Movie
number two – Lorenzo’s Oil. We didn’t bring this up last time, because the
Woodman is such a damn icon, but we should make it a point to mention all the
writers by name in these articles. It’s too easy to get caught up in the
mystique of the director (of course, we’ll always talk about them too, no
doubt).
So….
Lorenzo’s
Oil by George Miller and Nick Enright!
If not for
this project, I’m confident I’d have missed this movie entirely. Maybe, if
timing were perfect, I’d have caught it in a hotel room or something, but
that’s assuming I hadn’t seen the night’s rerun of Seinfeld recently. I’d
simply never heard of this before, and we were alive when it came out. Granted,
I was more concerned with Ninja Turtles and my own shit than prestige drama,
but that’s hardly an excuse. Especially since, fully grown, but no less
concerned for my shit
(it’s key to understanding what the body needs!), I’d
consider myself a fan of George Miller. But I guess, even for the strange
dichotomy of Mad Maxes and talking animals that are Miller’s career, this one’s
an outlier.
It’s also a
movie that has all the hallmarks of Oscar bait. And, really, by that I mean it
looks fucking boring. I can imagine us sitting in a theater while this trailer
played and me rolling my eyes while making a jerk off motion with my hand. And
that jerk would last until the trailer finished. I’d have to keep going. Even
after you tried to shush me, because you’re clearly embarrassed. Especially
since we’d be at the Queen’s theaters (Arclight), and everyone around us paid
fifteen bucks for ticket. But, by the end of the trailer, and, by extension, my
jerk, we’d all agree I was right. This does look like pandering garbage – sick
kid, ACTING, rare disease, based on a true story, Margo Martindale. Okay, that
last one’s a lie. She’s delightful. All right, so we know what it looks like,
but is there more to this movie than it’s sleek, gold-seeking surface?
Yeah,
totally. This movie’s smart. Everyone in it’s smart. And it’s so, so
refreshing. Because it assumes you’re smart too. It’s interesting to note that
fellow nominee, Husbands and Wives, is also full of smart people. Maybe
something was in the air? And, to clarify, I don’t mean this is a movie full of
inaccessible geniuses. We’re not marveling at their feats of brainpower
(another awards trick), we’re just impressed by their ability to handle their
shit. When Lorenzo gets hit with this disease, his parents dive in like fucking
superheroes to find a cure. It’s a thrill, and they spend a good chunk of the
movie in the library.
One of the
things I love about this script is its ability to make us understand the rare
disease in question - ALD. By the credits, I was ready to raid my kitchen, and cure the disease myself. The script goes out of its way to
make you feel like an expert. Occasionally, I wished they’d breeze passed the
science and get moving already, but I’ll admit I was mostly wrong on that. Because the
cumulative affect of truly understanding the disease puts you in the parent’s
heads by the end of the movie. You feel their victories, their losses more
acutely. You can really grasp the debates they have, they pain they feel.
And that’s
another thing this movie does well. Yes, we’re rooting for the parents. Yes, we
want them to find a cure at all costs. But we also understand the views of
their opposition. The doctors and scientists aren’t evil, heartless bastards.
They’re professionals. And their opinions are given equal heft. Same with the
family that heads up the ALD foundation. They’re not monsters. And they aren’t
presented as such. The script is extremely even-handed and it manages to make a
complicated issue easier to digest. We’re not watching an inspirational sports
movie here, and it’s nice that the medical community isn’t treated like the
fucking Cobra Kai.
Before we
dig into a couple things that didn’t work for me, I wanted to point out another
aspect that really did – this movie’s ability to veer into horror. It’s not
strictly script related, but it’s there in it’s willingness to make Sarandon’s
character pretty unsympathetic by the end. She becomes a single-minded
monster. She wants to save that kid like Jason wants to slice up teens. And
it’s there in the writing, but in the cinematography. Miller starts to get
pretty creepy with the lighting and the low angles toward the back end. And
Sarandon’s performance grows fiercer as the movie continues, allowing her to
show a side of motherhood that’s more mother tiger than her previous guise as a
story-reading mother goose.
Praise.
Praise. Praise. Okay, what didn’t work? It’s a little long. It does get draggy
in parts. Above, I noted that all the science helped bring the movie home for
me, and it totally does, but I probably could have done with one less “kitchen
sink” metaphor. Or, to save time, maybe Sarandon only fires, say, two nurses,
instead of the ten or so it feels like. Oh, and, maybe we don’t need dozens of
shots of Lorenzo crying. Maybe. But that Tommy Pickles wail is amusing. And
Nolte’s accent…I mean, look, it settles in. By mid-movie, I was able to just
accept because I don’t think it’s bad so much as…goofy? I kept waiting for
Groucho and Harpo to show up and join the shenanigans.
Gotta say
though, Lorenzo’s Oil worked for me. Maybe I just had low expectations going
in, but either way, I enjoyed this movie. I appreciated it for it’s
intelligence, and it’s willingness to trust that I’d follow along. If the rest
of the prestige movies turn out this good, we’ll be in for a fun (sad, brutal,
depressing) ride.
And to
continue --
1.
Husbands and Wives
2.
Lorenzo’s Oil
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