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What is Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind?
This
is not an easy question to answer. I like the movie more and more each time I
see it. And yet, I
still don’t quite have a handle on what the point is.
Or maybe I’m just trying too hard.
Maybe it is, simply, a bio-pic based on a madman’s
diary.
I do know that this is an audacious, and sometimes overly ambitious,
first effort for George Clooney behind the camera and
if it were done by a no name it would be getting praised to
the high heavens, far and wide.
I do know that although the screenplay has been reputed by
many to be one of the greatest ever written, it does not seem
to be concealing a clever twist, like Adaptation.
I think that because Kaufman’s reputation preceeds
him, we assume that this is another film like Adaptation
or Being John Malkovich, where the subtext is so key.
Here, the subtext is right out front.
Was Barris a CIA hitman in his spare time or wasn’t
he?
Of course, one can take the entire hitman shadow life of Barris
as a representation of Barris’ self-hatred and obsession with
his own demise. Clooney’s
character, the CIA shadow, shows up for the first time when
Barris gets the money to do a Dating Game pilot.
Clooney’s character first talks to Barris when Barris
is thrown out of a bar for fighting - after binging on booze
for a week when the pilot wasn’t picked up.
Julia Roberts’ Patricia Watson is a bit more complicated.
You see, there was a real Patricia Watson in
Barris’ life at some point.
Nonetheless, it would appear that Roberts’ character
here is also an odd representation of both death (very much
like Jessica Lange in All That Jazz) and Barris’
mother. (For a remarkable
coincidence, find another Patricia Watson
here.
Drew Barrymore’s Penny seems to be a representative
of Barris’ real life love, called Penny in the book but also
called Red in the film, which also happens to be the name
of Barris’ love interest in The Gong Show Movie, played
by Robin Altman, who may or may not have been Barris’
real lover… I really just don’t know.
Great performances abound in this film. Sam Rockwell is perfection as Barris…
he’s not really a leading man, but neither is Barris. Drew Barrymore hasn’t has a role this good since Boys
on the Side and she really hits every note in just the
right off-key way. Small
turns by Rutger Hauer and Robert John Burke
are gems. (Hauer would
make a great Dumbledore… even if he’s from the wrong country.)
Julia Roberts and George Clooney are
solid, if unspectacular, in their roles.
There is no question, the film is about self-loathing and surviving
it, much as Adaptation is.
The journey is quite different.
But this is clearly a theme in Charlie Kaufman’s
work, much as arrogance and establishment hypocrisy was a
theme of Chayefsky’s work. The big difference between the two writers
is that Chayefsky started with a clean, recognizable sheet
of paper. And Kaufman writes his human emotional adventures
on a stock of thick brocade.
Chayefsky might well have brought the opening scene of this
film to the screen. But
he would never have written, “The repulsiveness of my sex
confirmed by the tastebuds of a ripening pubescent girl” and
left it working on so many levels.
Clooney has made a remarkable, if unsettled and unsettling
picture. I await his
next with great anticipation.
NOW, THE
SPOILER SECTION…
You can jump to Reader Of The Day now,
if you like…
READY…
Okay….
The film begins in 1981 with Barris saying, “When you are young, your potential is infinite.
You might do anything, really.
You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age
where what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren’t Einstein. You weren’t anything. That’s a bad moment.”
Right after that there is a knock on the door by his slightly
estranged girlfriend, Penny.
This will be the first bookend of the movie.
All of Barris’ life and career takes place. A good story, well told. Fiction or not fiction…
When the success of The Gong Show rises, the abuse by
the media piles on. One
of the great scenes of the film is when an apparent Playboy
Playmate draws Barris into The Grotto and proceeds to castigate
him for the shallowness of his show. The brilliance of the moment is in part the
writing, but Clooney and actress Krista Allen take
it higher. Her beauty is clear. Her mouth and her eyes and her sex are all
still seducing Barris… but the words coming out of her mouth
are passionate and cruel.
And could there ever be a better metaphor for success
in show business? The
constant seduction and the cold truth, always circling one
another….
In Barris’ depression, he gets a call from (or conjures up)
Hauer’s happy hitman from earlier in the film.
The “hit man” pun seems to be a symbol throughout the
film. Hauer’s character reads to Barris from the bible, “Whatsoever
your hand finds to do, do it gladly.
Because there is no work, love, knowledge or wisdom
in the grave.”
Then, he talks about remembering his first hit. “It’s like entering a different time zone.
You become an outsider. Isolating yourself. You’re condemned. You have become their sadness and live in a different state of mind.”
Are we talking about murdering people or producing
popular television?
Barris finally reconnects with Penny. Hauer’s character has “committed suicide.”
He couldn’t take the pressure of being so condemned,
much as we have heard about the pressure that Barris put on
himself because people condemned his television shows.
The Gong Show is cancelled, though Barris still
has to finish the season.
Barris makes up his mind, Penny over Patricia. He gets back together with Penny.
And
then the Clooney character shows up. He’s trying to pull Barris back into the self-destructive
murder game. He recounts
Barris’ history, all of which sums up his carefully hidden
personal pain. Only,
Clooney’s Jim Byrd is already dying.
He’s no threat.
But his self-loathing over The Gong Show is. He’s still killing them. And Patricia is still dangerous.
He finally understands that Penny is his salvation.
Barris finally gets himself together and goes to Patricia Watson,
who finally dies. It
is with her death that Barris finds happiness and the freedom
to love… finally love. (Sounds
like Adaptation, no?)
She is, in his life, “the mole.”
She is the one who keeps him from being free. She is
the judgment of mother, made real… the mother who wanted a
daughter and always blamed her son for his twin’s death. It is not surprising then that after Barris
“kills” Patricia that he helps her write a suicide note that
reads, “No Love.” Love is all he ever wanted.
Once Patricia is dead, Charles Hirsh Bariss writes his
“unauthorized autobiography.”
We see his joy for the first time in a long time.
He marries Penny.
And, as they leave, his “victims” are also there on
the steps of the church. The getaway is complete.
But Bariss has to confess to Penny. He tells her that he has killed a lot of people.
And she just laughs in his face.
Hard. She is the light that cannot be overtaken by the dark. She is salvation.
Finally we get a moment with the really Bariss, circa 2002.
He speaks of “The Old Game, in which three old men
are given guns… they look back at their lives… and the one
who doesn’t blow his brains out wins.
He wins a refrigerator."
Great line. But
also a direct line back to the Rutger Hauer character,
who is paralleling Barris’ life and who blows his brains out.
Some see this as a tough, cynical ending. I see it as a survivor’s ending. He has survived. He has not succumbed to his demons. He is alive.
Okay… so maybe I do see a point to it all…
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