13th
my blueberry nights
After too many pierogies and too much wine, I finally saw the new Wong Kar Wai; his first english language feature.
Interestingly, the credits list him both as a co-writer and as the “story” writer, as if the two things are different, which for him they must have been, since his English is not quite fluent.
The lack of fluency doesn’t appear anywhere in the sumptuously rendered visual touches he’s famous for, but is instead uncomfortably apparent in some of the less convincing emotional exchanges (as when the impassive Norah Jones ponders foolishly, ”How do you say goodbye to someone you can’t imagine living without? I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t say anything. I just walked away. “). That these scenes fall flat is not completely Wong’s fault. With Jones as a one-note lead, even the starry supporting cast cannot compensate. Only David Straithairn, unrecognizable as a lovelorn alcoholic cop, delivers a really poignant performance, shrinking his body to a husk and molding his face into a haggard mask of desperation.
Wong’s fascination with Americana saturates the movie. From the blueberry pie of the title (singlehandedly responsible for this clunker of dialogue -
Elizabeth: So what’s wrong with the Blueberry Pie?
Jeremy: There’s nothing wrong with the Blueberry Pie, just people make other choices. You can’t blame the Blueberry Pie, it’s just… no one wants it.
Elizabeth: Wait! I want a piece) -
to the slipshod southern accents of Weisz and Portman (accompanied by a truly awful semi-scottish brogue on the usually apt Law), to the smoky dive bars of a subterranean Memphis, to the flash and smut of small-town Nevada, to the endlessly blue skies of the open road, Wai has gathered together what he seems to consider the integral pieces of the American mythology and compressed them all into a seamless atmospheric meditation on the relationship between the ordinary and the uncanny.
Ostensibly, what we are watching is the story of Elizabeth’s (Jones’s) self-transformation by way of another American standard, the road trip. This is no Kerouackian binge on physical pleasures. Rather, the reticent Elizabeth is luminously watchful, at once unremarkable and out of place. While Wong has made the ordinary fixtures of American living into garishly lit-up caricatures of their humble selves, Elizabeth’s path seems to run in the opposite direction: all of outrageous people she comes across (Straithairn’s drunk, Weisz’s unfaithful vixen, Portman’s bleach-blonde hustler) are humanized by their relationship with her, reduced to the small-scale, common emotions of loneliness, regret, and plain unhappiness.
Law’s presence and importance in the movie is unvalidated by his performance. Though his bartender is supposed to represent a kind of sage, measured wisdom, the gems he disperses are less insightful than they are hokey. He and Jones lack some essential chemistry and are merely two pathetic people that have decided to stick to the farce of meaningfulness they have injected into their brief encounters. When he tells Jones’ Elizabeth that she’s changed, it’s hard to believe, not only because the line is delivered with such dull assurance, but because the only change she’s noticeably undergone is from Elizabeth, to Lizzy, to Beth, back to Elizabeth again.
* Also, what is up with the Louis Vuitton sponsorship? Very strange: unlike Darjeeling Limited where Marc Jacobs actually did all of the gorgeous luggage, the only LV I spotted was a ragged looking tote the camera glanced at for a minute at the close of the movie.
