VCR Views
by Leonard Heldreth

One of the films this month centers around music with some satirical overtones; the second, a darker satire, uses music perversely; and the third, a satirical comedy masquerading as a teen-movie, takes no prisoners but shows some compassion. In all of them are recognizable types of people that we encounter almost every day.

High Fidelity
Is it true that you can tell a lot about people by the music they listen to? And is it also true that the pop songs that we have grown up with have influenced our lives in various ways? Rob Gordon, the hero of Stephen Frears' High Fidelity, certainly thinks so and wonders, "Did I listen to popular songs because I was miserable, or was I miserable because I listened to popular music?" For Rob and his two employees at Championship Vinyl, a record store in Chicago, everything in life is measured against the touchstone of popular music. Rob's other obsession is making lists—evaluating the various categories of his life to see which events make the hit parade and which do not. As the film opens, he is trying to decide whether his current breakup with Laura is one of his top five breakups of all time, to be put up there with the top five songs you'd like to have played at your funeral, the top ten side-one, track-one songs of all time, and other such compilations.
  John Cusack and his co-writers—D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink and Scott Rosenberg—have moved Nick Hornby's cult-favorite novel from its London setting to Chicago but apparently have otherwise been faithful to the novel's events and spirit (I haven't read it). Acknowledging the fascination of music trivia and obsessions about who's good and who isn't in popular music, they nonetheless see the narrow focus of Rob and his friends as essentially delayed adolescence and as something that must be outgrown if the individual is to function as an adult.
  In an attempt to understand why he is unsuccessful at love, Rob mentally replays his top-five break-ups and also reestablishes contact with the girls to test his current perceptions against his memories of the situations. Often, his memories turn out to be untrustworthy. Talking casually to the camera as he reviews his life so far, Rob begins to see that some of his problems may be in his own outlook. His encounters with the former girlfriends frequently are quite funny, as he now sees them more objectively, e.g., he realizes that Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is even more self-absorbed than he realized originally—perhaps as much as he is.
  Despite the rueful humor of these situations, the film is at its best in the record store. Rob originally hired his two clerks to work three days a week, but they have been showing up every morning for the last four years, and they almost steal the film. Barry, the obnoxious clerk who constantly puts customers down for their lack of musical taste or knowledge, is played by Jack Black, lead singer of the group Tenacious D. We all know clerks like this, whether they are selling clothes, books, records, gas, food or whatever. They are completely confident that they know more about everything than you could possibly imagine, and that their time spent waiting on you is time wasted that they could have spent thinking about themselves. Black is first rate as this character.
  Dick, the other clerk, is played by Todd Louiso in a very impressive screen debut. No one has "nerd" down as well as this young man. Watch the way he walks, the play of emotions across his face as he tries to answer a question, and his deference to practically everyone. Yet he's the kind of nerd that you want to comfort because he's trying to do the best he can and there's not a mean bone in his body.
  John Cusack holds his own in this company and manages to make Rob appealing, even though he admits he has not treated his girlfriends as well as he might have. If Rob's character has a problem, it's that Cusack makes him almost too nice. We need to see a little more of those qualities that drove his girlfriends away. Iben Hjejle plays his current girlfriend Laura, and she captures nicely that stage when you have to decide whether to stay with comfortable adolescent friends or move on into the tougher adult world. Lisa Bonet ("The Cosby Show") plays Marie De Salle, an up-and-coming young singer who has a one-night-stand with Rob. Tim Robbins (The Player) has a supporting role as Ian, the man who tempts Laura away from Rob, and his performance is somewhere between good and over-the-top. High Fidelity is more a chuckle than a laugh-out-loud film, but the imaginary scenes in the record store in which Rob and his clerks destroy the pompous Ian are hilarious.
  Stephen Frears (The Grifters, My Beautiful Laundrette) is a low-key British director who gets excellent performances from his actors and, except for Rob's monologues to the camera, doesn't let technique get in the way of the story. Altogether, High Fidelity is a lovely little comedy about people whom we all have met or have been. Top

