A
film review by Roger Ebert, October 28, 2004.
There was a tasting
last night,
Miles Raymond explains, on one of those alcoholic mornings that begin in the
afternoon and strain eagerly toward the first drink. That's why he's a little
shaky. He's not an alcoholic, you understand; he's an oenophile, which means he
can continue to pronounce French wines long after most people would be
unconscious. We realize he doesn't set the bar too high when he praises one
vintage as quaffable. No wonder his
unpublished novel is titled The Day after
Yesterday; for anyone who drinks a lot, that's what today always feels
like.
Miles
is the hero of Alexander Payne's Sideways, which is as lovable a movie as
Fargo, although in a completely
different way. He's an English teacher in middle school whose marriage has
failed, whose novel seems in the process of failing, whose mother apparently
understands that when he visits her, it is because he loves her, and also
because he needs to steal some of her money. Miles is not perfect, but the way Paul Giamatti plays him, we forgive him
his trespasses, because he trespasses most of all against himself.
Miles'
friend Jack is getting married in a week. They would seem to have little in
common. Jack is a big, blond, jovial man at the peak of fleshy middle-aged
handsomeness, and Miles looks like -- well, if you know who Harvey Pekar is,
that's who Giamatti played in his previous movie [American Splendor (2003)]. But Jack and Miles have been friends
since they were college roommates, and their friendship endures because
together they add up to a relatively complete person.
Miles,
as the best man, wants to take Jack on a weeklong bachelor party in the
California wine country, which makes perfect sense, because whatever an
alcoholic says he is planning, at the
basic level he is planning his drinking. Jack's addiction is to women. My best man gift to you, he tells Miles,
will be to get you laid. Miles is so
manifestly not layable that for him
this would be less like a gift than an exercise program.
Jack
(Thomas Haden Church) is a not very
successful actor; he tells people they may have heard his voice-over work in TV
commercials, but it turns out he's the guy who rattles off the warnings about
side-effects and interest rates in the last five seconds. The two men set off
for wine country, and what happens during the next seven days adds up to the
best human comedy of the year -- comedy, because it is funny, and human,
because it is surprisingly moving.
Of
course they meet two women. Maya (Virginia
Madsen) is a waitress at a restaurant where Miles has often stopped in the
past, to yearn but not touch. She's getting her graduate degree in
horticulture, and is beautiful, in a kind way; you wonder why she would be
attracted to Miles until you find out she was once married to a philosophy
professor at U.C. Santa Barbara, which can send a woman down market in search
of relief. The next day they meet Stephanie (Sandra Oh), a pour girl at a winery tasting room, and when it
appears that the two women know each other, Jack seals the deal with a double
date, swearing Miles to silence about the approaching marriage.
Miles
has much to be silent about. He has been in various forms of depression for
years, and no wonder, since alcohol is a depressant. He is still in love with
his former wife and mourns the bliss that could have been his, if he had not
tasted his way out of the marriage. Although his days include learned
discourses about vintages, they end with him drunk, and he has a way of
telephoning the poor woman late at night. Did
you drink and dial? Jack asks him.
The
movie was co-written by Payne and Jim
Taylor, from the novel by Rex
Pickett. One of its lovely qualities is that all four characters are
necessary. The women are not plot conveniences, but elements in a complex
romantic and even therapeutic process. Miles loves Maya and has for years, but
cannot bring himself to make a move because romance requires precision and tact
late at night, not Miles' peak time of day. Jack lusts after Stephanie, and
casually, even cruelly, fakes love for her even as he cheats on his fiancée.
What
happens between them all is the stuff of the movie, and must not be revealed
here, except to observe that Giamatti and Madsen have a scene that involves
some of the gentlest and most heartbreaking dialogue I've heard in a long time.
They're talking about wine. He describes for her the qualities of the pinot
noir grape that most attract him, and as he mentions its thin skin, its
vulnerability, and its dislike for being too hot or cold, too wet or dry, she
realizes he is describing himself, and that is when she falls in love with him.
Women can actually love us for ourselves, bless their hearts, even when we
can't love ourselves. She waits until he is finished, and then responds with
words so simple and true they will win her an Oscar nomination, if there is
justice in the world.
Some
terrible misunderstandings (and even worse understandings) take place, tragedy
grows confused with slapstick, and why Miles finds himself creeping through the
house of a fat waitress and her alarming husband would be completely
implausible if we had not seen it coming every step of the way. Happiness is
distributed where needed and withheld where deserved, and at the end of the
movie we feel like seeing it again.
Alexander
Payne has made four wonderful movies: Citizen
Ruth, Election, the Jack Nicholson tragicomedy About Schmidt, and now this. He finds plots that service his
characters, instead of limiting them. The characters are played not by the
first actors you would think of casting, but by actors who will prevent you
from ever being able to imagine anyone else in their roles. [Roger Ebert’s
rating: **** out of 4]
Labels:
comedy, drama, rom-drama-faves, romance, winemaking
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