MR. SOPHISTICATION B+
USA (97 mi)
2012 d: Danny Green
The Chicago premiere of MR. SOPHISTICATION took place at the Chicago
Film Festival and was something of a coming home party, largely attended by
family and friends, where Danny Green, whose career has largely been as a
second unit or assistant director, wrote and directed this film with Harry Lennix
in mind, and stood by the door afterwards thanking everyone who attended the
film. This is an intelligent and
beautifully written role, where the real guts of the film takes place onstage
where Lennix plays stand-up comedian Ron Waters, whose gritty, sharply
observant commentary about the world is startlingly hilarious, mostly speaking confessionally
about himself in the style of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, where he’s a guy
whose life is fucked up in many ways but once he’s onstage, he can’t help but be
honest with his audience. Chicago’s introduction to local actor Harry Lennix was
starring in the original 1988 Pegasus Players’ staging of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the first Chicago production of an August
Wilson play, a role he revived 9 years later at the Goodman Theatre in 1997, winning
a Joseph Jefferson Award as the best actor of the year both times. Having seen him in the latter production, he
was positively stellar in the role, reportedly one of August Wilson’s
favorite actors, playing a particularly difficult part with painfully explosive
moments, one of which climaxes the play. Normally a soft-spoken guy showing a quiet
reserve, Lennix literally transforms himself onstage. Goodman’s director Chuck Smith commented on
the character he played “Levee is as far from the real Harry as you can
probably get. Levee's an atheist, he's
streetwise and he's hot-tempered. Harry's
the opposite. I don't see any of the
real Harry on stage when he's playing Levee. He's also the most pleasant person to work
with in the theater.” Lennix grew up in Chicago's
South Shore
neighborhood and was an altar boy, attending Quigley South Preparatory
Seminary, deciding at a young age that he wanted to become a Dominican Priest
and the first black Pope before eventually discovering theater at Northwestern
University, where his original theatrical
role was only two years after graduation.
What’s different about this film is the lack of two
dimensional caricatures and stereotypes, bringing a mature and sophisticated
intelligence to the material, writing fully realized characters that are uncomfortable
with themselves even as they are apparently successful in life. The film opens in Chicago
where Waters performs to an enthusiastic audience, literally bringing the house
down in a club owned by his wife Kim, Tatum O’Neal. Despite their success, each is absorbed in
their own careers, where he’s the entertainer while she handles the business
end, but they don’t seem to have time for each other, where after 10 years of
marriage there’s an unspoken emotional disconnection where real intimacy has
been compromised by a routine of getting along.
Robert Patrick is literally transformed from the badass alien from
TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991) to a hip Hollywood manager, Sterling French,
a guy with influence and connections in the business who offers Waters a second
chance at the LA comedy circuit, as he apparently screwed up his career
earlier, one of the headliners of the 90’s until he began walking out on live
performances due to erratic drug related behavior (like whatever happened to
Sly Stone in the late 60’s and early 70’s?).
Kim has suspicions about a return to Hollywood
where temptations run amuck, as their current run of success was a long time
coming, but Waters is a driven artist who needs the stage and is ready for a
renewed opportunity. When he arrives in
LA, he’s treated like a star, given first class accommodations and a white
convertible, where opening night is a complete success, as his progressively
edgy material has such a blatantly realistic feel, with silhouetted closeups on
his face where cinematographer Keith L. Smith beautifully captures the
smoke-filled intimacy of the claustrophobic nightclubs. Rather forwardly, a beautiful young 24-year
old quickly introduces herself and latches onto him immediately, Rosa (Paloma
Guzmán), where they are still together weeks later.
One of the more interesting scenes is between girlfriends,
Kim and her best friend, Monique Gabriela Curnen, which reveals the backstory
of her husband’s calamitous descent. Nursing him off narcotics took
years, for which he is heavily indebted to her, trusting in her and believing
they are for real as a couple even as they undergo continual adversity. Rosa,
on the other hand, is a pleasure machine working in a dress store on Rodeo
Drive, where she wants to build a life around
Waters, making him feel like a king. Now honestly, who wouldn’t be
tempted? The script, however, delves into the depths of his indecision,
flattered by the adoring attention which strokes his ego, but also aware of
what he has with an independent minded woman his own age. When Kim hears
about the other woman, she flies to LA, where for better or for worse, she’ll
either save her marriage or end it. It doesn’t work out the way you might
expect, as there’s no dramatically confrontational scene, instead it slowly
plays out in Waters’ head, where he gets a little antsy for both women every
once in awhile and literally has to work it out in his blisteringly honest
onstage routines, which are the heart and soul of the film, and are simply
brilliant. Tatum O’Neal is surprisingly good here, showing an ease with
the Hollywood glamour world, where she’s been through it all before and is not
phased by the showbiz artificiality, showing she’s quite capable of holding her
own in the high pressure Hollywood scene. Her composure is really one of
the keys to the film, as it helps define Waters as a man, where there’s an
unspoken comfort zone between them that helps alleviate the natural tension of
what he does for a living, which is extremely high pressure. Nonetheless,
Lennix is every bit a star, commanding our attention throughout, where he’s
literally dazzling onstage, as his delivery is so effortless, where
the secret to the success of this film is the relaxed, underlying believability
of the characters, where the complexity of their lives is what comes alive
onscreen.
