Insignificance

Insignificance (1985)

Dir. Nicolas Roeg

Written by Terry Johnson

Starring Michael Emil, Theresa Russell, Tony Curtis, Gary Busey, Will Sampson

Today’s entry into our continuing series “Hey, did you know Nicolas Roeg made other movies after the 70’s ended?” brings us to what I would consider one of his more approachable efforts, 1985’s INSIGNIFICANCE. It’s a movie about love and science and fame and sex and art and politics and baseball and Armageddon, which now that I think about it actually kind of describes every Nic Roeg film. Except the baseball part, I guess, that might be new to this one. But unlike most of his other movies, it approaches those topics with generally comprehensible conversation and likable characters, instead of a bunch of weird inscrutable plot points and slow-motion montages of things blowing up. Although it has those, too.

The hook here is an imaginary meeting of four luminaries of the 1950's in a New York City hotel room one very late night. They’re unnamed, but are clearly direct representations of Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy, all drawn together for different reasons but all eventually refracting off each others’ own particular power and vulnerabilities. Their encounter is purely fictional, but the movie isn’t shy about using it to examine both the big issues of the day and the smaller, more intimate moments between these sometimes larger-than-life characters. These are the most significant figures of the day, but their ubiquitous fame in some ways that makes them even harder to really know, and the film delights in finding a balance between their monumental cultural status and their more nuanced inner lives.

Now that's what I call education.

The script --adapted from a stage play of the same name by its original author-- has a vague whiff of the sort of stagy chattiness that we watch movies instead of plays in order to studiously avoid, but for the most part it’s actually pretty charming. It’s ambiguous without being obtuse, funny without being jokey, and seems disarmingly effortless despite the ambitious contrivance of the plot. Something for everyone. The highlight, though, is the film’s long middle act, where Monroe (Theresa Russell, from most of Roeg’s films but most known to you, personally, as Sandman’s wife from SPIDER MAN 3) cheerfully imposes herself on a pensive Einstein for a long discussion of physics, fame, power and maybe a little sex.

Russell doesn’t look much like Monroe, but she captures something perfectly true about the actress, breathlessly matching Monroe’s own near-parody of bubbly sexpot effusiveness mixed with just the faintest hint of something genuinely ethereal and perhaps a little tragic. Einstein is played by Michael Emil, “an actor and production manager,” (says his IMBD) so insignificant he doesn’t even have his own wikipedia page. This seems to be his only major film,* but he’s fucking fantastic here, finding a perfect bemused tone for the iconic physicist, who claims not to know who his famous visitor is but may be in desperate need of a distraction from the more dire matters currently weighing on his mind.

You know that old rule of cinema: if you see a post-cubist Picasso painting in the first act, it's gonna be a metaphor by the last act.

One of those matters is the spectre of bitter nationalism, represented here by a gleefully loathsome Tony Curtis as Joe McCarthy, who wants Einstein to testify before his House of Unamerican Activities Committee… or else.** To McCarthy, Einstein simply represents a voice of recognized popular authority, but of course Einstein has his own memories of governments singling out minority groups for special scrutiny. And from there, it’s a terrifyingly short mental journey to Einstein’s own unwanted progeny, the spectre of nuclear war. Even as he meticulously works through equations and chats up busty blonde actresses, the Professor’s mind can’t help but flit back to images of devastated Japanese cities and dreams of Nazis showing up at his door. Plus, now he had to worry that the Actress’ doofus ballplayer husband (Gary Busey as Joe DiMaggio) thinks he’s a philandering shrink. It ain’t easy being genius.  

I haven't seen all his films, but I'd wager this is Tony Curtis' sweatiest role.

There’s a lightly magical quality here --as befits a movie about a fictional encounter between these iconic American figures-- but Roeg keeps these characters’ pain too close to the surface for this to sink into some kind of campy postmodern fairy tale. In a typically Roeg move, he frugally peppers the erudite talkiness of the present with silent glimmers of the past, flashbacks which draw interesting juxtapositions with the dialogue, suggesting layers of hidden meaning. In particular, we see heartbreaking flashes of Monroe’s lonely childhood and awkward coming to terms with her own sexual power.*** It skillfully --and with somewhat surprising sensitivity-- intimates both why Monroe is the way she is, and, curiously, what else she could have been had her life, perhaps, been different.

