Finding America
Blundering to the Heart of the American Dream
"Yeah, well, it's just us a few hundred of our closest friends"
Yeah, everybody's going to the movies. I've also been to the movies (as is evident from my posts of late). Now, after reflecting on Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, a brave venture for mainstream film makers and moviegoers, I find myself shaded by the looming shadow of events following late March 2003, that time last year the United States, having bombed, starved and stripped Iraq through one of modern history's most vicious sanctions campaigns, illegally invaded that country, overthrew its government and, using proxy armies (including 1,500 South African mercenaries who constituted a force larger than ally Spain) began—through its 4,000-strong "embassy", to build its Middle East springboard to dominance over Asia and initiate linkage with its hundreds of military bases forming a necklace of death around China.
A year down the line and with a long struggle ahead, I have no wish to revisit the ongoing carnage, mayhem, and despair inflicted by the United States and its vicious ideologues on Iraq and other countries it has destroyed in the recent past, e.g. Argentina, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Haiti, Columbia, etc. I'd rather stick to the movies.
Several months ago, our local pay channel screened Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming’s The Anniversary Party, featuring thirty-something Hollywood Hills couple Sally and Joe Therrian who, reconciled after a lengthy, inter-continental separation, decide to do the done thing and flaunt six years of make believe in front of friends with whom they share, all too frequently, that which they should share with each other. Sally is an intelligent, fast-fading movie star tarnished by a desire to live life to the full, i.e. act, save her marriage and have kids. Her prepubescent British novelist-turned first-time director husband, the ACDC Joe, proves a major drug-addled obstacle to achieving any of her three goals. They are as unlikely a couple as anyone's ever likely to meet but, hey, having met them, I thought I'd share their story with you. It is, after all, their anniversary party.
At least, in these end days of March and early days of faded empire, the movie's title and its characters’ aberrant behaviour are apposite. I do not remember much graphic detail of the film, but one short scene struck me most forcibly. Encapsulating the protagonists' inability to see the absurdity of their fast-deteriorating situation, it lent it great value as a reflection of U.S. values today. I tried to track down mention of what amounted to a single, defining shot and scoured the Web for a review noting it. The Web does not lack movie sites where, supposedly, one can find out anything and everything about one's movie or star of the moment (movies and fame being such fleeting or transitory commodities these days). However, and in keeping with our age of information-clogged ignorance, I found no mention of the scene that so impressed me. We'll get to it later.
"The clock is ticking!"
The Anniversary Party, scripted and filmed on the run in 19 days using digi-cams, exemplifies the potential of our new media and highlights the talent of today's actors and actresses. Jason Leigh and Cummins' coup and part of what amounts to a stunning achievement lay in their decision to cut out the ubiquitous middlemen, the costly directors and producers who, their profits made, end up dictating what audiences see. Throwing together an ensemble of their close friends and scripting the film as they shot it, the two long-time actors produce and direct a film of enormous insight that did not receive its share of deserved acclaim. Why? Put it down to self-hating Americans for all I care... it doesn't matter, the film's great.
The movie equates to the unravelling of a lie as great as that now lived by the United States. Tolerated by a globe envious of its obvious wealth, the U.S. has grown to an adolescence based on falsehoods carrying with them the heartbreak of unpalatable truths. Like the political charade playing itself out on a global stage, Sally and Joe's marriage is an act wherein the players try to outplay each other. There is no trust in this relationship, only a partnership balancing need and enmity, dedicated to the acquisition of selfish resources guaranteeing more of the same. Like Joe and Sally, the United States and the globe are locked in a destructive dance of unhealthy codependence. As Sally tolerates Joe's drug dependence for the sake of a wanted child, we all now suffer Israel's unholy grip on the U.S. body politic.
Okay, that's not really fair. From the outset, it's clear Sally is the one who will carry the day once loosed of Joe. Cumming immediately comes across as a self-absorbed child, far more in need of his wife than she is of him. He is the adolescent. Also, it's clear as the movie gets under way that we're not dealing with ordinary acting talents here. The bond shared by all those participating in The Anniversary Party is evident, electrifies the set, and illuminates a tight, fast-paced script. Against this backdrop of excellence, Cumming and Jason Leigh still manage to shine. As far as seasoned movie reviewers—embedded in the mainstream news media to replicate the publicity given them—are concerned, The Anniversary Party, though good, comes across as a self-indulgent exercise in navel gazing by the idle rich.
