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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
THE GOOD HEART There’s nothing wrong with quirky details but, as The Good Heart demonstrates, it’s easy to get carried away. A single instance can be interesting, even promising, but without follow-through, they just become a string of anecdotes, which is more or less what this movie becomes. The basic plot concerns an embittered bar owner, Jacques (Brian Cox), adopting a young homeless man who has attempted suicide (Paul Dano). Jacques’s bar has strict rules: only regulars are allowed, no carousing, and no women—the last of which causes problems when Mr. Dano gets a love interest—but the movie is less interested in the plot than how many ornaments it can hang along the way. Specifically, here are some of the more notable instances of quirk: — A cognac-sipping duck named Estragon — A flight attendant who is afraid of flying — A Teutonic gigolo — A metaphorical coconut — A foreign woman objectified through the language barrier — An unrecognizably sentimentalized Manhattan — The phrase “six quarters of an hour” — A German shepherd in hospital booties — Sleeve garters — Animal masks — The great-great-grandson of Jules Verne I could go on and on. Some of the elements may look familiar from various Wes Anderson films, and most are original at least, but the problem lies in the sheer number of them and how little attention each one merits. For every sustained plot thread, three more are introduced and immediately dropped. Cox is aggressively verbose (read, fantastic) and Dano has almost perfected stunned naïveté—although after this and Gigantic, he may want to look into action comedies—but nothing else sticks.
As a result, the experience of watching the film is not
unlike reading the list. Certain points are quite interesting—would you
like to hear more about the gigolo? How much more?—but somehow they
never add up. It’s all nouns and no verbs.
Russell Brandom
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