DOES PLAUSIBILITY MATTER?

MYSTIC RIVER intimidates even the most admirable of critics (Fallen World, by Geoffrey O'Brien in the NY Review of Books). It's hard for him to justify how "Victims will become victimizers, and victimizers themselves come to be seen as the helpless agents of a destiny just beyond their control," since the Tim Robbins character is TRIPLY victimized: as a boy, husband, and finally Sean Penn's "false" friend.

O'Brien harps on how the story's events are out of control, out of these characters' grasp, and unraveling without hope of reversal, which makes it tragic and lofty. It isn't. How can he say something like "Mystic River stares long enough at the irreversibility of what happens to induce something like grief, a grief felt equally for all its characters," without addressing the story's most glaring failure? Does this mute kid brother, who I'm told gets plenty of motive in the novel, matter to anybody else but me? Is anyone confused or unswayed by his motivation to KILL HIS BIG BROTHER'S GIRFRIEND (apparently because he fears the loss of his brother, who plans to elope), or by the UTTER IMPLAUSIBILITY of him faking deafness believably to those closest to him? Can you feel grief for a cynical plot device?

The most OBVIOUSLY INNOCENT character of the ensemble suddenly becomes the MOST GUILTY CHARACTER...so the bigger question is: would this movie get all this highbrow attention if its performances didn't obscure the most basic tenets of storytelling? After pointing to the Tim Robbins character the whole movie (who just happens to commit a murder on the same night, which some might call "cheating"), they pull the rug just like you know they will and the whodunit scheme is suddenly pushed aside for the emotional "payoff" of Sean Penn falling apart on Kevin Bacon in the same street of the original crime. This is disingenuously manipulative no matter how good the performances are: it's all so brazen it's like they're all acting in another film. Oh, and O'Brien neatly omits the cornball coincidence of Kevin Bacon's wife suddenly breaking her silence the minute he closes the case.

It's all of a piece with what's wrong with Hollywood: sophistication of cinematic elements (performance, editing, pacing) at the EXPENSE of the script. [If you're at all taken with O'Brien's writing, track down his books, chiefly DREAM TIME: CHAPTERS FROM THE SIXTIES, and CASTAWAYS OF THE IMAGE PLANET, a collection of essays, reviewed here.]

QUOTE OF THE WEEK (from Publisher's Lunch)

Dewey Gram is dubbed "the most sought-after film novelizer in town" by the LA Times, though he's "dismayed" that his novelization of the new Tom Cruise film "The Last Samurai" was killed before it was printed. He says, "It's the best novelization I've written." He's been doing this for 25 years, and has written 15 novelizations.

Gram explains, "One of the misconceptions people have about novelizations," he said, "is that they're just the screenplay plus padding. And some of them read that way. But everything I add is enriching and deepening the themes of the script." One of his fans, Nicholas Kazan, offers this gem: "Reading a novelization of your own screenplay is like watching someone else kiss your girlfriend."