The end is always nigh. Such is the pain of life. But lets not eulogise just yet, whilst we still have so many wonderful pieces of work to discuss. For as much as I have branded these articles as focussing solely on his film work, I do feel that I would be remiss to not look at his juggernaut televisual productions of some of the finest theatrical work of era. Hence we will discuss that later, but first we must look at the most lacklustre of Nichols 00’s fare; What Planet Are You From?
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What Planet Are You From? (2000)
Now many may point to the Day of the Dolphin as the great Nichols failure of his film career, however one can’t get away in many ways from the quality of possible product that could have occurred when it comes to two of the great comedic creatives of their generation coming together for a film. That was what was on the table with What Planet Are You From? when Nichols was brought on board for an astronomic reported $8 million to direct a script by Gary Shandling, when in the end the film was a huge box office failure (never actually receiving a UK commercial cinema release) and with a very well reported arduous working relationship between Nichols and Shandling. On paper when you throw in acting talent like Annette Benning, John Goodman, Greg Kinnear and Ben Kingsley and Richard Jenkins to boot, this had the possibility to be one of Nichols most promising later works. However piece by piece one can’t help but find it impossible to get away from the many issues this film has overall. The concept itself is both interesting and yet juvenile, not that that is an intrinsically bad thing, but we follow Shandling as a humanoid alien as he travels to Earth to impregnate an Earth woman for the baby then to be kidnapped by Kingsley as his alien master. Ok. But the whole film is built around a bevy of sex and relationship humour that just doesn’t land and is all delivered through the remove of an alien coming to learn the oh so difficult ways of women. It’s all played for absurdist comedy with a very dry edge, yet shot up against a backdrop of big budget sci-fi that doesn’t blend. The whole conceit also comes off incredibly creepily and the eventual romance that blossoms between Shandling and Benning does not work for me at all. Benning on the other hand is playing her side of the story as best she can and is solid as a woman who has decided to wait until marriage to finally have sex, this being in her middle age as a recovering alcoholic. Again Benning brings a humanity and quality of performance as this recovering addict that the film neither warrants or adapts around her. Shandling’s Alien is being hunted down by Goodman in a sub-plot that comes to nothing really and is a constantly jarring shift as we continue down to the films eventual unaffecting conclusion. Planet is filled with dated ideas and a non-cohesive film-making team that for me makes this Nichols worst film, afterall Dolphin in its oddities and ironic enjoyment surpasses this in many ways.
Wit (2001)
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Nichols first foray into TV movies almost feels like a dry run for his towering epic work that would follow two years later with Angels in America. Not only is it an adaptation of an incredibly esteemed Pulitzer Prize winning play that boasts an incredibly star studded cast of film actors (back when film and TV were two very different fields of performers), but it’s also an adaptation that manages to balance the fourth wall breaking elements of the original text with panache and not the slightest annoying winking quality, bringing the filmic and visual craft that made his previous stage to film adaptations so incredibly successful. And they both have Emma Thompson too for that matter. However here as much as I eluded to this films wonderful ensemble of great actors, this is Thompson’s finest hour. The whole film rests on her shoulders and is both a completely bare and physical performance but also one of incredibly linguistic intelligence. This is a film that multiple times over entirely is in close up on Thomspon talking directly to the audience with the sort of intimacy and quality of tenderness that very few actors can achieve. It truly is towering work from Thompson and one of the finer showcases an actor of her calibre and particular talents could have ever been given. But overall Margaret Edson’s play, adapted here by Nichols and Thompson themselves, doesn’t overall have the major impact that some of the other works Nichols adapted do have. Wit is an incredibly strong piece of work on the page and for me even stronger on screen in the hands of Nichols and Thompson, and the wonderful ensemble with particular standouts with Audra Macdonald and Eileen Atkins, no matter how brief Atkins appears. Harold Pinter the acclaimed playwright even shows up here for a brief cameo of sorts. But overall it is too prone to over-intellectualising and in tandem with the intense sentimentality, for me there is an unevenness that overshadows the work. But once again if nothing else it is a sublime example of Nichols incredible ability to adapt stage to the screen even when the material so pointedly feels unadaptable, aswell as of course a truly astounding testament to the acting powers of Emma Thompson.
