Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Two
Lovers, Half a Man
(Two Lovers, 3/9/09)
By Nicholas Nicastro
When
it comes to collecting nubile lovers, chances are Leonard Kraditor (Joaquin
Phoenix) has exactly two more than you. But that doesn't make him worthy
of your admiration.
In the first scene in James Gray's
last-exit-in-Brooklyn romance Two Lovers, the heartbroken Leonard
jumps into Jamaica Bay. His fiancée, you see, has left him because
both have tested positive for carrying Tay Sachs disease. It's probably
not a spoiler to say he doesn't succeed in killing himself, since the
title of Gray's movie is predicated on what happens next: Leonard finds
consolation not with one but two young women from the neighborhood—Sandra
(Vinessa Shaw), the lovely and willing marriage prospect, and Michelle
(Gwyneth Paltrow), the blonde, vulnerable, high-maintenance shiksa
from Hell. Guess which one Leonard falls in love with?
From a certain angle, Two Lovers
is very watchable. Gray, who voyaged to the outer boroughs in 1994's
Little Odessa, has made this one with a spare understatement
that feels as authentically Brooklyn as Nathan Original hotdogs (no
ketchup, thanks). Phoenix plays Leonard like a young but nebbishy Brando,
with an appealing physicality and what sounds like a fistfull of cotton-balls
in his mouth. He's cared for by a pair of adoptive parents, played with
tender affection by Moni Moshonov and Isabella Rossellini, and finds
good chemistry with the pitch-perfect Shaw. Paltrow, who appears here
quite a bit younger than her 36 years, evokes well the kind of woman
whose beauty conceals a neediness that can seriously up-end a man's
life. It's not a particularly ambitious story, but not a trivial one
either. So what's to quibble about?
Of their conception of Phoenix's
character, screenwriters Gray and Ric Menello tip their hands when they
have Leonard jokingly refer to himself as "next in line to the
throne of Denmark." And the Hamlet of romance he is, unable to
make up his mind between embracing Sandra or chasing Michelle. But Shakespeare's
Prince of Denmark is not interesting solely because he's conflicted—he's
also clever, articulate, passionate, and loyal. Leonard Kraditor, alas,
is no Hamlet. He's is the kind of guy who lets the love of his life
get away because of a genetic test (anybody in Brooklyn ever heard of
sperm or egg-donorship?). He takes arty pictures of storefronts and
vacant lots and stuff, and he humors his parents by pretending to be
interested in their dry-cleaning business, but mostly he just sleeps
late and mopes around. He's pretty much the textbook definition of a
shmoe, a shmendrick who deserves all the tsores
he has coming to him. And that's before the end, when Leonard makes
a final, monumentally selfish gesture that makes a shnook of
Sandra too.
Interestingly, this may well be
Joaquin Phoenix's last role. According to the tabloids (and confirmed
by no less formidable a source than Casey Affleck), Phoenix has decided
to quit acting because, well, "he's got music and stuff."
By "music", he means his burgeoning career as a rapper, which
recently got off to a flying start when the new J-Pho made his debut
at the Las Vegas nightclub, busted a few rhymes, then fell off the stage.
It's hard to blame him, of course—playing Roman emperors and sharing
onscreen love with the likes of Paltrow and Shaw can get old pretty
fast. Once you've played the Hamlet of Brighton Beach, where else can
you go?
©2009 Nicholas Nicastro
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