#4
Post
by John Cope » Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:04 pm
Still Danny Huston's greatest performance. One of the greatest performances ever. It's tragic that it remains so under recognized. Equally tragic is the fact that I don't think anyone has ever really capitalized on his unique set of acting talents since.
Ivansxtc presents a very well worn and simple seeming tale of the superficially successful man's confrontation with mortality. But it benefits from the attention paid to nuance. It's in that great unconstrained Peter Weller performance, too; the one that establishes some barometer for morality by exuding none, allowing an appreciation for Ivan's relative moral capacity (his richer humanness) and his authentic, sudden flailing need to find something real in his life. The scene, for instance, in which Ivan asks Weller's Don West whether he has slept with his girlfriend is deeply moving for the way in which it subtly indicates that difference in attitude between the two men and, by virtue of it, marks West as a repellant rather than comic figure. The pathos, meanwhile, comes from understanding that Ivan himself probably remains oblivious to the very drive which redeems him, though that recognition comes at last ("So I tried to find an image, one worthwhile image...and I couldn't find one goddamn thing...") and it's what makes the profound power of the film's resolution possible at all.
Whenever I watch this film I have to remind myself that it's Bernard Rose and not Mike Figgis directing. The digital photography and Hollywood milieu are a point of commonality, especially at the time in which this was made, and it feels like the proper extension or maturation of Figgis' whole project from that period (a far more sensible and coherent development than making Hotel, for instance).
It really is ludicrous that ivansxtc has remained more or less unavailable in the US, as it is a perfect Hollywood film (a film about Hollywood I mean) and also as perfect and succinct an examination of cultural and human malaise at the hands of commerce as is possible--commerce seen as defining society and acting as the arbiter of culture. There is good reason that the credits are front loaded and why the contextualizing responses to Ivan's death are also all at the beginning (positioning Ivan's last days as extended flashback); this strategy allows for a precision in depicting his downfall and awakening, a precision equivalent to a finely honed, controlled piece of music not at all dissimilar to the Wagner piece used so indelibly during the film's unforgettable final moments.
I still haven't seen Rose's other Tolstoy adaptations, The Kreutzer Sonata, Two Jacks and Boxing Day, which share some of the same digital aesthetic as well as Danny Huston, but I very much want to. Maybe someday someone could issue a Rose/Tolstoy collection.
