| Product: |
Finding Forrester (DVD) |
| Date: |
27/02/01 (313 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Good film, nice performances
Disadvantages: You've heard this one before
In some ways, this is the cinematic equivalent of a Will Smith single - lots of samples, lots of extra stuff laid down over an essentially old sound to convince you that this is something new, and if you like it, that's fine, but it's still Stevie Wonder's record underneath. That Gus Van Sant is actually remixing his own movies is neither here nor there, fundamentally, you have probably seen 'Finding Forrester' before.
Stop me when you've guessed; young inner city genius with no self-belief develops unlikely friendship with older bearded man who helps him to deal with his issues and achieve his full potential, which in turn helps the older man to face his own demons. Got it? Yes, it's 'Good Will Hunting'. The hero here is Jamal Wallace (Robert Brown) a basketball-loving black kid facing up to the fact that his intellectual gifts can only be developed outside the ghetto, away from his friends. The bearded older man is William Forrester (Sean Connery), a great writer who only wrote one book, and has lived as a recluse ever since.
Jamal has to learn to embrace his gifts and find his voice as a writer; Forrester has to realise that he has been locked up (physically and spiritually) for too long. And guess what? They get raped and eaten by feral children instead.
Actually, no, that's a lie - you know how this is going to turn out, that's one of the problems. This is a typically humane and heart-warming experience, beautifully shot and acted, with some nice dialogue and Van Sant's habitual affection for the people he's depicting. The opening montage of battered streets in the Bronx is superb, and the whole thing is shot in a dynamic, urgent style, but entirely without MTV bombast - energy without slickness, if you like.
It's just that it's all so familiar; the relationship that develops between Jamal and Claire (Anna Paquin), a white fellow student, is largely presented witho
ut the usual black / white problems, which is refreshing, and the film is free of cliches about the inner city. There is one big surprise (the big sporting anti-climax, whose resolution is pretty much unheard of in the winners culture of Hollywood cinema), but other than that, the similiarities between this movie and 'Good Will Hunting' are unignorable. The latter movie was too neat, but the dialogue had real spark, and all the actors really sank their teeth into it.
Here, while it's always a pleasure to see Connery at work - and he is very good - and Brown is effortless, holding his own with confidence and humour even in his scenes with Connery, Mike Rich's screenplay is just so much marshmellow. The one sort-of difference, F. Murray Abraham's character of the frustrated writer turned professor who puts hurdles in Jamal's way, is actually another borrowing. Abraham is simply re-running his best performance of Salieri in 'Amadeus', the cultivated but talentless older man who despises the gifts of the young. It's nice to see him in a good part, but it is one he's played with distinction before. Indeed, the great irony of the film is that Jamal is unjustly accused of plagiarism and has to fight back - but no-one seems to worry about the movie's borrowings.
It is good to see a film where words and writing are exalted over sports, where learning and mental development is the ultimate goal of the hero's life, and I couldn't say that 'Finding Forrester' is a bad film - far from it, it's intelligent, compassionate and entertaining. It's just that having wasted his time on his carbon-copy 'Psycho', Van Sant's promising career seems to be backing into a dead end, and one would have hoped that he - and Connery - could find something more original to do.
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