Reviews

(Contains spoilers)

I *love* Beggars and Choosers. I love it to bits and pieces. The Irish TV station, Network 2, shows it on Friday nights (when it feels like it and there aren't too many sunspots or a vital tiddleywinks match), usually after midnight, and even though I'm always exhausted by Friday night I never miss it. How could I live without my weekly fix of Rob Malone, the only good man in Hollywood? Not to mention Brad, the whore of an agent; Yolanda, the actress with Tourette's Syndrome; Lori "the fox" Volpone, as ruthless as she is beautiful, and the Russian gangster Nicky Krasnikov who wears down her resistance with poetry and smouldering looks (oh, and killing people who threaten her); Malcolm, the VP of Talent who dithers about coming out and finally does it on national television. . .not to mention the two characters whose sole purpose is to be in the restaurants when the others are eating lunch and make phone calls about who's eating with who. ..

Beggars and Choosers is a television show about television, and the gloves are definitely off. I'm frankly amazed that it got made at all, it's so scathing about the business. Rob Malone (boss of the fictional LGT network) at one point says that television is "sh***y"; and he's the only one who cares. Everybody else is out for themselves and only themselves. They don't care who they have to stab in the back to push themselves ahead.

And yet even the scummiest of the characters have real motivations. Even though we *know* Lori Volpone is a workaholic megabitch who'd sell her own mother if it would get her the credit for a #1 Neilsen-rated show, it's impossible not to see through her eyes as she is gradually seduced by Krasnikov -- and even though Krasnikov is a ruthless killer, he is so honest, so straightforward, so undeniably *real*, that after the phoniness of Hollywood he comes as a breath of sweet, fresh air. Brad spends twenty minutes choosing socks, on the grounds that each pair of socks represents a different career track, and the scene is ludicrous yet at the same time logical; it's quite possible that the wrong socks *will* cripple his career, and his willingness to pay such attention to detail is what gives him the edge over the others.

Beggars and Choosers is hugely funny, audacious, and sharp; but it's also surprisingly warm. Through all the back-stabbing and lies, the characters remain likeable as well as fascinating. I hope it runs for a long time.

It took several viewings for me to fully appreciate this film: the good, the bad and the merely eccentric.

On the good side, the performances are amazing, from Gore Vidal as the Gattaca Corporation boss-type to Ethan Hawke as the hero to (especially) Jude Law as the crippled, self-hating Valid who helps him. Even Uma Thurman manages to shine, despite her part being so slender you couldn't see it if it stood sideways.

The design is also stunning. I don't know whether they shot the whole film through a green filter or what, but somehow the future that we see is visually distinct without being all that different from the present. (Vincent's minimalist apartment wouldn't look out of place in present-day London or Manhattan.) The look of the film is a wonderfully understated elegance, not a hair out of place, reflecting the regimentedness of the characters' lives.

On the bad side...well, first of all the science is seriously dodgy. Niccol attributes to genetics things which are only partly genetic, if that, and over-simplifies horribly. Anyone who actually knows about genetics will cringe a few times at the mistakes he makes.

Also, the dialogue is appallingly banal. I found myself able to predict what the characters would say next -- the *first* time I saw it. And that lessens the credibility of the characters. Thank Goodness all the actors are so bursting with talent, or else this film would have been duller than ditchwater.

And as for eccentric...well, where were all the passers-by? This future seems curiously empty. I know, I know; there was plenty of traffic, and the concert-hall was full, and there were the Gattaca employees...but these somehow didn't seem like real people, more like video constructs to make us *think* there were people around. I dunno, maybe it was just me.

(spoilers ahoy)

Another thing on the "good" list, for me, was the ending. Up until the very end, I was convinced this was going to be yet another individual-fights-the-system-and-wins film, the kind that Hollywood puts out so regularly with no regard for realism. Because, let's face it, when an individual fights a huge institution, the chances of said individual winning are minimal. Institutions can only really be fought by groups of people joining together in common cause (viz. unions against big business, environmental groups against polluters etc.). But the ending of Gattaca is neither the unrealistic "I fought the law and I won" ending nor the realistic, but downbeat "I fought the law and the law won" ending. Instead, it's the third possible ending: "I defrauded the system and got away with it, and this is a good thing, because the system is morally corrupt."

This kind of ending is much rarer than the other two, because it's so subversive. It's not a huge leap from seeing the society portrayed in a film as morally corrupt to seeing *our* society as morally corrupt. That Niccol opted for the difficult, pessimistic, and yet not disheartening choice of letting Vincent get away with his deception without changing anything about the society itself or even so much as making a Bold Statement about genetic engineering speaks volumes about his willingness to take risks. It's not a conventional ending by any manner of means, especially when you factor in the suicide of Jerome.

Speaking of which -- I don't think the death of a major character has moved me so much since Charlotte's Web. What a truly heroic act -- and from a character so previously unheroic! Due in large part to the charisma of Jude Law's performance, Jerome is deeply sympathetic...yet he has considered himself a failure all his life. He drinks, he indulges in bouts of self-pity, he expresses contempt for life, other people, and, in one particularly memorable scene, the planet Earth ("this ball of dirt!"). It may be a cliche that you don't know your strength until it's tested, but it's true all the same; and *we* don't know Jerome's strength until the very end.

You might just think that it's a macabre and unpleasant way of committing suicide and no more, but think: as long as Jerome is alive, Vincent is not safe. There is always the possibility of Vincent getting caught as long as Jerome remains as, so to speak, a skeleton in his closet. Jerome, in fact, kills himself in order to set Vincent free, and does in it such a way as to make sure that no remains are left behind to incriminate Vincent, despite the intense pain this must have caused him.

Now *that's* love. And evidence of a far more convincing and profound relationship than the tacked-on romance between Vincent and Irene. Let us not forget that Jerome gives Vincent a lock of his hair to take with him on the trip...when he wasn't going to need it for a DNA test. The greatest love story never told. But that's just my opinion.