What’s cool about the whole enterprise is that every one of these people represents something abstract: Einstein, the capriciousness of science, DiMaggio, the deceptive simplicity of masculinity, McCarthy, the corruptive influence of Power, and, of course, Monroe, the feminine mystique. And the movie certainly traffics in these abstractions. But it never forgets that these are real people, too. Each of these characters is aware of their own legendary status, and to some degree both freed and held hostage by it. They’re the most well-known people in America, probably in the world, but to some extent they’re defined by the way a busy world sees them more than the way they really are. And who even knows what that would be? Like the collaged nude of his wife that DiMaggio sees in a bar, these people have all been broken into their individuals parts and reshaped into something superficially identical but fragmented, piecemeal. Relative.

Busey is skeptical about cubist pornography.

Relativity is key here, obviously; fame is all about perception, just like reality is, and just like reality, the most important thing is where you’re standing and how quickly you’re travelling. This is made explicit in the film’s best scene, where an energized Monroe uses toy trains and flashlights to correctly explain the theory of relativity back to Einstein. It’s a wonderful, unexpected moment for both characters, a great piece of energetic filmmaking, and a not-exactly-subtle but still appropriate metaphor for the whole experience of life and the universe. At its best, the movie embodies all these things, and balances them with an unusual grace.

Towards the end, things start to get a bit more melancholy and enigmatic, but by that time the film has earned it and it never feels like overreaching. In fact, it feels like a logical extension of these interactions between complex people, overwhelming abstractions, and a infinitely mysterious universe. Some things are too big and strange to be reduced to words, and fortunately this is where Roeg is able to step in and let his powerful style of impressionistic montage do the talking for him. Still, even here he never quite lets the film get completely away from his characters; even Marilyn Monroe may be insignificant before the totality of the cosmos and the grand laws which bind together (and can also rip apart) the universe… but that doesn’t mean that she’s not worth listening to, every once in a while. Physics, like fame itself, can be overwhelming and threaten to drown out the ever-so-significant minutiae of human experience. But at least in this film, Roeg manages to delicately --and even cheerfully-- balance the two of them with extraordinary verve. If you ask me, that’s an achievement impressive enough to earn him the right to be in my proposed 1980’s sequel, INSIGNIFICANCE II: INSIGNIFICANT OTHER, in which Nicolas Roeg, Madonna, Ted Kennedy, and the 1985 Chicago Bears have a fictional romance at Live Aid 1985. Featuring Sting as Ted Kennedy. Hollywood, you take it from here.

This is actually the perfect poster for this movie, although I can see why it would be kinda a hard sell.

*Looks like he was the lead in only two other movies, one of which was called “CAN SHE BAKE A CHERRY PIE?” so I don’t know what his deal is. IMDB claims that he is “ex-brother-in-law of Pete Townsend, so… good on him, I guess? He does play “Medical Examiner” in Larry Cohen’s Billy-Dee-Williams starring thriller DEADLY ILLUSION, so I better see that one, I guess. Oh, and he was sixth-billed in a bizarre-sounding G. Gordon Liddy-starring (?)  kiddie remake of REAR WINDOW (?!) called ADVENTURES IN SPYING in 1990. Jesus, was this guy born under a lucky sign or what?

**Apparently this never happened in real life, but one could easily imagine they would have come for him eventually.

***Wow, I just read up on this and I guess I didn’t know what a fucked up childhood Monroe had in real life. I kinda assumed some of this was fictionalized for the movie, I guess not.

Track 29

Track 29 (1988)

Dir. Nicolas Roeg

Written by Dennis Potter

Starring Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd

Well, huh. Longtime readers will remember our longstanding love affair with director Nicolas Roeg from THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, EUREKA, PERFORMANCE, and the many, many references I have made over the years to DON’T LOOK NOW. Obviously, this is not an artists for all tastes, or even most tastes. Recall that in THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH there is a scene where two unknown men in business suits show up at a nondescript apartment door, put on sparkly gold helmets, and then throw a bodybuilding gay man out of a 50th story window. Obviously, not everyone is gonna find that kind of arty nuttyness as delightful as I do, so I forgive the world for pretty much forgetting that Roeg existed post-1975, and simultaneously applaud Roeg for continuing to make movies consistently for the next three decades in obvious total defiance of the fact that there was absolutely no chance of anyone being around to appreciate them. Good hustle all around. But I’m sorry to say that 1988 may be my limit. That’s right, ladies and gents, with TRACK 29 Roeg has finally made a film which is too bizarre and obtuse even for me.

