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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
INSIGNIFICANCE Nicolas Roeg is revered as a supremely talented writer/director who has produced several cult-to-bona fide classic films, among them The Man Who Fell To Earth, Performance and Walkabout, but some aspects of his films tend towards the irritatingly pretentious, and much of the structure, if not substance, of Insignificance is, sadly, definitive evidence. The film is an adaptation of Terry Johnson’s 1981 play, but this fact perhaps only adds to its cumbersome weight of overbearing artifice, instead of deflating it. After the intriguing yet flawed and puzzling Bad Timing (1980), why anybody (particularly Roeg and Johnson) would have pinned commercial hopes on this film is baffling, since, if anything, Insignificance is even more self-consciously arty and deliberately experimental filmmaking than its neo-noir predecessor. Roeg’s films are always refreshingly unconventional, if, at times, straining to kick against formalist cinema and straightforward storytelling techniques. Insignificance is, at heart, a rumination on the cult of celebrity, existence, the cosmos, nuclear energy, and human conflict and relationships. In a deconstruction or reconstruction of events and characters of the 1950s, versions of Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio, and Senator Joseph McCarthy meet in a Manhattan hotel, where conversation and egos collide and the long shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki haunt the proceedings (or, at least, Einstein’s conscience), and thus the audience. Will Sampson even shows up as the Cherokee hotel elevator operator, who is either in touch with his people’s ancient past or despairing of New York City’s post-war future or both. Theresa Russell, ravishing and quite convincing as the Actress, demonstrates aspects of the Theory of Relativity to Einstein using children’s toys; it’s amusing for a few minutes, but then somehow palls. At least there’s still Ms. Russell to admire, as well as Michael Emil’s convincing turn as the Professor to ponder. The remainder of the cast is uniformly at the top of their form, including force of nature Gary Busey as the Ballplayer and legend Tony Curtis as a particularly venal and wonderfully cruel senator. Their interactions are mainly compelling, but the film finally fails in a host of other areas. Though Insignificance’s “famous” characters delight us for the most part with their unlikely interactions and improbable encounters (the Ballplayer threatening the Senator in Professor’s hotel room), the film also manages to irritate with its constant references and flashbacks to the nuclear bombing aftermath of Hiroshima, which threatens to overwhelm the much more intriguing action in the “present” (an alternate universe of the 1950s). The film is visually dazzling. Tony Lawson’s editing deserves special mention, and the film’s minimal special effects are low budget yet effective. However, the soundtrack score is marred by elements that often cringingly date many early-to-mid-’80s films, notably the techno drum machine-driven instrumental that intrudes on a few transitional scenes, rendering the film anachronistic in the worst imaginable way. The film seems sadly stuck now in its own dated time warp. It’s also somewhat baffling as to why so many modern films are released with the sound mixed in mono, even though Criterion’s technical standards here are otherwise as exacting as ever. A superior stereo or surround remix might bolster the enjoyment of this film considerably. Combine
these elements with its irreparably fractured structure, Roeg’s hallmark
technique/tendency to constantly shift temporal perspectives, and the film’s poignant, yet somehow intrusive,
obsession with the atomic bomb, and one ends up with a film wherein the
cast and crew are well up to the challenge but let down by the source
material.
Insignificance remains a film that occasionally amuses, delights,
and infuriates, but fails to cohere—at best, a
semi-glorious failure.
Scott David
Briggs
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