**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Robin Wright-Penn, Garry Shandling, Anna Paquin, and Meg Ryan.
Directed by Anthony Drazan & written for the screen by David Rabe, from his play.
1999 R
Being on drugs, at least according to the movies, is an awesome, terrible adventure. Dark forces are conspiring against you, your friends are all lying, world events on television correspond directly to your life, and someone is constantly after you. What’s really happening is that you’re pacing your living room spouting gibberish, or maybe cowering behind someone else’s toilet. Everything seems profound to you but no, those are just the chemicals that your body doesn’t know what to do with.
Such is the case for Sean Penn’s character in “Hurlyburly,” a Hollywood casting executive who is putting as much crap up his nose as humanly possible because, he says, it helps him get things in order. He shares his elaborate and well-furnished home with his business partner (Kevin Spacey), who balances his drug intake with detachment and a certain flat-voiced viciousness that we’ve come to expect from Kevin Spacey. They’re joined by a completely self-absorbed and partially deranged aspiring actor (Chazz Palminteri), whose problems range from his inability to get work to his wife’s desire to have either a child or a divorce. Palminteri frequently camps out at their house, even though Spacey can’t stand him, because he wants drugs, he wants Penn’s constant ego-stroking, and because he’s too self-absorbed to notice that Spacey can’t stand him. “Hurlyburly” follows three or four days in their lives, the first and second days separated by a year, as we watch their debauchery spin out of control.
“Hurlyburly’s” take on the Hollywood lifestyle is that everyone is too “sophisticated” and “in touch with their feelings” to be honest and say what they mean. All the characters have spurts of benevolence, in which they reach out of their self-absorbed, drug-induced quagmires and do something considerate, but they lack the resilience to keep from falling back down. The film opens with Penn and Spacey having an argument over the woman who has shared both their beds (Robin Wright-Penn). Penn is, of course, insanely jealous and wants her back, but he’s far too sophisticated to come out and say so. Instead he bothers Spacey all through breakfast, on the cell phone as they drive separately to work, and at work, because their desks face each other. Penn is still going on about her and Spacey when they get home. Eventually Spacey tries to do the right thing and say, honestly, that Penn and Wright-Penn should get back together. We think this is going to put Penn on the right track, but no, a year later he’s still debauching. This is one thread among many running through “Hurlyburly” and I mention it because it is symptomatic of all the film’s ideas: these people want and want but they don’t know what is good for them.
These characters talk and talk, probably a little too much for the movie’s good. We can tell that “Hurlyburly” is based on a play because of its love of semantics. Ten words are used when one will do, apparently because playwright David Rabe thinks this will add style or characterization. Sometimes the verbosity does work, but sometimes it just sounds like a play, especially when the Penn character becomes so obsessed with word choice that he busts out a dictionary and starts trying to form anagrams out of a note sent to him by Palminteri. That’s not a normal person’s interest in words, that’s a playwright’s.
Sean Penn and Kevin Spacey are two of the best actors working today. No one plays a wounded, self-indulgent yet sympathetic sleazebag as well as Penn. Spacey, as he does so well and so often, portrays a man who is intelligent, aloof, and sarcastic (although he insists he is not sarcastic, but flip). Chazz Palminteri’s actor functions with a bizarre, violent logic that makes normal conversation with him virtually impossible. “Hurlyburly” is an intriguing examination of these three characters, even if it does not make any particular statement about them besides a general condemnation of their lifestyle of drugs, partying, and meaningless sex. There’s a lot of dark humor in the movie, as well as confessions, self-revelations, and the key conflict is between Penn’s deep-down, albeit misguided search for honesty, and Spacey’s attempts to just “get by” and have an adequate existence.
What brings the film down is that Penn’s drug-induced gibberish is just that: gibberish. The first time he rants and raves in his living room we are overwhelmed by the sight of a man out of control. The second and third times he loses himself are just as well-written and well-acted, but they continue the thoughts he started in the first rant, which aren’t thoughts at all, which don’t really connect, and which don’t lead anywhere. In his drug-addled mind they certainly do, but we are seeing the movie not from within him but from without. We can’t make the connections. Another recent drug movie, Terry Gilliam’s 1998 adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” solves this problem by showing us drug use subjectively: when Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro are convinced of dark conspiracies out to get them we actually see what they see, be it crazed soldiers, flashing lights, or carnivorous man-sized lizards.
They’re aren’t any bad scenes in “Hurlyburly,” there are only redundant ones. The second and third times Penn goes wacko are indeed harrowing and skillful performances, but in my mind I was already writing this review. A good thirty per cent of “Hurlyburly” could probably be removed and the movie would be stronger. Watching it one gets the impression of director Anthony Drazan wanting to edit the film down but being unwilling to amputate the fine work of so many good actors.
Finished August 2, 2002
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