Dancing Like She's Never Danced Before

I'm with Rich--Hamlet 2 is really, really, really good. He's saving his take for the DVD, but here's mine. (I'll go light on the spoilers, but I am going to talk about plot points. This shouldn't be too big of a problem, but come back after you've seen it, if you'd rather.)

If you want to know what Hamlet 2 is about, just check the structure. Sure, it's got a standard overall arc, which the movie itself makes fun of with Mr. Marsch's (the drama teacher and main character, played by Steve Coogan) repeated references to inspirational-teacher flicks like Mr. Holland's Opus, Dead Poets Society, and Dangerous Minds. Yes, there's a setup, a period of trouble, and then a successful resolution. But how does it resolve? After what amounts to a really long build-up, we get to see the performance of the titular play--and that's it. After the performance, there's a brief (and fantastic) epilogue, but it's only a couple minutes long. The thing the movie was leading up to was not the resolution of various emotional and character arcs--the kids don't learn any lessons, and Marschz's romantic interest exists purely as a gag--but the actual performance of the play itself. What matters is not the journey the characters went through, but the journey the play itself went through. The movie, in other words, is about the unpredictable and ignoble nature of the creative process.

As any critic can tell you, creative types are rarely what we want them to be. Sure, every once in a while there's a David Byrne who's as culturally literate, thoughtful, and intentional as we critics are (or, at least, like to think of ourselves as being). In the main, though, artists, writers, and musicians are the kind of people who we'd be embarassed to know if they weren't geniuses. They're boorish, dickish, passive-aggressive, fickle, emotionally stunted, alcoholic, abusive, and/or pathetic. They have an extremely difficult time maintaining healthy relationships, with any friendships or marriages characterized by neediness, selfishness, leechiness, and sulking. They are, in short, losers--jobless wrecks of humanity who are so pathetic that you can't engage them in a conversation without feeling kinda guilty that you're a normal, together person. Worst of all, at least from the critic's standpoint, they are generally incapable of talking about their creations, either coming up with simplistic explanations revolving around their own personal issues or refusing to explain them at all.

And this is exactly what Marschz is for almost the entire movie--in fact, that's where the humor comes from. He has to roller-skate everywhere because of a past DUI, and he's not very good at roller-skating. When he breaks his sobriety, he ends up pantsless on a couch in the middle of a field. After getting him to wear a caftan so that his testicles are at room temperature, his wife leaves him with their roomate, who it turns out is the one who actually impregnated her. Marschz says it himself: "My life is a parody of a tragedy." And yet, after a life as a loser, his last-ditch effort succeeds wildly. In the world of the film, whether or not we think so, his play is a masterpiece both creatively and commercially. How does he do this?

The movie's explanation, in a memorable line, is this: "It doesn't matter if you have talent as long as you have enthusiasm." This is a funny little epigraph for the current generation, but it's also true. Marschz has enthusiasm in spades, and it's that enthusiasm that allows the play to be a success. His enthusiasm draws talented people to him, and this pathetic loser is at the center of a group of very successful people: a great actor, a great lighting designer, great security guys, a great lawyer. And when they all work together and deploy their talents in service of Marschz's enthusiasm, they produce something that is well and truly moving.

What's funny about this is that the creative process depicted in the rest of the movie gives no indication that this will be the case. A sequal to Hamlet is, as many people point out over the course of the film, a horrible idea, and Marschz has given no indication at any point that he's a good enough writer or director to make up for that questionable decision. And at no point does he suddenly develop a full artistic sensibility, complete with taste, thematic complexity, and nuance. It works because he pours all those loser qualities out in such a charming way that, when surrounded with an aura of success and competence, it seems to glow with meaning. None of which, it becomes clear, he actually intended. When one character argues with her mother that "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" is intended as a critique of celebrity, Marschz interjects, "That's an oversimplification." The Christians who come to the foot of the stage to protest change their minds when they come up with their own interpretation, that "Jesus kicks the devil's ass!" All the while, the play, in which Marschz is simply working out his own issues with his father, continues on its merry way, oblivious to the storms of meaning being kicked up on its periphery. That, indeed, is why it works. Because people are able to pin their own meaning to it, it speaks to them on a personal level. Marschz's "parody of a tragedy" life is ultimately so knowable that it forges a multitude of connections with otherwise disperate identities. The restraint that taste imposes is generally crucial. When absent, it is almost always embarassing and cringe-inducing. But sometimes--when surrounded by talent--tastelessness allows for such an openness that beauty can rush through.

That idea of a "parody of a tragedy" points toward the play's ultimate character arc. Marschz's idea for a sequel to Hamlet is to have Hamlet travel back in time in order to stop all the tragedy from happening, ending it not with a bloodbath but with a marriage. He has, in short, turned a tragedy into a comedy. In the process, Marschz does the same thing to his life. But that doesn't happen through him becoming a better person--he does not change at all. What changes is the play. Hamlet starts as sadness and dissolusion and becomes happiness and connectedness. In our traditional understanding of art, that itself should be a tragedy: a great work of meaningful-core should be ruined by the inclusion of happiness. That it's not is an argument for comedy itself--and a pretty powerful one, I might add. Don't get me wrong: this is a deserved cult classic in the making, and there are a lot of hilarious testicle jokes that I was a bit Shue about. But it's also a really smart and, I think, important piece of art.

Labels: comedy, hamlet 2, meaningfulcore, movies

posted by Mike B. @ 1:01 AM 0 Comments