Closer
directed by Mike Nichols

A line from a James Tate poem kept running through my head as I watched “Closer” --- “we keep digging a hole/that leads away from the door/through which we can't get our karma.”

In other words, life is a fairly hopeless enterprise, with humans scurrying around looking for happiness…and unable to recognize it when they stumble upon it.

Just consider the characters:

Alice (Natalie Portman), young and beautiful, newly arrived from America and working as a lap dancer in a London club. She falls in love with…

Dan (Jude Law), who writes a novel that borrows heavily from her life. Then Jude goes to have his book jacket picture taken by…

Anna (Julia Roberts), a photographer who is something of a cross between Annie Leibowitz and Richard Avedon. Jude flirts with her. They kiss.

That night, in one of the niftiest pieces of writing in a long while, Jude enters an internet chat room, pretends to be a woman and makes a date with…

Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist. Clive shows up at the appointed place, meets Julia and believes she's his date. She's not --- but, soon enough, she's his wife.

From here, it gets really complicated, and the less you know the better.

“Closer” began life as a play, and Nichols has wisely not “opened it up.” Love stories have public sides, but what we really want to see is what happens behind closed doors --- or, if we're honest, what really happens in the bedroom. Nichols likes to push the envelope. But he is also very much on the side of The Tasteful --- he's best with characters like these, who talk dirty about what they've done. But…flesh? That's for strip clubs, and one very hot scene with an all-grown-up Natalie Portman.

“Closer” isn't a comedy, though it's funny, and it isn't exactly a drama, though it has its own kind of suspense and action. It's a conversation --- and a conversation starter. It asks: What is love? What is truth --- and does it have a value in romantic relationships? And, most of all, it asks us to ponder attraction, the fatal pull we feel in the presence of people who vibrate at our frequency. Do we have to act on that attraction? Is there any way we can stop ourselves?

This sounds deep. But look at the characters in this movie --- a dermatologist, a photographer, an exotic dancer, an obit writer. They're all people on the surface of life, people judged by surface values, people obsessed with the exploration of surfaces. They have deep thoughts, but they're fundamentally shallow.

And because they are shallow, they're riveting --- they speak to the shallowness in us. In this world, people have affairs, betray one another, hurt one another, and come back to their original partners and do it all again. Not possible? Think a little harder about some people you know --- or, if you dare, about the way you live.

“Closer” is fascinating to watch because, although it covers a period of years, it seems to be happening in real time. Scenes are long enough to hold entire conversations. Which means there will be inevitable comparisons to the first film Mike Nichols ever made, another conversation piece with four characters: “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Here's a heresy: “Closer” may be the better film, and not just because Nichols has four more decades of experience in theater and film. His genius now is prodding an audience just enough --- pushing us out of our comfort zone with nasty language and fresh ideas, but not detonating our hopes. We look at his characters and think: “I wouldn't do that” or “I'd do it this way.” In other words, we're engaged with these people. How often does that happen to you at the movies?

It's interesting to watch how our sympathies shift in “Closer.” I started by caring about Jude Law. I moved on to Clive Owen. And I settled, finally, on Natalie Portman. Julia Roberts? It's hard to think of “ America 's Sweetheart” as a sexual being. But there I go --- taking her seriously. “Closer” has that effect.

If you can handle smart talk and “immoral” behavior, “Closer” will deliver 101 minutes of painful pleasure.

---  by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To buy "Closer" from Amazon.com, click here.

Copyright 2004 by Head Butler Inc.