I romanticize '70s movies; I know that. There's good reason for it. I'm convinced that film was undergoing a beautiful renaissance when I was a kid, and I was lucky to be learning how to watch movies at that time. One remembers the classics; one forgets about movies like this.
First point of order: you don’t get to be a Formula One champion without being a little bit obsessed with cars and driving. You don’t even get into the top twenty without that factor at play. Never having met the man, I will pretty much guarantee that Sebastian Vettel has never gone a week in his adult life without driving, tinkering with his car, or going crazy not being able to drive. Certainly he’s never, no matter how much in love he is with whomever, gone a day without thinking about driving. It’s not just racing: Nadal plays tennis in his head when he’s not on the court; Jack White channels constant music, even when he’s not touching a guitar. Since he was old enough to walk, I’d put money on it that Lionel Messi has never gone a day without touching a soccer ball, romantically blissed out or no.
Then there’s Bobby Deerfield, the eponym for this film. This guy is the racing champion of the world, and he doesn’t really seem to be that into racing, at least after the first half-hour of the film (which is, not coincidentally, the best part). How absurd is that? His big issue, according to the crazy woman with whom he falls inexplicably in love, is that he is too cautious in life. Too CAUTIOUS? A Formula One driver? Yes, sometimes a Felipe Masa might lose some edge after getting clonked on the head by a flying spring and bashing into the tyre-wall, but would you call the man cautious? He still gets into a Ferrari several times a year and dodges other crazy-assed adrenaline-freaks at speeds of several hundreds of miles per hour.
I know what you’re thinking: she means cautious about relationships. But he’s not. Quite the opposite: she’s the one who keeps running away. This movie has no internal cohesion.
On the other hand, this is Pacino before he expired: Pacino back when he was young and not only cared deeply about acting well but did it, with grace and a certain constancy, with quiet, introspective displays, before acting for him became synonymous with Being Loud. This was Pacino sandwiched between Dog Day Afternoon and And Justice For All, and so he was still a pleasure to watch whilst just teetering on the brink of his expiration date as one of the greats.
On the other hand, the scene where he does the Mae West impersonation is every bit as excruciating as it sounds, and this is Pacino stuck in a badly-scripted, stupid story. It purports to be about a Formula One champion who spins into an pit of existential angst when his team-mate is killed on a stretch of track which should not have been dangerous. Instead, it’s really about the crazy, dying German woman (badly played by Marthe Keller) with whom he supposedly falls in love (although there is no spark of onscreen chemistry between them) and her annoying, insulting manner towards him. She constantly accuses him of cowardice, calling herself brave for climbing into the basket of a hot-air balloon and simultaneously calling his racing “boring”.
I don’t for a second believe there’s an outstanding athlete in the world who will put up with the company of a person who so denigrates his passion, much less one who will give up, without a word or a trace of regret, his career to schlep around being in love with her while she’s dying. This movie is closer to Love Story than to Grand Prix, only it’s the BAD version of Love Story. Wrap your mind around THAT.
No comments:
Post a Comment