THE WORDS is under the impression that is making a profound artistic statement about the creative impulse. Its not. Though handsomely mounted, as they say, with a gifted cast gracing the screen, the film is diffuse, unfocused, and worst of all, dull, even when indulging in melodrama of the most fulsome variety. Using the slick trick of being told as a story within a story within a story, the level of passion evinced by the characters decreases as the story rises through its tripartite structure.
To start in the middle, there is Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), a struggling writer with middling talent, an adoring wife (Zoe Saldana), and an indulgent father (J.K. Simmons). Or rather, formerly indulgent, though still loving, father. As he writes his last check to Rory, he tells him that being a man is accepting ones limits, and maybe this writing thing should become a hobby rather than a full-time occupation. Conveniently, Rory, in the throes of existential angst, discovers a manuscript novel in an old briefcase and, inadvertently, is given credit as its author, leading to the fulfillment of all his dreams. The public at large is dazzled by the books scope and its poetry, and his father, once so skeptical, is dazzled by Rorys success. Hot on the heels of this comes the inevitable, as the true author of the book in the person of a smooth-talking but cranky old man (Jeremy Irons), reveals himself to Rory. and then begins to tell him about the events that led up to the writing of it. Ultimately there is Clay Hammon (Dennis Quaid), who wrote the novel that is Rorys story, the which he is reading at a public event where he is being romanced/stalked by a fetching graduate student (Olivia Wilde).
Oddly enough, it all flows together just fine in the unfolding, its the story itself that it lacking. Ben Barnes as the younger Irons is scene-chewingly passionate as the American ex-pat in Paris who lives a life of high romance and deep tragedy. Cooper as Rory, is more subtle, but palpably doing battle with his expectations of himself and the world, caught out by Irons, who is not so much subtle as inscrutable. Sitting remotely at the top of this pyramid of tale-telling, Quaid evokes in demeanor, approach, and appearance nothing so much as a tired haystack, and one that has grown weary waiting to be baled up for winter.
The story within story in THE WORDS leads up to an ending, embellished with Swedish ivy and moral dilemmas, to an ending with all the trapping, but none of the substance, of a climactic revelation and/or catharsis. It evokes in the audience neither gasps nor sighs, but rather quizzical exclamations and brows knitted with the effort of making sense of what has just been seen.
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