Release Date: April 30, 2003
Starring: Javier Bardem, Laura Morante, Juan Diego Botto, Elvira Mínguez, Alexandra Lencastre, Oliver Cotton, Abel Folk
Directed by: John Malkovich
Written by: Nicholas Shakespeare
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
MPAA Rating: R (strong violence, language)
John Malkovich the actor is always something to behold. He embodies a simmering fury, usually quiet onscreen but prone to great outbursts of passion or anger or emotion. Malkovich the director is very similar, as can be seen in his debut behind the camera, The Dancer Upstairs. For a movie about Latin American terrorism, it is mostly (and surprisingly) low-key, but, typical of the director, his purposeful, beautifully-photographed film is not without its outbursts.
One of these outbursts, which comes about halfway through the film, is more striking than the rest, but it perfectly crystallizes the simmering fury of the movie’s topic. In the scene, a young schoolboy sits by the side of the road in the capital of the movie’s unnamed Latin American country, quietly eating his lunch. A few minutes later he walks into a nearby café, and kills everyone inside -- including himself -- as the bomb inside his backpack goes off.
The bombing is part of a larger scheme (which is loosely based on the actions of the Shining Path terrorist faction in Peru), that of a guerilla-style revolution planned by a mysterious, messianic terrorist known as Ezequiel. The government’s man in charge of bringing Ezequiel to justice is an intelligent and far less mysterious ex-lawyer and police captain named Agustin Rejas (Javier Bardem). But with the typically limited resources of a developing country’s police force and the higher-ups in government (who stand to lose the most at the hands of a revolutionary like Ezequiel) threatening to declare martial law, Agustin’s task is not nearly so easy.
Nor do politics represent his only obstacle. Agustin, who is married but whose wife is somewhat empty-headed and boring, is romantically taken with his daughter’s ballet teacher, Yolanda (Laura Morante). His increasingly substantial trysts with her, however, may prove to be more dangerous to his mission than he thinks.
Agustin is well-played by Bardem, whose performance carries the movie. He, like Malkovich’s directorial style, has a quiet dignity, although most of the time he simply looks worn out. His eyes are the center of this, two wells of sadness that seem to encapsulate the sorrow and civil unrest of Agustin’s country. If there is anything to take from The Dancer Upstairs, it is that Bardem, a Spanish actor who first impressed American audiences in 2000’s Before Night Falls, is a talented performer with a future in Hollywood.
Malkovich, too, has promise as a director. Those who remember Spike Jonze’s whimsical drama Being John Malkovich, in which the legendary performer suddenly took a taste for puppetry, need not be alarmed -- The Dancer Upstairs proves that Malkovich’s ambitions behind the camera are far more serious and diligent. But this film, his rookie effort, is probably not the definitive word on the matter. Much as George Clooney did in his directorial debut in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Malkovich brings a unique perspective to the business of filmmaking (it is no surprise that this film is character-driven, given that it is directed by a very talented actor), but, also similar to Clooney, Malkovich the filmmaker is in need of some refinement.
His film is certainly marked with a purpose. It is an unflinching adaptation of Nicholas Shakespeare’s novel (by Shakespeare himself) designed to portray the emotional as well as the physical damages done by guerrilla terrorists in developing countries around the world in a very realistic manner. Agustin, as played by Bardem, fits perfectly into that mold. For instance, there is a scene in which Agustin is shot at by some of the terrorist Ezequiel’s underlings. The detective is visibly shaken as he fumbles at his pistol and desperately squeezes off a few errant rounds, more for the sake of looking like a policeman than actually trying to hit anything. Although Hollywood would have us believe that all policemen are the trigger-happy commandoes played by the likes of Mel Gibson or Bruce Willis, in truth they’re probably much more like the nervous, weary cops like Bardem’s Agustin.
Where the movie’s romance is concerned, though, Agustin is a little too human, because his fling with the mysterious Yolanda is out of character for someone so well intentioned and intelligent. Agustin, it is revealed early on, was a lawyer, but left that profession because most people think lawyers are crooks -- even though with his smarts he could have easily had himself a lucrative judgeship.
Likewise, the romance feels out of character for the movie. It ultimately proves to be subplot on which the movie’s main story hinges, but films ought never to depend on minor narrative details. This is especially true in the case of The Dancer Upstairs, where the climactic chain of events -- which relates to Agustin and Yolanda’s burgeoning affair -- all happens rapidly in the last 15 minutes of the movie. The rest of the movie, which had detailed Agustin’s tense but frustrating search for Ezequiel, feels like a waste in retrospect.
While it’s playing out, though, the movie is an enjoyable drama filled with atmosphere and occasional moments of genuine suspense. Malkovich has a talented hand at the helm to generate these elements with such ease in his first directorial effort, and if he steps behind the camera again, viewers can rest assured that it will be a movie worth watching. Until then, however, it’s probably best to regard The Dancer Upstairs as a preview of something greater to come, rather than the best that Malkovich has to offer.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)