At the beginning of the film we meet quell as he returns to civilian life after the war. There is a long scene of Quelle and his sailor friends making a sandcastle in the shape of a woman so that they can feign copulation with it. The scene suggests that Quelle is more than averagely preoccupied by sex. There is a later scene where Quell is watching a group of people dancing in a room, then there is a close-up of his eyes and, when we cut back to the dancing group, all the women are naked. This scene seems to making roughly the same point as the sandcastle copulation scene. The dancing scene is held for an embarrassingly long time, causing me to reflect on the humiliations actors must endure to receive their fee. After all this emphasis on Quell's interest in sex he does nothing in the film that is sexually untoward. So what was all that about?
Quell Is played by Joaquim Phoenix, an actor I admire, and Dodd is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I have always thought of Phoenix as being quite well built but here he looks very thin and cadaverous. He gives an amazing performance, maybe slightly overdoing the talking-out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth schtick.
In civilian life Quelle tries a few jobs including photographer and making illicit hooch, but nothing works out. While stowing away on a ship he meets Dodd, and they seem to have an unlikely affinity for each other. Dodd is already embarked on his career as proselytiser and conman or, as he puts it, 'I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher... but above all I am a man'. Quell joins Dodd's coterie and things jog along as Dodd finds wealthy sponsors and his enterprise grows. There is a disagreement between Quelle and Dodd and Quell goes his own way for several years. He returns to Dodd, finding him quite a lot more successful than he was when he left him.
This film has very little dramatic impulse. As one over-long scene meanders into another over-long scene I sat watching and wondering where it was leading. I thought of Dorothy Parker's description of Los Angeles as 'seventy-two suburbs in search of a city' because this film is seventy-two scenes in search of a story. This film is very well made and looks expensive, but the narrative arc is incoherent and lacks impulse, There are several unexpected scenes, such as one where Quell is made to blunder back and forwards, blindfolded, between the walls of a room, or one where suddenly they are in the desert playing with a motor bike, when I had no choice but to wonder where the scene was leading, whether it was entertaining, or what it was telling us of relevance to the story. The film is very much less than the sum of its parts. Maybe Anderson should try a little more delegation, particularly with screen writing. I liked Anderson's first three films but I did not share in the admiration for There Will Be Blood. This is Anderson's Heaven's Gate. As I watched Dodd's character - motivated by self-importance, vapid ideas and cliches - I wondered to what extent these qualities apply to this film.
It did not help this film's case that the film I saw after it was Michael Haneke's Amour, which cast into a horrible perspective the sheer banality of the points this film tries so expensively and incompetently to make. Those who like the idea of this film should give it a miss and obtain a DVD of Elmer Gantry instead.
