The Words

Building on yesterday's post on how amazing it is to turn a phrase just slightly and make a huge difference in some one's life, I bring you my review of the currently playing movie The Words.

Let me pause for just a moment and allow you to inhale the name of the actor playing the main character: Bradley Cooper.  Go ahead and click;  you know you want to.

Roll his name over your tongue like a 50-year-old Merlot.  Savor it like a good chocolate.  Find your fainting couch and fall onto it.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let me tell you that this movie was impeccably acted.  Spot-on performances throughout.  Above all the performances, though, stood Jeremy Irons, all English-speak and down-on-his-luck but full of just enough controlled anger to make us wonder if he was on the brink of doing something rash in the wake of betrayal.

I am a sucker for multiple story lines being woven together like a crocheted blanket that seems to have no true beginning or end.  Story lines that seemingly started somewhere in time and will end, eventually, but not necessarily, with the end of the movie.  In other words, I like a cliffhanger that seems to start by falling out of the sky.  And, if you add flash backs and flash forwards, I am totally engrossed.

This movie did all that.  (Crash had a similar feel, as did Momento, though this movie isn't nearly as convoluted or difficult to follow.  The Words has a simpler feel, yet with all the roller coaster ups-and-downs of these other two.)

For the better part of the first half, I thought I had figured out the relationship between the story lines.  Then, I discovered, that I hadn't had a clue.  Then, as the story ended, I THOUGHT it ended neatly enough.  But, then I realized it was a sloppy kind of neat, one that would leave a viewer with an interpretation not exactly like the other people in the audience might have.

And, I am digging that very fact, not knowing what other people might add to the conversation, if we discuss this movie.  Good works of art do this:  make people enter into lively debate about the who and what and what for.

As for story line, this movie examines several important themes, including honesty, loss, devotion, faithfulness, tough love, forgiveness and choices.  There are few judgments made by the writers;  the hard work of thinking through, especially, honesty and forgiveness, is left to the viewer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  It is one I will look forward to seeing again when it comes out on video, so Mike can watch and give his two-cents-worth.

Two pinkies up.