14 • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2003
Clooney's brilliant 'Confessions' injured by Roberts' performance
REVIEW
George Clooney displayed so much nice-guy modesty in the interviews for his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, that I thought he might be apologizing ahead of time for a potential failure. But his movie turns out to be a confident, if uneven, entertainment.
Stephen Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
Confessions opens in New York City in 1981 in a shabby hotel room where Chuck Barris, played by Sam Rockwell, naked and grizzled, has hit rock bottom. Barris achieved notoriety as the creator of The Dating Game and The Gong Show and then was crucified by the media as one of the leading figures in the decline of American society. As a grace note, or maybe just a substitute for suicide, he decides to write his memoirs, which serve as the arch of the movie.
The "dangerous mind" referred to in the title is revealing. According to Barris, he was not just a television producer. He also was a CIA operative, a lone wolf who committed atrocities for the government in its crusade against communism.
Clooney has dug deep into his own life as a celebrity to comment on another's. His seasoned perspective gives the backdoor scenes at ABC's headquarters and its fake sets a dark and ironic humor. Clooney also has a gift for off-beat visuals. His camera work is funky, and he draws your attention to it. Confessions works like Pulp Fiction. It gets you thinking about the creative team behind the scenes—like Tarantino's masterpiece, it could send admirers off to film school.
Recruited by a mystery man named Jim Byrd (Clooney), Barris ends up escorting his game-show contestants on vacations as a cover. Then he sneaks away long enough to blow to hell the unlucky folks on his hit list. Given his power and influence, this killing machine is bad news for the American public — his nihilism seems to seep into his audience's veins.
CONFESSIONS OF A
DANGEROUS MIND B
- Starring: Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore and George Clooney
Rated R for language, sexual content and violence
Playing at Southwind 12,3433 Iowa St.
The first hour is filled with kinetic movie moments and around every corner is a familiar face, including Drew Barrymore, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. Then Julia Roberts, shrillest of superstars, shows up and the movie begins to lose momentum.
What spell has been cast to make people believe Roberts is an appealing performer? Her teeth stick out like bent piano keys, her smile stretches her cheekbones back into a freakish horse-face, and she has the uncanny ability to play no one but
her narcissistic self. Seriously, was anyone else ready to throw down when she attempted to "share" Denzel Washington's Academy Award last year?
It takes a pretty great director, like Erin Brockovich's Steven Soderbergh, to make Roberts jell in a movie, and Clooney hasn't developed that kind of talent yet. Her wasteful presence in Confessions gave me ample time to consider a flaw Clooney had otherwise done an excellent job of covering up.
Confessions essentially suffers from the same problem as Man on the Moon, Milos Forman's biography of Andy Kaufman. The center characters of these films remain enigmas, despite in Clooney's film an exhaustive portrayal by Rockwell. The filmmaker assumes an interesting life will make up for an uninteresting, unknowable character, but this contradicts the function of biography.
Still, scene for scene Confessions draws you into a dense web of conspiracy, showbiz and murder. There's a suicide scene over a diving board that's as creative a representation of death as I've in years. The film is thematically hefty and fans of today's American Idol should especially appreciate Barris' cynical views of cheap fame.
Clooney even comes up with a late revelation about Barris' parents that could shed a whole new light over everything shown before. Perhaps Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a brilliant film — just not the first time you see it.
Shupe is a graduate student in journalism from Augusta.
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