Delayed Reaction: Genius

Premise: The relationship between author Thomas Wolf and his editor, Maxwell Perkins…That’s it. That’s the premise.

 

As I’ve learned from the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, there are many stages or levels of Oscar buzz.

·         There’s successful buzz: i.e., films that do in fact earn Oscar nominations.

·         There are snubs: films that expected to have Oscar nominations all the way until nomination morning where they were left out.

·         There are critical champions: films that wouldn’t typically have Oscar attention at all but get championed to see if they can earn an unlikely nod.

·         There are festival favorites: films that play wonderfully at the festival they premier at before fizzling out when introduced to the larger population (People often talk about the mountain air at Sundance blinding audiences).

·         Finally, there’s sight-unseen buzz. These are films that you hear who is involved and assume they are Oscar players even though you know nothing else. There are so many of these movies. More than any of us realize. Most actors, these days in particular, with shrinking paydays and shorter attention spans, stay busy with projects even if it isn’t clear they will work.

 

Because, really, how does anyone ever know if a movie is going to work? Even Scorsese and Spielberg have whiffs. Directors can come from anywhere. Who is to say whether a music video director, a TV director, a short director, or a theater director is the best bet? Or even a first-time director with no experience? I don’t think many actors go into a project with an explicit Oscar calculus attached. More often a role seems fun, they like some of the people tied to the project, and/or they’d like to put an addition on the house.

 

Genius is a movie that sounds like it was made as an Oscar play. It’s a period movie; a somewhat tragic biopic. The cast is full of Oscar winners (Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman), Oscar nominees (Laura Linney, Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby), and Oscar flirts (Guy Pearce, Dominic West). It competed in the Berlin Film Festival. I hear all that, realize that I never heard anything about the movie when it came out, and immediately wonder what went wrong. Rotate its fortunes just a little and this movie is Kinsey. Rotate a little more and it’s The King’s Speech. It’s the odd fate of a movie like this where the cast is both the reason it gets made and the reason it’s looked at as a disappointment.

 

I did see the movie for the cast. And I’m fascinated by this mini-genre of films about 20^th century authors along with Rebel in the Rye, Kill Your Darlings, and Tolkien. Sadly, I am rather tired of stories about erratic geniuses who torture those around them because their genius makes it worth it. Jude Law goes to town with his Thomas Wolfe performance. Colin Firth tamps down every bit of charisma he has to play up the contrast between him and Wolfe. The biggest success of the movie is how it validates the role of an editor. Having something to say is great, but’s it’s meaningless if no one can read it. With it being two men at the center of the movie and the women ranging from crazy (Nicole Kidman) to put upon (Laura Linney) this doesn’t play particularly well from a gender perspective. I also question the decision to bring in actors playing Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In both cases, I wanted to leave this movie and follow them. Both Hemmingway and Fitzgerald are rightfully exhausted by Wolfe’s lack of discipline, which only make him more annoying and makes it less clear why he’s worth the effort.

 

It’s not an awful movie. It’s competently made. The cast is too talented to make it unwatchable. It is pretty apparent that the director comes from a theater background, because he never finds much to do with the camera. There’s nothing to make this cinematic as opposed to a play with a lot of locations.

 

Also, it feels a bit like the movie is gaslighting me. Thomas Wolfe is a famous author. I know his name. I struggle to recall the titles of his books. Meanwhile, the film features other authors who I know well. I can name their books easily. I was definitely taught them in school and seen their works adapted in numerous forms. Yet, the way this movie carries itself, I’d assume that Wolfe was the best-known author to modern day audiences. It has all the “misunderstood genius” tropes of films about artists who met their greatest fame after their death. Basically, they make the movie like he’s Van Gogh, when in actuality, he was more of a Picasso, if we actually didn’t remember Picasso very well anymore. It’s a strange decision by the film.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend