It's Not About The Bird?

Review: The Words

Even though everybody knows that the bird is the word, they may not know that The Words opened a few days ago in the midst one of the worst box office weekends in years (more on that in the upcoming Weekend Recap). Perhaps the film's failure to be about "the bird" contributed to its low attendance, but, Family Guy jokes aside, I'd say the film got just about the popularity it deserved.

The Words is actually three stories in one, told in concurrent layers. It's not Inception, but let me break it down for you.

The film begins with an author (Dennis Quaid, Far From Heaven) reading an excerpt from his new book. From these excerpts, and later as he discusses his book with a fan (Olivia Widle, People Like Us), we are told the story held within the book of another writer (Bradley Cooper, Limitless) who plagiarizes a novel he found in an old briefcase. His act of immorality affects his relationship with his wife (Zoe Saldana, Avatar) and leads to a confrontation with the original author, now an Old Man (Jeremy Irons, Reversal of a Fortune). The Old Man then recounts his own life as a Young Man (Ben Barnes, Prince Caspian) falling in love with a girl (Nora Arnezender, Paris 36), who accidentally leaves his debut, and apparently masterful, novel in a briefcase on a train.

Did you keep up? Author 3 writes and loses a novel. Years later, Author 2 finds the novel and plagiarizes it. They confront each other. Author 1 writes about their experiences. I promise, it's really not all that hard to follow as you are watching the events unfold on screen.

It is an interesting story, to be sure, but for being a film wrapped up in layers, The Words never quite widens its lens enough for the audience to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Don't get me wrong; I appreciate it when films are bold enough to roll the credits with an open-ended conclusion, allowing the audience to draw their own inferences. But what makes those types of endings effective are clues that the filmmakers provide throughout the film; hints to guide the audience to finality without screaming out answers in our faces.

I'll again mention Inception. - Did the totem wobble at the end? Was Cobb wearing his wedding band? Those questions fueled months of speculation from viewers.

The Words has interlocking stories and an open conclusion that leaves room for thought, but without any real guidance concerning what was left open-ended, audience members just aren't going to leave the theater having the engaging debate that co-writers-and-directors Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, both relatively new filmmakers, clearly thought they were setting up.

It's sort of like they dug out a pool, but only filled it halfway. Had Quaid's author been given as much attention as the authors played by Cooper and Irons, and had the latter two been given more time to interact, I think the film would have had the volume of content it needed to match the depth they were aspiring towards. (I know I'm speaking in generalities, but I'm trying to not ruin the movie for you!)

Everyone did well in terms of acting (although I'm not entirely sure how sold I was on Cooper's crying),  the scenes set in post-war Paris looked great, and the pacing was good - things never got too complicated, despite sounding so in a written synopsis, and the film never felt too long.

Unfortunately, while The Words might not have felt long, without a well enough constructed conclusion, it did feel purposeless.

As an aside, fans of literature will recognize that the bit about an author's wife losing his work on a train happened exactly the same way to Ernest Hemingway with his early writings, so we can appreciate how The Words is also loosely a "what-if-Hemingway's-stories-were-found?" exploration, even if The Old Man is certainly not supposed to be Hemingway himself. And it does make you wonder if anyone ever found Hemingway's pages and claimed them as their own. Anyways...

The Final Word: Wait to rent it.