3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, alcohol abuse and some sensuality, all involving teens
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.23.13
We must be our own best
advocates.
It’s a difficult, often bitter
lesson. Sometimes we get lucky, and somebody comes along who believes in us
wholeheartedly, unreservedly.
 |
| Aimee (Shailene Woodley), never having enjoyed the thrill of romance, falls heavily in love with Sutter (Miles Teller), despite knowing full well that he's bad news. Indeed, everybody in school knows about Sutter's self-destructive tendencies. The question, then: When he goes down in flames, will he take her with him? |
Sometimes that isn’t enough.
At first blush, 18-year-old
Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) seems the life of every party: vibrant,
good-natured, aggressively spontaneous. He enjoys a relationship with Cassidy
(Brie Larson), one of the most popular girls in their high school; they’ve
obviously been intimate for awhile.
But Sutter’s glad-handing
exterior masks uncharted depths of pain and uncertainty that he has absolutely
no desire to confront. He’s a smart kid who doesn’t bother to study, much to
the dismay of a concerned math teacher (Andre Royo). Sutter is left on his own
too much, because his single mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Sara) often works
double-shifts just to keep a roof over their heads.
And Sutter drinks. Far too much,
far too often. He is, in fact, a teen alcoholic, rarely seen without the shiny
hip flask that he regards as a badge of ultra-coolness. He’s cheerfully on the
fast-track to nowhere, a road he has traveled for several years. Doesn’t bother
him a bit: If confronted, he smiles broadly and extols the virtues of living
solely for the moment, for the “spectacular now.”
Screenwriters Scott Neustadter
and Michael H. Weber, who did such a marvelous job with 2009’s (500) Days of Summer — their own original script — have done some equally sensitive work
with this adaptation of Tim Tharp’s 2008 novel.
The Spectacular Now stars off
as a hip, flip teen saga, displaying the raunchy language and earthy behavior
we’d expect from something shallow like the American Pie franchise ... but
that similarity fades quickly. Sutter Keely is badly damaged goods, and Teller
throws himself into the role with a reckless abandon that his character would
recognize.
Before we know it, director James
Ponsoldt has taken us into dangerous waters; we realize that things can’t end
well. The only question is how much collateral damage will be involved.
With (500) Days of Summer, Neustadter and Weber demonstrated their skill with unconventional narrative
hooks; no surprise, then, that this film opens with Sutter’s feeble attempt to
compose an essay for what we assume is a college entrance application. He
stalls when asked to discuss a personal hardship or life-changing event:
uncharted territory he’d prefer to blow off. And so the subsequent film becomes
the answer, as we eventually meet the catalyst who serves as Sutter’s possible
life-preserver.
Assuming he’s willing to hold on.
Astute high school seniors
recognize the need to plan for the future: to take that next step. Much as
Cassidy loves Sutter and tingles in his presence, she recognizes that he’s
holding her back. She desperately wants to flee their small Georgia town;
Sutter sees no reason to change what he perceives is a winning formula.
And so she dumps him. Sort of.
More or less. Can’t quite let go of him completely, despite sliding gracefully
into a fresh relationship with the far more serious and stable Marcus (Dayo
Okeniyi).
Sutter, nonetheless feeling
abandoned, responds with a reckless night on the town. He wakes early the next
morning, having passed out on somebody’s lawn, with no idea where he left his
car. His timid rescuer is Aimee (Shailene Woodley), the sort of mousy, high
school outcast who never gets dates, never attends school dances.
She knows who Sutter is, though;
everybody at school knows Sutter. She’s therefore flattered when he expresses a
desire to hang out with her, even more pleased when he asks if she’ll help
tutor him in geometry. After all, “tutoring” invariably turns into an excuse
for something much more, ah, recreational.
Sutter’s one genuine friend,
Ricky (Masam Holden), is appalled. Aimee is a nice girl, Ricky protests,
knowing full well that his buddy is a self-centered jerk. She’s the kind of
girl who falls unconditionally in love. The kind of girl who can be hurt.
Similarly, Aimee’s best friend —
played by Kaitlyn Dever, well remembered from her striking work in TV’s Justified — views Sutter as totally bad news.
And, at first, Sutter is a jerk,
arrogantly assuming that Aimee is a “project”: an immature flower he can
encourage to bloom. Aimee, no slouch when it comes to perception, recognizes
this ... but tolerates it. She expects, with time, that the relationship can
progress, become more of a sharing thing.
