by Frank Calvillo
Box Office Alternative Column
Box Office Alternative is a weekly look into additional/optional choices to the big-budget spectacle opening up at your local movie theater every Friday. Oftentimes, titles will consist of little-known or underappreciated work from the same actor/writer/director/producer of said new release, while at other times, the selection for the week just happens to touch upon the same subject in a unique way. Above all, this is a place to revisit and/or discover forgotten cinematic gems of all kinds.
Friday’s release of Race, the true-life story of how celebrated athlete Jesse Owens won three gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games, gives proof that in spite of the franchise-happy kick of late, some parts of Hollywood still believe in the power of the true-life drama.
One prime ingredient of any prestigious Hollywood drama is the inclusion of a well-respected actor and luckily for Race, they have enlisted the talents of Jeremy Irons.
Irons’ participation in virtually any dramatic title tends to elevate what’s on the screen and give true heft to whatever story he is helping to tell. Anyone with any doubt of the actor’s powers in this regard need look no further than the 2012 drama The Words.
The epitome of the multi-strand narrative, The Words opens on celebrated author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid), who encounters beautiful graduate student Daniella (Olivia Wilde) at a reading of his latest novel. Enchanted by the young fan, Clay invites Daniella back to his apartment where he tells her the story of another writer named Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper). Rory is happily married to the gorgeous and loving Dora (Zoe Saldana), but finds himself frustrated by the fact that he is unable to make a career for himself as an author, despite being told by publishers he has real promise. When a trip to Paris leads Rory to find a lost, yet brilliant, manuscript in an old briefcase while he and Dora are shopping for antiques, the aspiring author decides to pass the work off as his own, bringing him instant fame and acclaim. All is well until an old man (Irons) encounters Rory in the park and proceeds to tell him a story of a young man (Ben Barnes) living in post-WWII Paris, which will change Rory’s life forever.
What makes The Words such a joy is how it’s able to encompass so much of the type of classic Hollywood drama film lovers have come to crave for decades. There isn’t a frame of this film which doesn’t feel incredibly cinematic. Mainly, this is because of the various genres at play and how the filmmakers have managed to make them work to the extent that they do. Among the many hats the film so beautifully wears is a dual love story between two distinct couples whose stories are so incredibly similar and secretly linked. In particular, the gorgeous flashback segments featuring Barnes and Nora Arnezeder, which features almost no dialogue, proves especially touching thanks to lush music, Irons’s flawless narration and its overall tragic nature.
The Words also works as an intriguing literary mystery with the guilt of Rory’s deed eating away at him as he fears being found out, while a separate mystery surrounding Clay becomes an object of high interest for Daniella. At the heart of The Words, though, is a classic tale of morality versus ambition and how two such emotions will forever be at odds with one another, especially in regards to art. All of this is peppered throughout with a deep reflective quality about how the choices we make, big or small, not only have the power to change lives, but will, in one way or another, come back to haunt.
If it sounds as if The Words packs a lot into its less than two hour runtime, the film’s structure is more than up to the challenge of exploring every one of its plots as deeply as possible. There are flashbacks within flashbacks as the story drifts back and forth between eras and couples. Yet the team behind the scenes have managed to weave the various plotlines in such a symphonic way that the audience never once feels bored or overwhelmed. Instead there’s nothing to do but examine the flawed nature of human beings and realize how universal real life truly is.
A script like The Words is an actor’s dream, and nowhere is this more evident than in each of the performances. Irons is heartbreaking, Cooper is conflicted, Quaid is soulful, Saldana is lovely, Wilde is magnetic and Barnes is poetic. It’s obvious when a group of actors believe so strongly in the material in front of them. They push themselves to become one with it to the point where they truly embody both characters and dialogue. When that happens, as it does here, the screen simply radiates.
The acclaim from Cooper’s runaway success in that year’s Silver Linings Playbook unquestionably overshadowed his fine work in The Words, which was roundly ignored by most audiences. Mixed reviews from critics only added to the film’s underwhelming performance and all but ensured that the film would be more or less completely forgotten come awards time.
The overall reaction to The Words still baffles me. I simply cannot understand how a film which touches on so much human joy and conflict in such a poetic way can continue to remain so under the radar. In the end, however, it’s virtually impossible to pinpoint what people are going to respond to and how. But the fact remains that The Words exists for those select few lovers of cinema who crave the kind good acting and captivating stories so rarely found anymore.
