Michael Chabon is one of our generation's greatest writers, having earned the acclaim of awards and prizes that he deserves. "Wonder Boys" was made into a very good if uneventful film, and one has high hopes for "Kavalier & Klay." "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" is about Art Bechstein, the young son of a gangster who does not want him to follow in his footsteps. Art has majored in business but has no taste for it. It is the summer after his graduation and he is supposedly studying for a test that will license him to work in high finance, though he spends his time enjoying the summer as the last of his youth.
Art works at a bookstore and meets Phlox, an attractive young woman. He also makes friends with a gay man named Arthur Lecomte, who introduces him to Cleveland Arning. Art meets Cleveland's girlfriend Jane who is striking and mysterious to him. Art spends his summer in relationships with these people and learning more about himself.
The tone of the book is one of the great accomplishments of Chabon's writing. It is wry and witty, and ever so slightly tongue in cheek. My favorite line in the book is the last, in which Art tells us this summer was a turning point for him, or maybe he just made it all up. Art is a cousin to Holden Caufield, with his attitudes, but he takes himself far less seriously.
This film is not the trainwreck that many would have you to believe, including devotees of the novel. While some criticize the glossy cinematography, I would argue that it is one of the few things that work in this film. Pittsburgh has a fascinating aesthetic that deserves to be filmed well, and the cinematographer accomplished that.
The overall problem with the film is that it never comes even remotely close to capturing the tone of the novel. The wit and humor are gone completely. The tone of this movie is so deathly serious that none of the events that were shocking in the novel are the least bit surprising in the film. It is the equivalent of sitting in the parlor of a funeral home.
Jon Foster is an exercise in bad casting. He looks like what one imagines Art to look like--mildly handsome, lanky, a non-showy intelligence--but never once plays the character properly. There is no slyness, no humor, no wit or warmth in this performance, and that is about 60% of what's wrong with the whole film. Foster does not even come remotely close to the character we followed in the novel. A toned down Topher Grace is what the part called for, but all we get is an actor who is so bland and dull that we couldn't care less about the character he is playing.
Peter Sarsgaard was perfect casting as Cleveland, and has a resume of similar successful roles in his past. However, Sarsgaard plays Cleveland with all the seriousness of a war veteran who's lost his legs. The unpredictability and wildness that makes up the book's character is not in the film.
Sienna Miller's Jane is an overinflated part, about a character who was only meant to be an enigma in passing, sort of like Suzanne Somer's "Girl in the White T-Bird" in "American Graffiti." Her mere beauty is supposed to mean more to us than it ever does.
Only Mena Survari as Phlox and Nick Nolte as Art's gangster father manage to properly convey what we knew about the characters. Unfortunately the likable Phlox is reduced to being a clingy nymphomaniac, as opposed to the sweet, likable free spirit in the novel. Still Survari made the part work despite limited screen time.
Art's sexual awakening is glossed over and Cleveland's bisexuality is treated more as pansexuality. The film has the nerve to show the men in embrace, but cuts to the morning after in chaste fade away.
Even the Cloud Factory is given a short shrift. A prominent fixture in the book, it is also a big player in the movie, but as with the characters, it is also played as a serious location rather than a humorous one. The actual plant in the novel is a working facility at Carnegie Mellon University. In the film, it is an abandoned facility outside of town about which Cleveland says no one knows why smoke still comes out of the stack. Well, actually, smoke can only come from a stack if it is fed coal or some other energy source, which someone must purchase. So if no one is buying coal for it then such a thing is not even possible. Smoke doesn't just appear! And that sums up the problem with this film. Smoke appears out of nowhere and for no reason, as do the human emotions. We don't see any motivation or reasoning, and we never understand why any of these boring people want anything to do with each other.
Pittsburgh is a fascinating city with a rich history, Chabon's novel is a great book with rich characters. Both got the short shrift in this plodding and pointless film. The only way to enjoy it is to put it on TV at a party and turn down the sound while playing a music CD. The visuals make for great music video and replace the characters who never muster any personality in the atmosphere of the film. Like most films about ennui, we become bored with watching boredom.
Art works at a bookstore and meets Phlox, an attractive young woman. He also makes friends with a gay man named Arthur Lecomte, who introduces him to Cleveland Arning. Art meets Cleveland's girlfriend Jane who is striking and mysterious to him. Art spends his summer in relationships with these people and learning more about himself.
The tone of the book is one of the great accomplishments of Chabon's writing. It is wry and witty, and ever so slightly tongue in cheek. My favorite line in the book is the last, in which Art tells us this summer was a turning point for him, or maybe he just made it all up. Art is a cousin to Holden Caufield, with his attitudes, but he takes himself far less seriously.
This film is not the trainwreck that many would have you to believe, including devotees of the novel. While some criticize the glossy cinematography, I would argue that it is one of the few things that work in this film. Pittsburgh has a fascinating aesthetic that deserves to be filmed well, and the cinematographer accomplished that.
The overall problem with the film is that it never comes even remotely close to capturing the tone of the novel. The wit and humor are gone completely. The tone of this movie is so deathly serious that none of the events that were shocking in the novel are the least bit surprising in the film. It is the equivalent of sitting in the parlor of a funeral home.
Jon Foster is an exercise in bad casting. He looks like what one imagines Art to look like--mildly handsome, lanky, a non-showy intelligence--but never once plays the character properly. There is no slyness, no humor, no wit or warmth in this performance, and that is about 60% of what's wrong with the whole film. Foster does not even come remotely close to the character we followed in the novel. A toned down Topher Grace is what the part called for, but all we get is an actor who is so bland and dull that we couldn't care less about the character he is playing.
Peter Sarsgaard was perfect casting as Cleveland, and has a resume of similar successful roles in his past. However, Sarsgaard plays Cleveland with all the seriousness of a war veteran who's lost his legs. The unpredictability and wildness that makes up the book's character is not in the film.
Sienna Miller's Jane is an overinflated part, about a character who was only meant to be an enigma in passing, sort of like Suzanne Somer's "Girl in the White T-Bird" in "American Graffiti." Her mere beauty is supposed to mean more to us than it ever does.
Only Mena Survari as Phlox and Nick Nolte as Art's gangster father manage to properly convey what we knew about the characters. Unfortunately the likable Phlox is reduced to being a clingy nymphomaniac, as opposed to the sweet, likable free spirit in the novel. Still Survari made the part work despite limited screen time.
Art's sexual awakening is glossed over and Cleveland's bisexuality is treated more as pansexuality. The film has the nerve to show the men in embrace, but cuts to the morning after in chaste fade away.
Even the Cloud Factory is given a short shrift. A prominent fixture in the book, it is also a big player in the movie, but as with the characters, it is also played as a serious location rather than a humorous one. The actual plant in the novel is a working facility at Carnegie Mellon University. In the film, it is an abandoned facility outside of town about which Cleveland says no one knows why smoke still comes out of the stack. Well, actually, smoke can only come from a stack if it is fed coal or some other energy source, which someone must purchase. So if no one is buying coal for it then such a thing is not even possible. Smoke doesn't just appear! And that sums up the problem with this film. Smoke appears out of nowhere and for no reason, as do the human emotions. We don't see any motivation or reasoning, and we never understand why any of these boring people want anything to do with each other.
Pittsburgh is a fascinating city with a rich history, Chabon's novel is a great book with rich characters. Both got the short shrift in this plodding and pointless film. The only way to enjoy it is to put it on TV at a party and turn down the sound while playing a music CD. The visuals make for great music video and replace the characters who never muster any personality in the atmosphere of the film. Like most films about ennui, we become bored with watching boredom.