How many women have gone down in
flames, hoping to change their men?
The resulting story is driven by
these two young actors: most particularly Woodley, whose performance is
breathtaking. Her Aimee is fragile yet foolishly impulsive: willing to embrace
unwise behavior, even when she knows better. Woodley’s first scene sets the
high bar for what is to follow, when Aimee finds Sutter passed out on that
lawn. She giggles nervously, stumbles through inane chatter, too flustered to
think straight: absolutely awed by the fact that Sutter Keely is willing to talk
to her.
And if the warning bells go off,
well, Aimee ignores them.
It must be mentioned that Woodley
is far from mousy, withdrawn or unattractive, even though the filmmakers do
their best to emphasize a “plain Jane” demeanor. It’s impossible to believe
that any girl this adorable would be dateless. But the brilliance of Woodley’s
performance includes the ability to carry herself in a manner that conceals her
own beauty and charisma; she’s every inch a girl whose many attributes fade
into the background, because she herself doesn’t believe they exist.
It’s an impeccably shaded
performance: no surprise, coming from the young actress who held her own with
George Clooney, and earned a Golden Globe nomination — not to mention a slew of
other acting awards — for her work in 2011’s The Descendants.
Teller’s acting résumé isn’t as
flashy, but his work here is equally subtle and sensitive, even though Sutter
often behaves like a blunt instrument. His nakedly vulnerable scenes arrive
unexpectedly: a brief chat with his older sister; a long-awaited heart-to-heart
with his mother; an unexpected moment of candor with the patient proprietor who
owns the men’s clothing store where Sutter has an after-school job. The latter
scene is particularly heartbreaking.
In his own way — often with a
stiffened reaction, as Sutter looks inside himself and winces at what he finds
— Teller elicits our concern about this contemptible character. That’s an
impressive feat, because Sutter constantly proves himself unworthy of anybody’s
sympathy ... and yet we care, despite ourselves. If not because he deserves
salvation, then at least because such self-destructive tendencies are so
tragic, in one so young.
Aimee, on the other hand, clearly
deserves the apprehension that Woodley’s performance elicits: Our anxiety
mounts by the minute, the tension building almost unbearably.
Such well-deserved praise
notwithstanding, though, Neustadter and Weber’s script has some rather glaring
problems. We never meet Aimee’s mother, also a single parent who remains an
off-camera figure: apparently damaged in some way (mentally unstable?) that never
is specified. This character’s absence becomes increasingly irritating, as the
story progresses.
The narrative also glosses quite
superficially over Aimee’s willing embrace of Sutter’s alcoholic tendencies,
leading me to believe, early on, that we were in for a teen echo of 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses. But Neustadter and Weber never confront the
implications of this plot point, except for a quick references to Aimee’s
father having died from drug abuse, thereby suggesting a dangerous genetic
predisposition, on her part.
Somehow, Aimee just doesn’t get
as drunk as Sutter; somehow, she seems able to control her consumption, and it
never becomes a problem for her ... despite the fact that we watch her getting
loaded just as often as he does. That’s rubbish.
Worse still, however, is this
film’s failure to honor the conclusion Tharp gives his novel. Longtime film
fans who remember George Segal’s crisis of conscience in 1973’s A Touch of
Class will recognize where this story is heading (and I’ll not share the
pivotal quote here, because it’d be a major spoiler). Tharp’s book demands that
conclusion, and so does this film ... but although Ponsoldt, Neustadter and
Weber replicate the novel’s key final scene, that’s not quite the end of this
movie. Which is a shame.
Because it’s dishonest and false,
and that comes as a jolt after so much of this story — thanks to its gifted
performers — feels so authentic.
Despite these shortcomings,
there’s much to admire in this big-screen handling of The Spectacular Now. Ponsoldt draws excellent performances from his young stars, and the supporting
players are equally memorable. You’ll not soon forget Kyle Chandler’s brief
turn as the estranged father Sutter eventually meets.
This summer has been marked by
the failure of gazillion-dollar action franchises, and the much more satisfying
success of “little films” with a fixation on coming-of-age storylines. We’ve
seen three now — following The Kings of Summer and The Way, Way Back — and
they’re all a treat. And if this one doesn’t quite live up to the adjective in
its title, it’s nonetheless quite memorable and well worth viewing.
After all, most of us recall the
agonies of star-crossed young love ... and Neustadter and Weber definitely nail
that vibe.
No comments:
Post a Comment