Angels in America: Part One – Millenium Approaches (2003) and Part
Two – Perestroika (2003)
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Now, a matter of context I feel is due to really classify Angels in America in its totality as perhaps Nichols greatest triumph – something that in actual fact he felt so himself. In 2003, the idea of bringing a series of movie actors (again, back when there was a firm delineation) together for what could be referred to as a six episode mini-series (not that I would or that one should) is something that we may today see every week on television screens, but back then was a huge and largely few and far between event and never on this budget or scale. This project all in all took just shy of a year to film and included many of the biggest and best names in the worlds of the theatre and film that were currently working, all coming together across six hours to bring Tony Kushner’s towering epic piece of theatre Angels in America to the screen. This was afterall not a piece that could be truncated perhaps to a three hour big budget film, without losing characters, plot threads and oh so many of the brilliant dialogues that make Angels the masterpiece it is on the page, on the stage or in this case on the screen.
Nichols worked very closely with Kushner and overall one can see the very early decision to make this as faithful an adaptation as possible and the overall project excels because of it. This is afterall incredibly dense and difficult material to bring to bare even in its original intended format, as a matter of fact with its vast ensemble and many time-spanning and location sprawling scenes, the argument could very easily be made that Angels is better suited to a film anyhow. Kushner’s vast story tells the tales of many across a period of months and then years (and later eras and spaces) as they traverse the tragedies of the AIDS pandemic of the mid 80’s. Kushner blends brutal realism with fantastical elements and blends character creations with real life figures, beyond then blending our world with others, our time with vast legions of the past, whilst on the other hand blending a plethora of genres and tones whilst never once feeling un-sure handed. Now… the ultimate conclusion of Angels with its final leap into ultimate fantasy, before plunging back down to reality is one that the tale undoubtedly needs, but is one that I don’t think I have ever seen wholly pulled off. However Nichols and Kushner get closest I feel with this production of the work. The only other negative I can throw at this 2003 film / mini-series is some truly abysmal early 00’s CGI, made even more abysmal regrettably by the high quality of when the project chooses to use practical effects. This reeks most of the ways in which at times Angels as a work feels to not quite reach the stellar heights it sometimes goes for, making so many incredible swings that some simply don’t connect. However ‘some’ is the operative word, afterall most certainly do, ‘most’ by far.
The mini-series boasts for my money a series of career best performances and although it gets harder down the line of the ensemble, one can seriously make a case for any of the cast to be honest. Justin Kirk, firstly as Prior, who is in a sense is our lead and does get the final word, is so charming, so devastating, so hilalrious, that it’s almost the template for anybody who wishes to portray Prior moving forward from this. It’s the perfect balance of pastiche, exaggeration and profound sadness and interiority. Ben Shenkman is known by many who know the play as the most hateable character with his series of selfish (but never unrealistic) decisions, but Kushner and any knowing audience member understands that the character of Louis is not only difficult to perform but mostly difficult to like and it is Shenkman who manages to make Louis if not wholly likable, certainly understandable in his terrible pain. Mary Louise Parker portrays Harper and although Parker certainly has her moments, this has always been the part of the play and the part of the show that has never actually worked for me completely without fault and Parker although is at times rather brilliant it doesn’t manage to alleviate this issue for me I’m afraid. Jeffrey Wright however comes near to stealing the entire project, particularly as Belize but even as some of his other minor multi-rolling characters, his wit, affability, charm, eloquence and simple under-statedness is profound and his win at the Emmy’s for his performance is not in the least bit surprising. Emma Thompson appears with magisterial amazement as one of the titular angels and is perfect casting and another perfect reunion of Thomspon and Nichols. The film boasts another reunion of Nichols with a longtime collaborator also, with Meryl once more entering the fray to take none of the roles that to be honest you’d expect her to take, instead she even opens the whole film as a rabbi, but of course is her brilliant self. Nichols understands Streep’s strengths like no other director I have seen her work with and time after time puts her in complex and varied roles that highlighted her different talents. But for me this film is stolen almost completely by Al Pacino and a truly brilliant Patrick Wilson, its’ certainly the greatest acting of Wilson’s career with a character so meaty and complex that one wishes so much so that he would be given such a role again, but one could very easily make the Pacino argument that he this is at least in his top five for sure. Wilson has such an arc and so many aspects to balance that his interiority implodes almost every scene and Wilson can portray it all with delicateness and astounding emotionality. Much the same can be said for Pacino who gives a performance as Roy Cohn of incredible devilish charisma, painful horridness and overall tragedy one could say as he succumbs to not only his illness but also the lies he has plagued his life with.
