Director: Barry Levinson Starring: Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig Writers: Buck Henry, Michal Zebede | 3/5 The Humbling Good Al Pacino movies - even decent Pacino performances - have become increasingly rare in the past two decades. So, when one comes along, like this Philip Roth adaptation about a disgruntled, delusional aging actor, you really have to treasure it. Pacino is beyond solid, even when the film is crumbling around him. Simon Axler (Pacino) is in a rut - that’s putting it extremely lightly. At the end of his most recent play, he took a dive off the stage into the pit. After hospitalization, he is sent home, where he fantasizes of offing himself like Hemingway. He is aware that his skills are slipping away. He spends thirty days at a mental health facility. He begins dating Pageen (Francis Ha’s Greta Gerwig, excellent); who, as luck would have it, is technically a lesbian. It is in this last relationship where Levinson focuses most of his attention. Despite a pair of stellar performances, Simon and Pageen’s relationship rarely feels intimate, sensual, respectful, or even platonic. Is Simon keeping her around because she is young and beautiful? Is he trying to artificially create a muse? Is he intrigued by the fact that she clearly is not into men? Or maybe Pageen is the one keeping him around out of some kind of weird fascination with this decaying artist. With an actress as good as Gerwig, you always feel like she may be the inconspicuous smartest person in the room. |
All of these questions present some interesting trains of thought. If you care to hop on any of these trains, they really could lead you to somewhere interesting. Veteran director Barry Levinson (Good Morning, Vietnam) inserts reflections on aging, the loss of talent, love/loneliness, and even identity. Levinson, who worked with Pacino most recently in the Jack Kevorkian TV movie You Don’t Know Jack, has had his shares of highs and lows. With every Wag the Dog comes an Envy when it comes to Levinson. The Humbling never reaches the highs or lows of those two films, mostly due to Pacino’s dynamite performance.
Nobody, including me, will deny that Pacino is one of the greatest modern movie actors; but as of late, he has adopted this intensity that at times can feel ham-fisted. More times than not, this over-dramatization has left the actor looking like a parody of his younger self. Once every couple years, though, a movie and a role will come along that requires exactly that. Humbling is one of those movies. Simon is as eccentric and mad as they come. Needless to say, Pacino wears the role like a second skin. The film’s opening scene, which finds Simon having a conversation with himself in a dressing room, is pure gold. The fumes of that scene will leave you high, even when the story cracks and falls as the film progresses.
While many directors have pulled off movies about possibly-insane protagonists who may or may not be living a fantasy, Levinson never seems to get a hold on it. Sometimes it feels like he took the storyboards, shuffled them like a deck of cards, and just told his story whichever way that turned out. The uneven pacing and tone feels frustrating rather than intriguing. That line between interesting and annoying is a thin one, I just think Levinson may have accidentally fallen on the wrong side of it.
(Available on iTunes)
Nobody, including me, will deny that Pacino is one of the greatest modern movie actors; but as of late, he has adopted this intensity that at times can feel ham-fisted. More times than not, this over-dramatization has left the actor looking like a parody of his younger self. Once every couple years, though, a movie and a role will come along that requires exactly that. Humbling is one of those movies. Simon is as eccentric and mad as they come. Needless to say, Pacino wears the role like a second skin. The film’s opening scene, which finds Simon having a conversation with himself in a dressing room, is pure gold. The fumes of that scene will leave you high, even when the story cracks and falls as the film progresses.
While many directors have pulled off movies about possibly-insane protagonists who may or may not be living a fantasy, Levinson never seems to get a hold on it. Sometimes it feels like he took the storyboards, shuffled them like a deck of cards, and just told his story whichever way that turned out. The uneven pacing and tone feels frustrating rather than intriguing. That line between interesting and annoying is a thin one, I just think Levinson may have accidentally fallen on the wrong side of it.
(Available on iTunes)