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I had the opportunity to see Changing Lanes yesterday…
wow… I wish I had seen it when it came out.
The question seems to be, can Changing Lanes
be an Oscar contender. And my answer is yes… and no.
There
were two great revelations for me in Changing Lanes.
First, there was Samuel L. Jackson’s overwhelmingly
brilliant performance. Jackson’s genius is bittersweet, because we
live in a movie era in which the studio drama is all but non-existent. If that weren’t true, Jackson would not be
the Sidney Poitier of his generation… this guy is DeNiro
or Pacino or Hoffman. He
is Spencer Tracey. He is an actor and a movie star. He can do anything.
Jackson
is one of those actors who loves to add physical stuff to
his characterizations. His hair changes… or disappears. He wears glasses or sports a scar that covers
half his face or wears clothes that seem to define the character. In Changing Lanes, I’d swear that he
was two inches shorter and that his chest was six inches smaller
and that his little mustache reset the strength of his face
with a patina of weakness.
Ben
Affleck is very good in this film, his first starring feature
in a truly dramatic role.
Kevin Smith showed us that he was an actor all
the way back in Chasing Amy. He can do this. I’m not sure he’s meant to save the world, but he can act.
Sam
Jackson’s work here is exquisite. This is an intimate, real, unshowy, deeply emotional, truly special
performance. If Paramount
gets serious about pushing Jackson for an Oscar - and Ben
Affleck is the kind of human being, it seems, who would
be the first to encourage attention to someone else’s brilliance
– it can happen. I
don’t know that anyone is going to catch up with Jack Nicholson’s
performance in About Schmidt as a showstopper. But you will not see a more perfect performance this year than Jackson’s
in Changing Lanes.
The
other thing that really jumped out at me here was the work
of Roger Michell. Sidney Lumet is on my list of favorite
directors. Lumet was
from the great generation of TV drama directors who went on
to dominate the scene in the early 70s along with the film
school bunch. Besides
directing one of my very favorite films of all time, Network,
Lumet made such great dramas as 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker,
Fail-Safe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City,
The Verdict, Running on Empty and the sadly undervalued
dramatic comedy Just Tell Me What You Want.
Michell’s
work on Changing Lanes reminded me of no one more than
it did Lumet. His simple, but complete understanding of the
emotion of New York streets.
His brilliant choices for supporting cast members,
across the board. (The only misstep for me was Amanda Peet
as Affleck’s wife. I
like Peet a lot. But
she didn’t have the crackle that the rest of Michell’s choices.
Laura Linney, a little older than Affleck, would
have been absolutely perfect in the one-scene, big-fireworks
role.)
Amongst
the raft of quality supporting roles – Sydney Pollack,
Toni Collette, Dylan Baker, William Hurt and really great
moments with people cast in really small roles… so small that
I don’t know their character names well enough to credit them. And then, there is Kim Staunton. If she were a name actress, her brief turn
as Jackson’s estranged wife would be listed as a serious possibility
for Best Supporting Actress.
She actually played Jackson’s on-screen wife before,
in the disastrous Amos & Andrew. But unless I am wrong, she played another tiny
role with a huge impact as the significant other of Dennis
Haysbert, who desperately wants her man to stay on the
straight and narrow. (He gets his brains blown out onto a steering
wheel.)
As
with Jackson jumping ahead of Affleck for me, my appreciation
for Michell doesn’t diminish the work of screenwriters Chap
Taylor and Michael Tolkin. The film has the potential to slip into melodrama,
but never does. The
dialogue is smart, strong and measured.
And as the story carries you along, there are no easy
answers about what is coming next as Affleck and Jackson keep
switching the roles of cat and mouse.
This
is a really good movie. A
solid, unique story told with great skill.
If there is an inherent weakness, it is that Jackson’s
character is so right and that Affleck’s is so wrong for so
much of the movie. But
in a story about men who can’t help themselves, where one
of the men has tricked himself into believing that he’s trying
hard enough and the other doesn’t think he needs to try at
all, I was pleased to have taken the ride. And Jackson… wow.
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