Nichols sure-hand here is astounding, pulling on his greatest strengths of drama and dark comedy, whilst also imbuing a flare for the fantastical that previously one would use to point to as his biggest failures. In many ways Angels as it came to be is the ultimate Nichols project, filled with great stars with a foundation of astounding material and a keen eye for adaptation, blending historical factors with at times even very broad comedy. To cut so frequently from scene to scene and balance at times pace and quality across three or four scenes at the same time, with in some cases actors playing multiple roles – a choice kept from the stage play in a decision that some might choose to avoid, however Nichols adds to the degree of difficulty and chooses to keep the multi-rolling aspect despite not having the grace of suspended disbelief of the proscenium. I note now that I have used the word ‘however’ a few too many times for a well-penned critical essay… however, perhaps in this case it is the perfect word to use, after all Angels is such a piece where the challenge was so unmountable that the fact that the final product is so astounding in the face of that feels like something to be noted. When I think of Angels that is in so many ways what I think of first, the astounding degree of difficulty and just to what level Nichols managed to pull it off with the same level of brilliance he brought to so many of his finest works, which this of course sits firmly amongst.
Closer (2004)
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The fit was natural and almost obvious for Nichols to take on the film adaptation of Patrick Marber’s hit play Closer, afterall as I commented in my writing on Carnal Knowledge, each film work together as a sort of double bill – both following a pair of couples who over the course of a series of years without any specific time jumps or clear timeline notation set out back and forth cheating and lying to each other until the film comes to its close with little resolution other than a burst of sexual bizarreness or in this case a burst of violence. Pair with this the historical element of Nichols adapting for the screen what many could argue in its form and content (I wouldn’t go as far as saying quality) is the modern day Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If one ignores Charlie Wilson’s War (which I often regrettably do), it’s a nice bookending of sorts for Nichols to start and end his film career with adaptations from the medium where he arguably he created his greatest work, that of the stage. Closer is pricklier and more slick than Carnal Knowledge but is also built around in its first half a lot more coincidences and impracticalities that for me have never really worked. There are simply too many conveniences to throw these four people into different altercations and different pairings for scenes that one can very easily pass off as believable when one factors in the timespan of events, but it still all feels rather convenient, especially when we are dealing with early 00’s chatrooms and hugely busy London aquariums. But Nichols strengths remain the same between this and Virginia Woolf, repeatedly with focussed camera work and zooms paired with the great editing of John Bloom and Antonia Van Drimmelen, manage to bring this naturally stagey product to a different medium with ease and effectiveness, with some of the films greatest scenes effectively deploying cross-cutting with a bluntness and a harshness that stage craft could never achieve.
Marber adapts his own play to the screen here and bar a few noted changes in uplifting his ending, the screenplay is a more or less direct adaptation, especially with much of the dialogue. That venomous and visceral quick vulgar dialogue that the film is built upon never grows grating or unrealistic as I find in less accomplished writers it can, with the nature of the characters lending perfectly to the verboseness and the smutty nature of much of what is said. In many ways there are times when one can flirt with the idea that this is the sort of profanity Albee would have used if allowed, I don’t personally think so, but the point could be made in pairing this with Woolf. The film is built around four key characters and four really great performances who each in their own turn have their big screaming scenes and their moments of intense vulnerability, often in direct contrast. Marber and Nichols form a quartet of believable characters who we enjoy watching, even if at times we are cringing and aghast at their actions. Jude Law and Natalie Portman make up the younger couple, with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts portraying the slightly older. Owen actually played the Law role on stage and his shift into this role is decidley strong actually and earnt him, along with Portman Oscar nominations, the films sole two recognitions by the Academy, for which it won neither. Portman is working here clearly against the type she had ended up being seen as, but frequently makes the role feel more than just a leap and her strongest asset is in making this ‘damaged dream-girl’ feel natural and believable and in many ways the most honest of the four. The entire film being built around honesty and deception, with questions in the dialogue being an almost grating constant. Law is his suave, charming self, with a dirty quality that once more makes the seediness of his character shine through in parallel. His most intriguing concept being that of his naivety in the face that anybody could do to him what he does to others. Roberts is her quality self and this is probably one of my favourite performances from her, certainly when it comes to pained vulnerability and quiet intensity. Owen’s role is written almost to steal the show and he doesn’t entirely, but he does get rather close, with his character often overpowering others with dominance in direct conflict with Law’s more sensitive dirtbag. At the end of the day this does fall into that Carnal Knowledge issue in that we are following two deeply deceitful and arrogant men, with the modern angle this time being that we also have a deceitful lying woman too. Nicols and the actors find the truth and the pain underneath the betrayal, with Marber’s dialogue frequently returning us to the visceral and sexual facts of the matter. Closer has a lot of qualities to enjoy, but still feels like lesser Nichols in the cannon, especially following the towering achievement of Angels.
Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)
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Now comes time for Nichol’s last film, and unfortunately
this is not a case where a director concludes his career with another seminal
work, it’s not that Charlie Wilson’s War is
bad, it’s just a little underwhelming and ultimately not especially compelling.
Nichols directs the film with a panache and great pace, with time and time
again camera movement that allows for the pace to be picked up even further.
However this is also undeniably not Nichol’s movie, or at least if one were to
give sole credit to an authorial voice in this case, it would have to be that
of Aaron Sorkin. And has there been a more a more distinctive, for better and
for worse, writer’s voice in the recent memory? Now I have to say for as much
as my favourite Sorkin scripts are some of my favourite scripts ever written,
even Malice, I mean I love Malice, but when it comes to the current
exposure of Sorkinisms, specifically that of lesser Sorkin. For instance comparison
is often a fruitless form of criticism, however one can’t watch a court room
drama like Chicago Seven and not see
a lesser A Few Good Men, one can’t
watch a decade spanning biopic of material set over a few days like Being the Ricardo’s and not see a lesser
Steve Jobs, or to some extent Social Network. Charlie Wilson’s War, adapted
here by Sorkin from a book by George Criles has one fundamental flaw it seems,
it fails to have any sort of opinion or depth. There is no complexities to this
story here and any that were there are either not touched upon or referenced in
the most slight of ways, montages and scenes of exposition flitting between one
another without much great cohesion. It’s well-paced and the characters are
interesting, the plot is too, the history is too for that matter, but overall
it all just feels underwhelming. What was the point in this small part of
history being presented? To meet these characters? They’re interesting, but it
all just feels like a very slight movie, which unfortunately only feels more
slight due to the fact that this ends
up as Nichol’s last film, which is a very unfair thing to place upon a simple
and effective, if slight, film like this. It’s the cast that also keeps this
effort light and fun to watch of course, and then and again dramatically
complex. Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and a cast of so many other classic character
actors of the era and era’s before, all give it their all and pull of the
Sorkin dialogue and make it a lot more convincing in the hands of a solid
director like Nichols, than other such films of Sorkin’s have been recently, in
less solid hands such as the directors hands of, well, Sorkin. Phillip Seymour
Hoffman is the clear standout, as he so always was, and sole Oscar nominee.
Overall looking back on this film is to look back on a time when Sorkin was a
bit of a god who couldn’t do much wrong, however the signs are here for what
will come in later lesser movies. However Nichols is a steady and assured hand,
as he always was too, and it does mark a fine example that even a lesser
Nichols film is still a class act affair.
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Sometimes a true genius can come along, make his place and then disappear from us, leaving so, so much behind. Such was the case with Nichols, and such will always be the case with him. His movies were human, his effect was profound and his talent was immeasurable. His capability to balance the human drama of heart and the total comedy of life all in one tight (but often emotionally ambiguous) package is the sort of work I strive for in life and in my creative endeavours. On this blog I don’t often let glimpses into my own acting, writing and directing shine through, but if I were to point to one of my many, many influences, I think it’s pretty fair to say that Nichols would be very, very high up that list.
Mike Nichols, the Greatest
6th November 1931 – 19th November 2014
- - Thomas Carruthers
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