** (out of ****)
Starring Stephen Dorff and Hector Elizondo
Written & directed by Phil Joanou
1999 R
“Entropy” begins with an old story-telling standby: a man is in what he thinks is a bizarre predicament, wonders how he got there, then tells us in flashback how it came to be. The predicament is that he is married to a woman he has known for forty-eight hours. The bizarre chain of events turns out to be that a different woman broke his heart, leading him to get drunk at a party, fly to Vegas with another girl from the party, and get married. This is a mildly interesting predicament, but not one that kept my interest after the movie’s first two hours.
“Entropy” tells the story of first-time director who loses artistic control of his movie to corporate moguls, who loses his heart to a runway model, then loses himself to a series of impulsive actions probably brought on by alcohol. There’s nothing particularly original about this basic framework; as recently as 1995, the Coen Brothers made “Barton Fink,” about a playwright who goes to Hollywood and is deprived of all artistic freedom by studio powers. That film won a record-setting three awards at Cannes. “Entropy” has Jake, a pop music video director given orders by a studio mogul to direct a film that seems a lot like “Chinatown,” and then he slowly loses his mind to fighting his producers and wallowing in self-pity. Not every movie needs to find totally original subject matter; movies about the artist-crushing aspect of Hollywood are as old as Hollywood itself. The problem with “Entropy” is that it doesn’t have anything new to say about Hollywood, or about the romance of its lead characters, and then “Entropy” takes forever to get there.
The characters themselves are all more-or-less archetypes. Stephen Dorff, as Jake the pop music director, is a walking-talking assembly of Generation X stereotypes. He wears retro-chic Buddy Holly glasses, drinks, smokes, never tucks his shirt in, has short, spiky hair, and rambles on in self-effacing, pseudo-ironic narration. Then there are his producers, Sal and Andy, who have absolutely no interest in his film except keeping it on a budget, keeping it on schedule, and getting the lead actress to take her shirt off. Sal and Andy have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The lead actors on Jake’s film are about as fleshed out and interesting as Sal and Andy. Jake’s runway model girlfriend is Stella, and she is Modern Woman. She meets Jake in a coffee shop and tips over his table by accident, which I guess is supposed to be cute. She sleeps with Jake after knowing him for a day. Afterwards, everything out of her mouth is either a soppy sentimentality or an equally woozy apology to Jake as to why she can no longer be with him. Watching the film I almost wished she would break more furniture because it would mean she would have something else to face besides her bipolar feelings for Jake.
None of the events in the film are remarkable enough for the two-and-a-half hour run time. “Entropy” has nothing new to say about the filmmaking process and is instead content to show us Jake sitting behind a camera in a director’s chair saying “cut”and “that was good.” The film also shows us nothing new about the making of rock music videos or rock tours. We see Jake in an editing room once or twice, then we mostly see him drinking in hotel rooms filled with super-hip rock followers (no one is this movie may have any actual expertise about what they’re supposed to do, but they all dress like they do). And “Entropy” definitely has nothing new to say about love, except that maybe you should get to know someone before sleeping with her.
The film’s flaws could have been solved in one of two ways. 1) Abandon the love story completely and focus on the director/artist’s struggle with his more cautious superiors. “Entropy” could have shown us directors and actors and producers and agents, each with conflicting viewpoints and insecurities about how this particular movie could have been made. That would have been a movie about ideas, and writer-director Phil Joanou, who has directed many U2 videos and their feature film “Rattle and Hum,” probably knows enough about the business to make a real movie about it. 2) Keep the same subject matter and events, including the love story, but edit the movie down to sixty or seventy-five minutes, leaving out many of the digressions. The purpose of these digressions is redundant anyway; precious minutes of my attention were wasted proving that Jake has nihilist tendencies, but I already know that when I see that he drinks, smokes, wears retro-chic Buddy Holly glasses, etc. Digressions are purposeful only if they contradict earlier images, but “Entropy’s” digressions only confirm them, as if we can’t draw those conclusions ourselves, and the result is that a character we already know everything about from the first five minutes is shown to us in painfully specific, redundant detail. Cut the digressions down, and kick out some of the repetitive love slop, and “Entropy” might not be a movie about ideas, but it would have still been a fast-paced, entertaining ride, instead of a slow-dredge through an uninteresting love story about two self-obsessed people.
Having said all that, there are a few good things about the film. The performances are better than they were written. The direction is colorful and very visual, with rotating camera movements and sweeping crane shots. Phil Joanou the director could have used more from Phil Joanou the writer. Irish rock star Bono, playing himself in a handful of cameos, is perhaps the only original character in the film, because as far as I know he is the only rock star in film history to come across as wise, patient, and calm, instead of a compulsive long-haired weirdo stoned out of his mind. But there is too little of him in “Entropy,” just as the other interesting moments are too few and far between.
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night