Hey, they're not that far off but, in not giving the movie the kudos it deserves, they short-change viewers and those who make the movie work, its writers and actors. Mind you, the writers and actors (or is it just their publicity machine) don't do a bad job of short-changing themselves in the publicity department. The official movie site is a case in point. I find no mention made on it of two actors who, to me, play pivotal roles, Clara Demedrano and Norizzela Monterroso. They portray the Therrians' Spanish-speaking Mexican servants, Rosa and America.
Look, I'm no North American, so I wouldn't know if half the Mexicans in the U.S. are named America, Jesus, or Rosa. The defining character's name is America and that's all there is to it... and then some. To both the people who made the movie and those publicizing it, Rosa and America don't seem to matter. They are airbrushed out of existence. Perhaps, as is the case with most foreigners in America, their presence is accidental or purely utilitarian, not deserving of mention.
I mean, someone has to cook the dinner.
It doesn't matter. Well, it does, but it doesn't, if you know what I mean. Nothing about the U.S. surprises me any more and besides, it has its up side. The Anniversary Party is much like life, a good film in which—much like current international events—the lies, duplicity, denial, self-absorption, greed, selfishness, immaturity and irony on which it is built combine, in the end, to set free an underlying truth evident to all but the characters to whom it should be evident.
We meet Sally and Joe Therrian on the veranda of their spacious, made-to-order glass-and-chrome Hollywood home on the morning of their anniversary celebration under the instruction of their personal yoga teacher, Steven. "Great," I think. "Yoga, the ultimate East meets West For Dummies DIY activity." Yoga, in the West, represents a form of spiritual jogging for mentally obese practitioners who need not leave their yoga mats to do any work. That is, after all, what they pay their personal trainers for. Much as the U.S.' derisive scorn of global opprobrium sets it beyond a capability to understand itself, the Therrians’ facile appreciation of an ancient art is born of a lifestyle distinctly at odds with their ability to appreciate what this slice of culture has to offer them. Their love of it is as empty as their addiction to each other. The movie is off to a good start.
Enter servants Rosa and America, who we see through the open sliding doors separating them from the earnestly re-united couple and their rent-a-guru contortionist. They start setting up the dining-room table for the evening's celebration of a union made in all the world's free capitals and that bastion of entrepreneurial spirituality, Hollywood. Muttering quietly in their alien tongue, Rosa and America upset Joe's fragile equilibrium and he asks them to make themselves scarce. They close the glass door and their muttering fades to the peace of the garden and the selective silence of its New Age mystics.
Rosa and America are servants who, like children in the America of old, are to be seen (when needed) and heard (if necessary or to say "Yes"). With their mistress, they form the bedrock on which this movie is built but, as said earlier, I find no mention of this in the reviews. That, I guess, is to be expected. Just as the pass-for-glass house on the hill floats above the fantasy of Hollywood, the toxic cloud of American media shrouds our globe, shaping and influencing our lives with its naive pass-for-thought emissions. Just as the child-bride and her infantile husband cannot commit to reality and each other, our neonatal baby power, convinced of an unending and unconditional supply of global goodwill, cannot commit to realities facing everyday people living everyday lives.
Am I being somewhat overzealous in highlighting Rosa and America's roles? Perhaps. I tend to do that with most things, i.e. read into them that which might not be there. But, in this instance, I think I have a pretty good case, not least the script itself and the fact that in most stories, major characters are introduced at the outset. This film introduces us at the outset to Joe's suicide-junkie sister Lucy and Sally's gynaecologist by way of phone calls, as well as to their dog Otis who, unlike Rosa and America, features prominently throughout the film. He is to the Therrians what the average moggie is to the single blogger, a repository of misplaced emotion usually reserved for real-world things like kids. In many ways, and much like the blogger's cat, the Therrians both misuse and abuse Otis. He is the catch-fence of every projected or misplaced emotion that slips from behind tightly controlled facades.
"It's married and it's the neighbor."
But let's forget the psychology and follow the story. Finishing their yoga session, Joe (the master of the house if not the East) gives it over to Rosa and America in a manner befitting domestic relationships. "It's yours," he says casually. Yes, well, it is, but only insofar as the two middle-aged Mexican servants are there to take care of Joe and Sally's needs, support their whims and follow their dictates. And only insofar, as is the case with mainstream politics, social discourse and the media, as every phrase means the opposite to people whose lives are dominated by a wealth referred to in throwaway terms. The lie of money's meaninglessness becomes evident in artistic output measured in quotas and Sally's reference to her cherished, self-styled designer house as "a big white thing on the left." In a sense, it may be the White House, although we could hardly interpret that as being left of anything. Implicit in Joe's statement, "It's yours" is that which says, "It's ours. Clean it."
