Review of The Words (2012) by Jim G — 08 Sep 2012

"The Words" a film by Brian Klugman was released this week, starring Dennis Quaid, Bradley Cooper, Zoë Saldana and Jeffrey Irons. I liked this movie if you were going to twist my arm, and yet I had many problems with it.

The first and main problem is this. I know I am going to view/listen/read a work of fiction unless I am watching a documentary. But in this case we are introduced to a writer, Claylay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) who wrote a book called "The Words" which introduces other characters in his fictional story "The Words". So, a minute in and we are in a story within a story.

I am already once removed from the story at hand. I am not sure what how to quantify measurement of this, but I believe that how much I care about the characters is halved when I am introduced to a character who then introduces another set of characters.

The set of characters introduced by Clay in his reading of "The Words" are Bradley Cooper who plays Rory Jansen, and Zoë Saldana who plays Dora Jansen, and their lives as he is struggling at writing. He is a pretty good writer and is told that despite how good his book is, it is unmarketable. So the problem he has here is not talent, but talent that does not create a product that people will want to buy.

As he begins to wallow in despair at not "making it" as a writer, he comes across in a satchel his wife bought him in Paris an old manuscript that for whatever reason is marketable. We are told in no uncertain terms that while Rory's writing is "good" the work he found was "great.".

Rory, in a way to rationalize copying it, writes the words from the manuscript to his computer to "feel" what it is like to write something that great. He changes nothing, including the punctuation or spelling errors. In other words, they make it clear that he is plagiarizing word for word.

And I guess here is where I throw another flag on the play. A writer is to a degree someone who thinks his work is worth publication, otherwise he would not offer it up to be part of a slush pile, relegated to the grind of getting read, and in time receiving a rejection letter. I just don't think a "real" Rory Jensen would allow the writing to pass unfiltered to his computer. There must be something that he would add to it, remove, or modify. But I guess any compromise on this issue would not make the act of stealing look as bad if he "made it his own.".

Eventually, although Rory himself never offers the work up for publication, we know that inevitably it will be discovered and get published.

Another problem I have with the movie is that it talks about how great "Window's Tears" is, the book that Rory Jansen wrote, and yet we never actually here any of the prose from that movie. We see images the work invokes, but we don't actually hear any of the words. This is a copout in my opinion. I want to hear some proof that this book is award worthy. Instead we are told to believe it by the accolades it receives and the success he gleans from it. But I don't buy it, and here is where I think the movie falls short. Like Rory, I want to "feel" the greatness of the book.

Smash cut to some time later and, of course the original writer, now an old man (played by Jeremy Irons) of "Window's Tears" tracks down Rory and starts an idle conversation and ends it with confronting him about the book he wrote and that man to man, Rory stole it. But this is merely a way to introduce a third story being told, the story behind the story of Window's Tears.

The problem with this movie is that I was waiting for the revelation of connection between the fiction and the reality. Is Clay Hammond an old Rory Jansen who is confessing this crime now that he is nearing the end of his career? If so, I would have liked to have seen that movie. Or is Clay Hammond merely thinking of himself both in terms of the old man who is wrung dry and bitter and full of regret of the life he could have led versus the young man who in many ways realized that he was a fraud when it came to writing.

The third problem with this movie is the lack of an ending. After Rory confesses to Dora that he did not write the book, we never get to see if he "patched things up." The old man (Jeremy Irons) after his wife loses his manuscript could not get over that any more than perhaps his wife could not get over the death of their daughter. And Clay Hammond is stuck between the limbo of going back to his wife with whom we never see and who he is now separated, and going after the young fresh faced Daniella played by Olivia Wilde.

I know that the ending is left there to intentionally give the audience the option to draw their own conclusions. I just don't agree. I don't need to be spoon fed, but give me some indication how things tie together, or if they do at all. Yes, I know that reality does not tie up in a bow like fiction, but there is a reason why we enjoy movies. (I'll leave the writer of this movie to decide what I meant by that.).

There is a final thing in the movie I have a problem with, there is an alley scene where Bradley Coopers leaves a restaurant in anger because he is dealing with such a heavy air of guilt over having stole the story and Dora comes after him. In the alley he keeps saying "damn" where clearly the word he is saying is not damn, it's another curse word that is hard to mistake for the other word. I don't mind overdubbed profanity when I am watching Turner Classics, but on the big screen either don't show me his lips at all, or man up and use the original words used.