American Psycho
To discuss American Psycho with the previous film is like mixing apples and oranges, except that twenty-seven-year-old Patrick Bateman also has a fascination with arcane popular music knowledge, and before killing his victims, he plays CDs for them and holds forth in boring lectures on the significance of various 1980s icons, such as Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News. American Psycho, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, is directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol) from a script written by Harron and Guinevere Turner. People familiar with the novel will either praise the film for drastically reducing the body count, clinical details, and endless lists of esoteric name brand items, or criticize it for betraying the horrific vision inside the head of its literary protagonist. What Herron has preserved is the social satire of the snooty world of Wall Street mergers and acquisitions (what Bateman slyly refers to as "murders and executions," knowing everyone will think they misheard him).
  Patrick Bateman admits that he is all surface, that he doesn't exist outside of his decorated apartment, his expensive clothes and his business cards. Even his beautifully shaped body and carefully tended face are part of his facade, like his ability to get reservations at the best restaurants and to make jokes about the right people at the right time. What Bateman acknowledges only to the camera is that he is also a serial killer, someone who stabs homeless people in alleys and then stomps their dogs to death; who invites prostitutes to his apartment for an evening of sex, murder, and chain saw games; and who even takes an axe to one of his co-workers. The film initially received an NC-17 because of a sexual three-way that Bateman has with two prostitutes whom he then kills, but Herron cut the scene to get an "R" rating. It's back in the DVD version, and while it adds nothing to the erotic quality of the film, it adds significantly to the satire as Bateman, in front of the mirror with the women, flexes his muscles and preens, more interested in his reflections than in his sexual activities. How strange that the rating system took umbrage with this sexual scene but had no problem with the chainsaw attacks which clearly have sexual overtones as Patrick, wearing only jockey shorts and holding the chainsaw low in front of him, runs after the escaping prostitute! Do you suppose the censors don't recognize a symbol when it nearly bisects them?
  Against this mayhem, Herron portrays the world of these wealthy, bright young men as being totally narcissistic. In some very funny scenes, they compare business cards, argue about which restaurants are the best because they are the most difficult to get reservations for (the restaurants also get their satiric dues), and confuse each other for someone else, demonstrating their lack of individuality. Bateman constantly is being mistaken for one of his victims. One of the best scenes is Bateman's morning cleansing ritual. After doing a thousand crunches and showering his well-defined body, he shaves and applies various masks, creams, astringents, washes and unguents to his face to attain the perfect complexion. As he lavishes this care on himself, he openly acknowledges that he has no emotions beneath the carefully tended exterior.
  The film's ending, like that of so many recent films, raises questions about all that went before and leaves ambiguous the filmed reality. When one of the bright young men tells Bateman that he had lunch with Paul Allen (Jared Leto) in London two days ago, it calls into question Bateman's murder of Allen the previous week. Or is the friend just again confusing the identities of these young men? At one point, one of them says, "I had dinner with Patrick last week—I think." At another point, Bateman returns to an apartment where he has stashed some body parts and finds the apartment empty and apparently being remodeled. Is he a killer or is it all just pornographic fantasy?
  In this film of surfaces, Christian Bale (Children of the Sun, Velvet Goldmine) gives an extraordinary performance, portraying someone portraying a role and yet demonstrating the frustration as people ignore him and force him to keep raising the quotient of violence until he receives the recognition that he feels he deserves. Willem Dafoe is fine as Detective Donald Kimball, a part that little is done with, and Jared Leto is slimy enough as Paul Allen, Patrick's alter ego and early victim (Herron says she did not realize the name was the same as that of Bill Gates's partner). Reese Witherspoon is convincing as Evelyn Williams, Patrick's fiancée.
  One last thought: No critic seems to have picked up on the similarities between Patrick Bateman and the character of James Bond carried to an exaggerated extreme. Both are handsome and live a wealthy lifestyle, both pride themselves on superb taste and name-brand recognition, both use women and discard them, both have been labeled misogynistic, both have secretaries that they flirt with, both tend to conceal their "other" lives, and both are deadly, often sadistic killers. The most famous Bond was Scots former Mr. Universe Sean Connory, and Bateman is played by well-muscled Welsh Christian Bale. The only difference is that we accept all of Bond's qualities because he's on our side and useful, but if "M" should fire him, he could easily fit into Bateman's old job on Wall Street. But perhaps these correlations should not be pursued too far, given the world's infatuation with Mr. Bond. Top

Election
Given the results of the presidential election, how could one pass up a satirical comedy with the title Election, especially when the tentative winner defeats the tentative loser by only two votes, and the two crumpled ballots that should have been counted turn up in the waste basket of the faculty advisor (and vote counter)? It's not quite as convoluted as Florida, but this is merely fiction.
  Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) has decided that being elected president of her George Washington Carver High School class in Omaha, Nebraska is just what she needs to round out her resume and win a scholarship to a prestigious school such as Georgetown. Like everything she attempts, Tracy sets out with single-minded determination to achieve her goal. Dedicated to stopping her is faculty member Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), partly because Tracy has destroyed his fellow teacher who had an affair with her and partly because Tracy is the kind of egotistical, successful student that almost everyone but her mother hates. McAllister persuades popular jock Paul Metzler (Chris Klein of American Pie) that "it's time to give something back," and Metzler, not the brightest berry on the bush, agrees to run against Tracy. Then Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell) decides to run against her brother and Tracy when she finds that her former girlfriend has thrown her over for her brother. Tammy's campaign theme is that all school elections are stupid, and that if she is elected, she will end the whole charade of student government. The rest of the film shows how the campaign plays out with each character getting some of what he or she deserves but seldom deserving what he or she gets.
  Reese Witherspoon is pompous and completely self-serving as she accepts what she sees as the rights she has earned, and before the election, she prays, "I really must insist you help me win the election tomorrow." Wrapped up in her own and her mother's dreams of success, her eyes narrow to slits whenever she is obstructed, and her behavior when she thinks she has won, a kind of stiff-legged jumping up and down, is priceless. Matthew Broderick, after the farce of Godzilla, again reveals that he is a fine actor, but it's difficult to believe that the once-hip Ferris Beuhler has turned into this slightly paunchy, platitude-repeating high school teacher who talks about how sensitive his divorced neighbor is but whose eyes are on her cleavage. Chris Klein makes the slightly dim Paul Metzler the least disagreeable of the characters, even though he thanks God for the size of his penis and votes for Tracy because he feels it isn't appropriate to vote for himself. Jessica Campbell, Paul's adopted sister Tammy, argues that she is not a lesbian because "I'm attracted to the person. It's just that all the people I've been attracted to have been girls." Except for a couple of simulated sex scenes, the film avoids the deadly salaciousness of so many teen pictures, but its sexual language and attitudes are exceedingly blunt.
  Election is not a typical teen comedy. Director Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth) is after bigger game as he lets each of the major characters narrate and in the process skewer themselves, just as our national politicians do. Tammy's comment that all elections and politicians are the same, only the names change, seems accurate, but she doesn't necessarily believe her statement since she just wants to shock the school into expelling her to an all-girls' school. While the film is full of funny situations and lines, they are all barbed, and the winding down of the post-election events finds each of the characters getting some of what each wants but also blundering on in the same old errors. Under the guise of high-school teen comedy, Election is an original satire that shows the way high school students and adults really are. That the film was made and distributed is no small accomplishment. Top

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