A prelude to pre-party love-making is interrupted by a phone call from the Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow), the young actress portraying Sally in Joe's book and directorial debut. Sally is furious at Joe's invitation of Skye to their anniversary do and the cracks in her overstretched psyche immediately become chasms of jealousy, anger, and uncertainty. That Joe has hired and makes little secret of his desire to bed the 27-year old chosen to portray her opens gaping holes of self-doubt for Sally. Her star, like Europe's and an acquiescent world, is apparently on the wane. Nevertheless, at least this woman has the insight to doubt her worth. It will stand her in good stead as the movie progresses. Part of the script's allure is that, as we become aware of the character's obvious flaws, we grow to like them for having them. In contrast to the reviewers, my sense is that we're watching real people here, dysfunctional people twisted by forces we are able to see on-screen only because of their off-screen friendships. The Anniversary Party admits us to the inner sanctum of an extremely close circle of friends.
In the face of Skye's imminent arrival but comforted by Joe's facile pledges of undying love, any thoughts of Joe and Sally rumpling the bed are shelved as the guests start to arrive, welcomed into a foyer filled with flowers by Rosa (the rose symbolising fealty) and America. The flowers, we soon realise, are set to remain among the most neutral natural entities in this house. The cell-phone, Palm Pilot-toting Jerry Adams (John Benjamin Hickey) is the couple's business manager and it's important to note that, not only are he and his wife Judy (Parker Posey) the first to arrive; he bears the Therrians’ completed tax returns, ready for signing. Jerry is to the Therrians what Rumsfeld is to Bush and Cheney; a threat and an opportunity to further ambition by artifice and numerical cunning. As Sally and Jerry discuss pressing business matters, Judy notices the flowers and mentions them, but nobody hears her or sees them.
A rose by any name? The neighbours Ryan (Denis O'Hare) and Monica Rose (Mina Badie) are guests invited under sufferance owing to a dispute involving their dog and Otis. Ryan Rose is to Joe Therrian what John Kerry is to George W. Bush, a po-faced loser and fellow author with a chip on his shoulder. With the flowers, the servants and the dogs, the Roses form natural (awkward) but unwanted perturbations in a house where every pre-packaged, stylised item, utterance or emotion is either formally arranged for effect or frozen forever in the countless tastefully muted professional photographs covering the walls of the Therrian home). All that is natural is commoditised, be it flowers, dogs or neighbours. Cut flowers are arranged, the dogs groomed and gated, and the neighbours' tamed and cowed with threats of litigation. It is the stuff of politics and of life.
Given life by the presence of Joe's Leica-carrying former wife or lover, Gina (Jennifer Beals), who presents the Therrians yet another image of their freeze-dried love as an act of soft vengeance and an anniversary gift, the photographs carpeting the Therrians’ walls scream—like divorce-court witnesses—the couple's futile repression of issues tearing their lives apart. Gina is the Cherie Blair of Tinsel Town on the Hill, at once the artistic interloper and at all times the shrewd barrister and conniving judge of character and opportunity who frames the desperation of the Therrians’ still life in shades of black and white. Objects are vital to this movie and Sally's character fights them. Realising the frigidity of her marriage, she cannot decide where to hang the latest monument to their union, sterile but for the baby in her womb (in a sense, her neonatal personality set to bloom). Expressing their undying love and appreciation of the non-existent beauty surrounding them, Gina and Joe, still flirting after all these years, up the tempo of empty platitudes. Every exchange is reduced to "I love you..." or "I love this...," accompanied by a peck on the cheek.
Each arriving guest carries items bearing testimony to the Therrian marriage's stillborn nature and each couple carries a wholeness they lack. Sally's dissatisfied, Shakespeare-quoting co-star in her current movie, Cal (Kevin Kline), epitomises lively success as he arrives laden with gifts, kids, diaper changes and his self-declared wife, Sophia (Phoebe Cates). Like the servants, flowers, and neighbours, other people's kids are relegated to seeming irrelevance. Dispatched to the guest room, they offer telling signifiers unseen by self-important major players lacking the wisdom of childhood. Sally's creative but neurotic director and professional anchor, Mac (John C. Reilly), arrives with his delightfully self-destructive, anorexic wife Clair (Jane Adams), three video cameras, a firm grip on the dog and a tenuous hold on reality. He obviously lives for his movies. Mac and Cal make up the Hollywood neo-cons, think-tankers, and campaign managers, the makers and breakers of careers, trends, and insiders. They dictate who is to bless and who is to blame, out the unwary and exact revenge on those who fail them.