Now, as we’ve discussed before, Netflix is the father of all lies, so I knew I should be skeptical of the superficial simplicity of the plot as described by those notoriously imaginative netflix blurb writers. “In this psychological drama, a bored wife's curiosity about the son she long ago gave up for adoption coincides with the man's sudden appearance. Their meeting triggers more bizarre events as well as enmity between the woman's husband and offspring.” Sound suspiciously simple, but actually it’s not entirely bullshit, only the last sentence is explicitly and demonstrably false. Not too bad by Netflix’s standards. But what that description doesn’t quite get at is just how fucking bizarre this strange dark (comedy?) is, through and through. Yes, that stuff happens, but it’s much, much weirder than you imagine.

Nothin' phallic about that.

See, it’s not just that Gary Oldman’s “Martin” character claims to be Theresa Russell’s long-lost son. He’s also possibly a ghost, or a figment of her imagination, or something. We first see him appear quite literally out of thin air, and although he sometimes interacts with other characters it’s clear he’s not quite as tangible as the description makes him seem. Fair enough, that’s part and parcel for a Roeg film, I don’t expect to be able to figure out what’s really going on. What I wasn’t prepared for is just how fucking crazy a performance everyone in the film gives. Martin doesn’t just want to reconnect with his long-lost birth mother, he wants to re-live his childhood with her, and he does that by reverting to his five-year old self, whining, pouting, shouting, and throwing foot-stamping tantrums in between slyly manipulative guilt-tripping and weird, uncomfortable sexual intimations.

Gotta give Oldman credit for going for it, this is an absolutely unhinged, fearless performance. But, uh, I’m not sure exactly what the “it” he was going for was. He’s waaaaay too creepy to be endearing or humorous, but too laughable to be exactly threatening, and too nebulous to be relatable. It seems like the strange exaggerated childlike behavior both he and Russell’s “Linda” character exhibit must have been intended as comic, but I don’t know? There definitely aren’t any real jokes in there, and there’s a disturbing undercurrent of rape and psychological trauma which pretty much guarantees we’re not gonna feel OK laughing at these characters. But if we’re not supposed to laugh, how the hell are we supposed to feel?

Who knew Sid Vicious had so many Mommy issues?

Roeg has never been much interested in character development, and I think that hurts him here a little more than any of his other films I’ve seen. I get the feeling the script (adapted by Dennis Potter from his own awesomely named play Schmeodipus) was probably (maybe?) originally kind of a psychological drama about this lady Linda dealing with the painful repercussions of being raped, and then kind of emotionally raped again by having the resulting child taken away against her will. But Russell’s performance is all over the place, its too hard to get a fix on what she’s even like normally for us to really understand what’s motivating the behavior we’re watching. At first she seems like the mature one, a stifled housewife running out of patience with her arrested-development husband (Christopher Lloyd, BACK TO THE FUTURE III) and his fixation with model trains. But then out of the blue she starts flipping out and having this childish meltdown that ends with “I’ll just die if I don’t have a baby!” and he starts to look like the sane one (she was married to Roeg at the time, not sure if that had anything to do with the movie's perspective). Also she has braces and is attempting some kind of Southern lisp, so, uh.** Hubby’s obviously an asshole, but it’s not hard to see why he’s a little tired of her if she’s pulling this shit on a regular basis. (Plus he’s right, those model trains are pretty fuckin' fly. I bet some production designer had the happiest job of their career.) Neither one of them is especially endearing or relatable, and both have glaring social and mental problems which seem completely inexplicable. It feels like we’re not supposed to be particularly sympathetic to either of these people, but the movie is too vague about their problems for us to really find much satisfaction in condemning them, either. So I just don’t know what we’re supposed to take from all this, much less what it all means. And truth be told, I don’t think Roeg really cares exactly what’s really happening here, he’s more interested in just going along for the ride as the nutcases bring out the crazy in each other.

