Elated at being told he has won the Nobel Prize, self-absorbed researcher Eli Michaelson soon finds his classroom philandering and his past quickly surface in the forefront of his life. The kidnapping of his son and the emotional breakdown of a manipulative student lover are just the beginning of what fame delivers to an absolutely unapologetic university professor.
Modern mechanics and high tech wizardry blaze through lightning quick scenes while house music sizzles on the soundtrack courtesy of famed DJ producer Paul Okenfold. All of this combines to make the film slicker and hipper than many of its independent counterparts at this year's Tribeca festival. A top cast helps to brighten an already intricate plot, and academics will appreciate the deadpan quips. Later the cloak and dagger antics of the well-planned heist more than make up for the price of admission and show that even an independent can play on a level playing field thanks to digital editing tools like Final Cut Pro running in a simple mac studio.
The story ostensibly begins as a family drama between a successful father and his disappointment towards his struggling son, but the plot soon spirals into black comedy, paying homage to the likes of John Huston and Guy Ritchie in copious doses. At the core this is a classic heist, and like any good noir the lines of cause and effect blur throughout. The script seems intent on satirizing the cliches that jaded movie viewers have come to guess instantly. This irreverence forms the basis of much of the humor and creates a strange series of events that is surprising and fresh without leaving too much believability behind.
Played in trademark comedic style by Alan Rickman, director Randall Miller admits the character of Michaelson is loosely based on his late father, a well-known chemistry professor at Berkley who disapproved of Miller's own career path in his youth. Add the lightning-quick mental dexterity of Michaelson's forensic psychiatrist wife (well-played by a thoughtful Mary Steenburgen) and soon years of closeted secrets are unraveling. Members of this estranged family learn about Eli's even more shocking acts as they are pulled into the consequences. All of this slowly smolders behind the course of a seemingly straightforward kidnapping and extortion scheme that Steenburgen and her often-available detective coworker (Bill Pullman) work to solve in desperation to help her son.
Michaelson is less effected by what his offspring suffers and seems comically oblivious to his looming fate of discovery thanks to his recent notoriety. He beams with self affection at a celebratory dinner, relishing his cutting remarks at faculty and the concerned department director, warmly played by Ted Danson in a cameo role. Danson warns his fame will put bad behavior under close inspection just when Michaelson's angry young lover appears behind him for a flamboyant scene. The young student lover more than winks at Rickman's other well-known professor performances, turning past performances in a more overt direction.
Dawn Balkin has a fun turn as a flight attendant who must serve a smugly tipsy Michaelson during a scathing outburst on whether the captain has homo-erotic fantasies about him. Steenburgen expertly and clinically puts the situation in perspective. "I'm sorry," she tells Balkin, "but it appears the genius part of his brain has swallowed up the civilized part, causing this monstrous antisocial behavior."
Even without drinks it is clear Michaelson keeps a running interest in anyone who may be interested in him. Between kinky introductions where a flavor of the week comically barters for better grades even while he does the deed to her atop piles of better-graded reports, Rickman plays the flamboyant chemistry teacher once again to a fully R-rated capacity. The night is still young after his flighty young lover threatens to go public and Eli's son Barkley runs off smarting from public humiliation due to Michalson's venomous mood at the faculty dinner. Still riding a bicycle and scrounging change, the strangeness of the twenty-something grad school experience plays out for young Barkley in Ann Sexton epitaphs, sultry bohemian hook-ups, and snide bookstore coffee house baristas out to turn a deaf ear against the pleading pauperism of writer's blocked grad students. Instead of going back to his lonely research, Barkley is off in the night to stalk his current crush at a local poetry reading, which is where the two plots of the movie finally collide.
He eyes the smoldering City Hall, who voices edgy prose amid achingly funny poetry monologues by the certifiable. Excellent casting include scenes carried by Matt Winston (think alligators and area rugs from the Tribeca skits) and an over the top Kevin West. These scenes are so much fun because they are clearly meant to be. Lucky for writers Savin and Miller the supporting cast is just as strong as the main event making their witty writing hit the mark many more times than it misses through the flurry of high speed chases and quick camera cuts. There are some misses, but they are few in a script that works double time to fit multiple genres while never quite deciding which to follow at a given moment.
The central cast is rounded out with strong performances from Bill Pullman and Danny Devito, as well as a host of good lines that sometimes hit perfectly and often land out of nowhere and with flawless poise from Eli's brilliant wife (Steenburgen). Pullman is an awkward and sometimes inaudibly mumbling suitor who has waited in the wings for Steenburgen to come to her senses for years. Danny Devito plays a quirky variation as a mentally challenged neighbor. He is pitch perfect while Pullman comes across by reading between the lines of scenes that aren't there, but probably were at one point during the sophisticated background outlines of this complicated and weighty script.
If there is such a thing as mental motion sickness a film like this might need a warning label for some audiences, especially those expecting more soft focus lighting and retirement home scoring. Nobel Son does not suffer more than what it gains for the trade-off in becoming a caper more than a family drama. In a series of high tech scenes, much of what Miller is visually capable of directing meshes perfectly with the high style of Savin's perceptive writing and the energetic soundtrack overlays the nimble cinematography beautifully. The result is a perfectly paced young and fresh take on how to properly handle the nymphomaniacal, the certifiable, an indoor Mini Cooper, and a Seven Eleven big gulp. In that order.
For anyone looking for a fresh take on how to break out of the standard crime drama cliche, this one might be worth catching since it was quickly picked up for distribution and has a flash fan following since the premiere who are now lining the gates to see in theaters. I admit, I had to see it twice before I was done with it.
Labels: Nobel Son, Premiere, Tribeca Film Festival