And ultimately, Sally's soul mate and friend, the single, violin-playing Peter Sellers look-alike and mimic Levi Panes (Michael Panes), pitches up. Panes turns out to be more a self-serving facade than a confidante of substance. He is a neat reminder that the Therrians’ anniversary party can be juxtaposed with The Party so well trashed by the late, great Peter Sellers. Panes is the Karl Rove of Sally's life and a constant reminder that, as the Therrians gather a slice of white America to itself to watch its edges curl, The Party and Hrundi V. Bakshi will always belong to 1968, Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards. The Anniversary Party is unquestionably now. Whereas in The Party Sellers, with impeccable timing and ineffable grace, plays an awkward outsider wreaking histrionic havoc, the characters filling the Therrians’ designer lives play intimate insiders bringing down, through deliciously uncomfortable silences, mistimed outbursts and ringing irony, a chaos of perfection's making. Through all this, Sally and Joe play host to different manifestations of their own fractured selves, slipping and sliding in the vacillation of their indecision.
At times, the obvious skill needed to pull off this seamless integration of ruptured lives, emotional schisms, and broken dreams puts even Sellers's comic genius in the shade. To juxtapose the two movies so obviously and so unselfconsciously calls for supreme confidence, a confidence Jason Leigh and Cumming obviously have in each other and the friends they direct. Besides shredding the paternalistic master-slave relationship and notions of success, The Anniversary Party dissects marriage with a scything but gentle mirth. Despite finding most relationships wanting, it leaves one wanting more relationships. The more unreal these people get, the more real they become.
"So how much do you hate her?" "Big time."
As the guests arrive, America dispenses wine to each, ensuring (like all good Mexicans, Koreans, Filipinos, A-rabs, nigras and the like) she gets a bit on the side each time. Funny thing about America; she's always close to the action. She certainly is when Skye Davidson, who drops into this mix of identities as transparent as the large windows framing the house, embarrasses Sally by gushing her adoration and Sally's status as a fading star in front of the mute servants in the kitchen. The nubile Skye carries all the physical attributes Sally has seen fade to skeletal angularity and none of the intelligence evident in the self-doubter's thoughts and actions. Skye is much like the Charlize Therons of today, an intelligent woman you'd want to fuck as a prelude to intelligent conversation. Skye is the ultimate commodity; unthinking pleasure on a stick, the wet bed of the American Dream. Her feigned naivety fools no-one, but her shrewd intelligence makes her conquest the more desirable. Who does not want the U.S. spread out before them, offering them eternal sensual bliss?
Sally, on the other hand, epitomises the Streeps and Fosters of yesteryear, people I'd choose to have a damned good conversation with before getting down to more fundamental pleasures. In her insecurity, which is strangely devoid of any panic-stricken neurosis, she retains an air of "the strong woman", the one person others can count on to pull it all together. Joe? He's a likeable but effeminate tosser, a complete hoser, a six-year old wastrel in a 'Boy' sweatshirt incapable of commitment to anything but his selfish desires. Having nothing to give, he takes, constantly raising the question, "How the hell did these two end up together?" A professional relationship carried too far, obviously. But it doesn't matter. Life generally throws us into the weirdest relationships, leaving us to wonder at what might have happened had we any say in the matter.
Joe's intellectual and personal nemesis and antithesis is Ryan Rose, his next-door neighbour, the uptight, bitter dry-drunk and prolific author who, in choosing to remain an observer throughout the movie, sets himself beyond the pale and offers a counterpoint to the hedonism on which Joe thrives. Ryan, who abhors others' self-indulgence with the passion of a convert, straitjackets himself in sterility. Yet, in his selfishness, there is a certain, deliberate logic. If he is to survive, he cannot revert to a lifestyle he has obviously enjoyed or been sucked into in the past.
I must say, I sympathise with this guy's anger and frustration. An absolute asshole of his own creation, he's doomed to watch others indulge themselves. As a husband and father, I understand his apoplexy absolutely. It just ain't fair, Bubba, but if you want what you've got, you'd better learn to live with it or you'll explode. If Ryan offers a counterweight carefully crafted to balance or highlight other's deficiencies, he does so brilliantly and brings essential foibles to the mix. His wife Monica, however, suffers the brunt of his coat-hanger rectitude and self-righteous inflexibility and, when the movie takes off, cannot resist falling into experiencing the upside of a lifestyle lived on the downside.
"Isn't Skye amazing?" "She's got great tits."
This film might have been shot in under three weeks and its script written on the run, but nobody will convince me the original screenplay had not been lying around a long time. The balance, structure, and craftsmanship evident in the story line is too good for an off-the-cuff, impromptu performance by a dozen or so talented individuals. The dialogue is sharp, witty and pointedly ironic throughout. "I've been watching your films since I was a little girl ... I've seen all your movies. When I was in rehab, the second time, they wouldn't even let us see your drug addict movie. They said you were too real. I worship you. And I couldn't be more flattered, because I know the part I'm playing in Joe's movie is based on you as a young woman," gushes bimbo Skye, darkening Sally's kitchen-sink mood. It is up to America to break the ugliness of the moment by wheeling in the cake marking the moment; a cake topped by three separate and edible photographs of the Therrians and their dog.
Much like Adaptation, this movie takes off only once the scene has been well and truly set. And perhaps, also like Adaptation, this is where most so-called reviewers part company with its promised excellence, missing the exposure of the rot corrupting those involved. Skye, having arrived and conquered, and after shaming Sally to silence and a passive-aggressive counter-attack, is the thoughtless but sensual point around which the film revolves. She proffers—after an embarrassing-but-clever-yet-uncomfortable set of necessary party games (Charades, naturally), her gift, a supply of Ecstasy to a communion party trimmed down to those prepared to bare their minds, bodies and souls.
Ecstasy becomes a misnomer as every suppressed passion explodes with the delicacy of a thousand volcanoes. With the onset of its effects, clothes come off, the swimming pool becomes a centrepiece, and personas peel like old paint. Sally's director Mac bewails his female lead's inability to act; friend Sophia aligns herself with Sally's pregnancy, distrust of Gina and assessment of Joe as "...narcissistic, irresponsible and unreliable"; Ryan becomes ever more awkward; Joe admires the studiously unselfconscious Skye's breasts, Clair glides nakedly from neurosis to neurosis, and Sally, out looking for her dog (missing because Monica has left open more than a subliminal gate), catches her giving herself unreservedly to Joe. Sally’s handling of the situation hints at the movie's brilliance. Her deepseated anger, evident only through her refusal to react, promises violence.
The script moves swiftly from passion to crucifixion as Joe, Sally, Panes and Skye head in pairs up the canyon above the city of dreams to look for the dog. Again, as with everything in the script, the left foot does not move unless the right follows. Panes and Skye, essential foils to the phobias of Sally and Joe respectively, form a possible alternative or complementary relationship and follow their upward path separately to the Therrians. Sally and Joe, left together for the first time, use their hilltop hike to thrash out their differences and vent their frustrations. They tear into each other like drug-crazed rats.
In keeping with the dark, bleak, but often excruciatingly funny humour pervading the film, we cut away from the two lovebirds unleashing their anger and enmity on each other. Back at the house, the camera focuses on Ryan who remains as oblivious to the Therrian's difficulties as he does to his wife's attempt at rebellious infidelity. Uncompromisingly and without feeling, Ryan is in the kitchen grilling America and Rosa (always present when the film takes a twist) about building permits. Like their owners, the slaves are taking heat. In their alien-tongued obduracy however, they tell the dry drunk to piss off just as Monica rushes in and, filled with a zest for life fuelled by her newly unbridled passion, tells him to get off his ass to look for that which he hates most in life, the Therrian's dog.
Back up on the hill, Sally and Joe's conversation spirals through a detailed litany of each character's real or perceived failings, all of which we have seen on-screen. The sense of a building acrimony is palpable and it's topped by Sally's sudden realisation that she must end her marriage and end it immediately if she is to save herself. She bluntly states that she has had an abortion, a saving lie that puts her cards irrevocably on the table. She is finished with her self-indulgent, self-pitying toy-boy husband. In Sally, one of few characters with any spine, we see a woman fighting her subservient self-image, the House & Garden woman who should, because she has it all, be ever mindful of her place. Fortunately, Sally has heart and passion and, in keeping with the emerging theme of La Rosa Mystica, uses her beauty and thorns to see off those who leech off her soul. It is she, of all the film's protagonists, who will flower most obviously when the storm fades away.