I think we've all been here.

Unfortunately, the ride the nutcases take him on is only sporadically one which really avails itself to his talents. I think it’s hugely problematic that this one was adapted from a stage play, because the result is that the main action gets trapped in a mundane 80’s living room talking a bunch of nonsense for way too long, and Roeg doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to indulge his superpower of expressionistic montage. He’s the best there is at conveying intense emotions when he can get symbolic and crank up the visuals, but there’s not much to be done with these two people weirdly baby-talking each other on some suburban couch. He has better luck with Lloyd’s side story, which ends up involving a gathering of miniature train fanatics who perform “Chatanooga Choo-Choo” with a fervor which borders on a frenzied evangelical revival. But what the fuck that has to do with anything in the main plot I surely do not know. Obviously I guess it must mean something, since it’s the origin of the movie’s aggressively generic title (what, was this a sequel to MOVIE 43?). I’m assuming it’s a symbol or something, but I guess maybe they just couldn’t get the rights to “SCHMOEDIPUS” and stuck TRACK 29 in there as a filler and only at the last minute after the posters had already been struck realized they’d forgotten to go back and think up a real title and then just ran with it. But I don’t know, that could have been it, too. I’m not a mindreader for fuck’s sake.

Fundamentally, the problem here is that the film never seems to coalesce around a consistent tone or style, instead it swings wildly from one idea to another, sometimes negating previous choices and never quite building to anything. It’s a psychedelic headtrip that only really turns trippy a handful of times, and is also a psychological drama with characters who are incomprehensible cyphers, and also a comedy with no punchlines. Makes it a little frustrating, obviously. Still, there’s something there, amid the alternating outlandishness and tedium. Not exactly a good movie, but something. An odd unease permeates the whole thing, a subtle intimation of dread which anchors the absurdity and gives it a kind of diffuse focus. We may not be 100% sure what’s happening, but we know it’s not gonna end well. That sharpens the film’s otherwise lackadaisical meanderings and forces you to engage with it more earnestly, try to parse out some meaning and identify what the threat is and where it’s coming from. Even when the film starts meandering, it's too visceral and erratic to entirely lose your attention, and on the occasions when its firing on all cylinders -for example, the surreal but harrowing rape flashback at a carnival- its potency is undeniable. It’s not a particularly pleasant experience, but I gotta admit it’s a unique one, and moreover a unique one with fitful bursts of real power. Not Roeg’s strongest work, but it’s still a reminder that even in the later years of his career he was an enormously gifted filmmaker, with plenty of ability yet to frustrate, baffle, and mesmerize.

By the way, that handsome gentleman on the poster in the background produced the movie and scored it. Not his most memorable work, but you gotta respect that he went out of his way to help these weird movies.

I’ll close with the words Roger Ebert used to close his own review of the film in 1988, as nothing that I could possibly write could come close to this sort of perfection:

“Look at it this way: Most of the time we go to the movies hoping to be amused, and often we are disappointed. “Track 29” does not offer amusement, but it promises confusion, frustration, weirdness and the bizarre. You probably won’t like it. But it won’t disappoint you.”

*If that even happened; there is definitely dialogue that suggests that perhaps it didn’t and Linda is just a fucking nutcase who has made up an elaborate fantasy for herself. But if that’s the case, who the fuck even knows what’s going on here.

** Speaking of Russell’s ill-advised accent, part of the problem here may be that this whole thing is somewhat lost in translation; it was written as an English story by an Englishman, and its essential British-ness makes an uneasy bedfellow with the Wilmington, North Carolina setting. Particularly since I have a feeling that neither English Roeg and Potter nor Californian Russell has an overwhelmingly strong understanding of Southern Culture. The movie seems to delight in goofy Southern stereotypes, but they’re all of the blandest, most generic variety. I don’t think anyone who actually lived in the South would ever mock it in this particular way, so it feels both clumsy and tone-deaf. Lloyd doesn’t even both with an accent and Oldman says he grew up in England, so I don’t know what the point of transplanting the story to the US was.