent page of his 2200-page encore, Grady's most definitely
in a rut. In effortlessly rendered overlap, the distractions that
no doubt put him there float to the surface: His gorgeous student
boarder, Hannah (Katie Holmes), wants more than just academic attention;
his snarkily sybaritic agent, Crabs (Robert Downey Jr.), is getting
impatient with his lack of output; his affair with married university
chancellor Sara (Frances McDormand) has produced a frighteningly indiscreet
pregnancy; and his protˇgˇ James Leer (Tobey Maguire), a wraithlike
"wonderboy," is constantly bringing new meaning to the phrase "tortured
artist." The film's true eloquence, however, mainly lies in what it leaves unapologetically unsaid. Grady's weed habit, Hannah's crush on him, Crabs's proclivity towards transvestite whores, James's tendency to pack heat at parties--all would be perfect jumping-off points for pat exposition, but Hanson just lets it be. We get to know these people in the same way they probably got to know each other: in slangy fragments, with plenty of blanks to fill in between. The rails of this approach are greased in no small part by the castmembers' consistently fluid performances. Douglas and McDormand exude blemished authenticity as aging paramours; Maguire, playing James as a dour, Trent Reznor-via-Dead Poets Society cipher, is surprisingly engaging; and Downey Jr., inhabiting the charmingly parasitic, sexually protean Crabs with astonishing assurance, very nearly steals the show with a coyly deployed array of smirking quips. Such effortlessly realized characters don't require a flickering projector to exist--they all had lives preceding the opening credits, and you can bet they'll continue living them even after the theater's empty. Wonder Boys admittedly feeds upon a romanticized vision of literary genius: Surely some good writers exist who are not misanthropic, talisman-hoarding troglodytes. But deep down we wish they all were, and the filmmakers know it. We like our artists ribald and ragged around the edges--so maybe that's why the film's too-neat denouement feels like a bit of a cop-out. But outside of that minor stumble, Wonder Boys feels right. Indeed, its greatest strength, the same one Grady identifies in James's own debut novel, may be its simplest: "It's true." John Pavlus is a senior film major at Ithaca College. |