As with Sally and Joe's hillside confrontation, the glass walls cocooning The Anniversary Party and our public world seal the unspoken truths of decades. Today, they crack to breaking. And just as Joe's every childish whim has been catered to at unspeakable cost, the United States' jackbooted march across the globe has imbued in those of us living outside it a silent but lethal enmity. Perhaps, to Americans, we are all Spanish, Arab, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Filipino, Asian, Korean, Chinese—inscrutable aliens-cum-servants of the Greater American Good, to be taken at face value and ignored once used. The United States forgets to whom it owes its dues, the world at large. And it is a world tired of much ado about nothing and the perennial passion play amounting to a meagre pretence at foreign aid.
We too want out.
"You have to sign your taxes anyway."
Back at the movies and following the Biblical theme, we are taken back to the baptismal fount, the swimming pool where Mac, Sally's director, choreographs naked nymphs in an underwater ballet. Mac is a wonderfully complex and paradoxically warm-hearted Machiavelli, one of the few sane weirdoes present. Under the influence of the E, he swallows water, drowns, and is brought back to consciousness by Jerry, the accountant, who knows how to balance the books. Mac realises Sally's acting failure is his and his alone and he is left to face his demons in tears. Compounding the rain of disaster (while newborn hero Jerry and his wife get it on), girlfriend Gina takes a call from Joe's father who tells her Joe's sister Lucy has taken an overdose.
Joe, Sally, Skye and Panes return dog-less to the house and the news of Lucy's OD; Sally takes charge and Joe falls apart. She allows him to crash and sees off her co-star Cal, his wife Sophia, and their kids before walking in on Skye and Panes screwing each other's brains out (or consummating Sally and Joe's relationship, if you will). Just as the movie started with Sally and Joe's interrupted lovemaking being evident in an untrammeled bed, Pane and Skye's passion is obvious in the tangled covers at its close. Once the dust settles on the carnage remaining at the credits, the dumb blonde, unaware of her role in exposing fraudulent lives she is set to emulate, starts clearing the debris from the tables. "You don't need to do that," says Sally. "I don't mind," smiles the cluster-bomb Madonna. "Relax. You've done enough," stresses the more mature woman with determination and a full and healthy appreciation of Skye.
The movie, a mélange of shifting scenes, can’t be spoiled by any description of it. The timing, dialogue and 'balancing' themes are too good. The walls adorned with dead photographs are replaced, in the guest room, with walls covered by children's pictures.
Ultimately, with Joe set to head off alone to London and his sister's sickbed, we are left with the couple and their unsigned tax returns. This is the scene that prompted my attempt to dissect the film. Lacking a graphic memory, I do not remember it clearly but I do know that I saw it. It is a Kodak moment that allows us a simultaneous glimpse of the American dream and its reality. Joe and Sally sign off their tax returns and each other under a sign or plaque imploring "God Bless America." God does indeed bless America but, in life as in The Anniversary Party, it is we outsiders who take the role of America. As dysfunctional adolescents in a world of jaded cynics who tolerate their kids without sanction, it is to 'America the world' that the United States, if it is to eat, will ultimately have to answer.
As Joe and Sally make love for the last time, America and Rosa sweep up the mess. It is their job and their lot. The party is over. Joe leaves, Sally sweeps their wedding rings into a drawer, puts the house on the market, and the dog returns. Shot of her husband, Sally is free to discover her life and herself. The people who filled this movie with cut-glass egos and paper-thin personas have gone. And yet, out here in the so-called real world, they are still with us. Be they movie stars or politicians, they are the mass-market personalities created by the media that give us FOXNews, CNN, CBS, and USA Today. They are, and are of, the media. Is it any wonder they believe their own lies? It is they, after all, who script the fictions that pass as truths for all occupying the cocoon of cosseted privilege.
It is difficult for me to believe that reviewers can, in seriousness, tout this film as a reflection of Jason Leigh and Cumming's movie-star realities. Seeing it as clearly as they do, why would they ever want to live it? Set against Blake Edwards' 1968 movie, The Anniversary Party is as cuttingly funny as Sellers' is slapstick adept. The script, acting and use of digi-cams show how rapidly scriptwriting and film-making have matured in thirty years and, as a whole, it shows that movies have a future even, if like their country of origin, most opt for a mediocrity that highlights its finely crafted brilliance.
Would that Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming and friends be charged with scripting our global future. They'd do a damned side better job of it than the boys in the Jesus Bunker.
